As you all know, there's a setting for the timing offset, and there's also a simple map made by peppy meant to help you fine tune your setting.

What might be less known is that different maps will have different offsets.

My computer screen runs at 144 Hz and is supposed to have a ~5 ms delay, according to a website that tests this stuff. 5 ms is about as good as it gets.
I've set my offset at 42. That's a HUGE offset!!! Bold! Daring! Reckless! And here are the results of my tests...

Peppy's map, 40 ms late.
Alive, mapped by AIR, normal difficulty, 13 ms early.
Calling, mapped by NeilPerry, PandaHero's Normal difficulty, 5 ms early.
Digital Angel, mapped by Waku, Born difficulty, 40 ms late.
Everything Black, mapped by CoolGuyRift, Normal difficulty, 20 ms late.
Maritime Police, mapped by Mir, Normal difficulty, 40 ms late.
Mazare, mapped by IntellectualBoy, NeoSL's Hard difficulty, 30 ms late.
Good Times, mapped by Frey, Collab Normal difficulty, 7 ms late.
Imaginary Places, mapped by Moreon, "how do play game" difficulty, 30 ms early!
KAEDE, mapped by Hollow Wings, Irre's Normal EX difficulty, 27 ms late.
Kiroku no Kakera, mapped by ailv, Anxient's Normal difficulty, 40 ms early!
Tidal Wave, mapped by Secretpipe, ryuu's Easy difficulty, 7 ms late.

All those tests were made by playing the same section several times going by the beat and getting consistent results.
The red ones have the music playing FAR too early, my offset would need to be even higher than 40 to play those maps comfortably.
The orange ones are ok, and the green ones are good if your offset setting is where it should be. (Less than 10 I guess)

Soooo it varies a lot, some maps, even ranked, are unhealthy, and Osu is not a rhythm game but a reading the circles game.

Comments?

lol i hope no one thinks that all maps are timed the same

also test that on some ar9 insanes when you can play ar9 insanes, that will be more accurate but also you should have consistent (most important) and as good as possible (a bit less important) acc for your error to be related to the map's timing

did you know that the sliderends will be constantly shifted if you have the wrong offset? that is very likely to shift your next click too and destroy your hit error measurements

I think you have no idea wtf are you doing xD
Play od10.

ManuelOsuPlayer wrote:

I think you have no idea wtf are you doing xD
Play od10.

I think you have no idea wtf hit error and offset are xD
Acquire brain.

Or how about you just get good instead of worrying about minor timing issues xd
play more

pandaBee wrote:

Or how about you just get good instead of worrying about minor timing issues xd
play more

He has a point, though.
Even on modern maps like Buriki no Dance the timing is so far off that even though you're in sync with the beat you still hit too early. It does affect gameplay and most importantly the enjoyment on some maps.


The ranked requirement for maps are "perfectly" timed maps, and maps that are like 25ms off isn't even close to that.



Edit: And it's not like that getting close to 1-3ms to the actual beat is hard to do. Some mappers just seem to lazy to actually time properly it seems.

Rayne wrote:

pandaBee wrote:

Or how about you just get good instead of worrying about minor timing issues xd
play more

He has a point, though.
Even on modern maps like Buriki no Dance the timing is so far off that even though you're in sync with the beat you still hit too early. It does affect gameplay and most importantly the enjoyment on some maps.


The ranked requirement for maps are "perfectly" timed maps, and maps that are like 25ms off isn't even close to that.

It's not off.
There are very few maps that are misstimed even amongst older maps, they got it down pretty well relatively early.
And even if it's misstimed it's very clear because sliders become unreadable if it's extreme.
Well at least not to the point where it would hinder your accuracy.
I found a remix which was clearly misstimed, and a couple others, but other than that really nothing else, it's not common issue.
But if you can't read a specific AR then there's nothing you can do but misstime your hits, this is true for lower ar older maps.

So i'm pretty sure you just suck.

edit: i think this was it: https://osu.ppy.sh/s/34 if you mess with the offset you can see the difference in sliders, if you can read it.
doesnt look fixable though cuz it's fucked up on multiple parts.

Sure, but most people do just fine ignoring it. Unless a map is badly mistimed I don't see it posing an issue. You can still enjoy and improve on most maps without ever touching the offset.The alternative I guess would be to check every map for timing, but is that really a path you or anyone else would like to tread upon?

There will always be a delay between our intentions and our actions no matter the case of scenario. Even when it comes to moving our bodies to a direct stimulus like say, a ball flying towards your head, there is a lag (reaction speed). The brain cannot process what it cannot see, it takes time for auditory and visual cues to travel through space and time to be sensed by our body and thus our brain. It then again takes time for the brain to process this information and to send commands through our nervous system to our body. In this sense there's a very real level of lag in everything. Whether it's with tools, computers, tablets, our bodies, etc. that gap will always exist. So it's more about how big this gap really is and not so much about the presence of the gap itself. I would posit that the vast majority of ranked beatmaps are adequately timed and that this is not an issue most people should care about.

Pandaebebee wrote:

I would posit that the vast majority of ranked beatmaps are adequately timed and that this is not an issue most people should care about.

^
prettymuchcaseclosedthx

Why are you quoting yourself sweetie?



It seems like there's some offset mistiming with your post.

whopps
fixded

Whoppers

https://osu.ppy.sh/s/588211
tested on 3 sections of the map (beginning, middle, end) because i couldn't possibly play the entire map without misaiming a stream

all needed consistently +2 local offset which is pretty much perfect timing, that's what i often need on maps seemingly just because the people who timed them have a different audio setup.


here is your proposed -25 local offset

conclusion: you either have shitty hitsounds that are not sharp enough for you to notice mistiming on od8/od9.2 (you should notice mistiming around od11.5)

or uhh your audio setup is weird and you should do global offset ~10-20 (positive)

Momiji wrote:

https://osu.ppy.sh/s/588211
tested on 3 sections of the map (beginning, middle, end) because i couldn't possibly play the entire map without misaiming a stream

all needed consistently +2 local offset which is pretty much perfect timing, that's what i often need on maps seemingly just because the people who timed them have a different audio setup.



conclusion: you either have shitty hitsounds that are not sharp enough for you to notice mistiming on od8/od9.2 (you should notice mistiming around od11.5)

or uhh your audio setup is weird and you should do global offset ~10-20 (positive)

It's most noticable to me on 00:52:430 (1) - and 02:43:709 (1) - (Insane diff). Using the normal offset it does reward me with 100s by tapping purely to the beat (not trying to visually read it), with the -25ms offset I hit pretty much perfectly on the hit error.



Could be differences in audio setup. I'll try a different headset. I do run a medium audio setup, though. HD650 and E10k. Either way, on that part especially it becomes really noticable, but also just checking when the first beat hits in the editor (for me) gives a delayed start to the beat.


Doesn't apply to all maps. Other maps are absolutely perfectly timed. So maybe it is just difference in the audio gear.

dacs basically give you higher audio latency. having to click early in relation to the map to sync to the music just makes sense, it's just logical.

my experience: played it with hr and found it a bit hard to get below 80 ur, i feel like the vocals were throwing me off from being a bit inconsistent but
drums<---> map had a good relationship because to get a 100 there i had to click audibly off-sync

Momiji wrote:

dacs basically give you higher audio latency. having to click early in relation to the map to sync to the music just makes sense, it's just logical.

my experience: played it with hr and found it a bit hard to get below 80 ur, i feel like the vocals were throwing me off from being a bit inconsistent but
drums<---> map had a good relationship because to get a 100 there i had to click audibly off-sync

For this map it's not delayed, though. For me the beat starts earlier than the actual offset does. But I guess we already found the culprit.

If you do the comparison with the offset on BDs WWC, Dear you and Vals Dance Number (just to name a few). These maps absolutely are perfectly timed on the dot, for Buriki it starts earlier. Try those two and see which off the two is off for you, if any.


The "tapping before the actual beat", of course that is true. It should feel like you "beat" when you hit the note or slider. I get that, and again it works fine for a lot of maps, but this one just really stuck with me in terms of the offset.

pandaBee wrote:

Or how about you just get good instead of worrying about minor timing issues xd
play more

Maps' offset varying wildly like that is not minor. Indeed I've been trying to get better and working on accuracy, and I noticed that I get a lot of green hits when I shouldn't and I've been trying to find why. And at times I have no idea what part of the song I'm supposed to be following among the beat, drums, vocals, a random background instrument or the mapper's plain imagination, because the circles don't seem to be in sync with anything at that moment. I thought it was just me being bad at reading. Now I know why I get that, the offset is very wrong and I shouldn't try to time my hits with the music. ...And that makes the game boring.

I've been trying to understand how better players think and what they focus on when they play. That's how I got to changing the offset and doing this test. The ranked process seems so slow and thorough, I honestly am surprised that the offset is often overlooked. But the offset problem is probably more common in lower difficulties because it comes straight out of mappers' asses as an afterthought. 80 ms off the mark is inexcusable, and 40 ms off the mark is incompetence.

Flying Deer wrote:

Maps' offset varying wildly like that is not minor. Indeed I've been trying to get better and working on accuracy, and I noticed that I get a lot of green hits when I shouldn't and I've been trying to find why.

Or you could just git gud man. Your life though.

If you truly wish to measure the accuracy of a map's offset you should do so via the editor.
Tapping to the beat is an inaccurate method, especially for people that are not accustomed to it. You really have to see that tapping on a keyboard key is a lot more inaccurate in the first instance compared to hitting a drum as the keyboard already resists the force of your tap before(!) you get past the actuation point.

I'd be interested how you got your values in the first place to be honest because I don't expect the average 22h playtime guy to have any substantial knowledge about the editor.

Like I've noted briefly, I've made the test by going through the same passage multiple times (a good 15-30 times) to get mostly consistent results. Of course, to do that, I've played through passages where I hit everything accurately.

Flying Deer wrote:

Kiroku no Kakera, mapped by ailv, Anxient's Normal difficulty, 40 ms early!

This map is ranked and the most extreme case of bad offset I've found while doing this little test. In the editor, I've set the timeline at 00:47:393 just before Kiai starts, because it has enough action to trigger the Mistimed Hits analysis and yet it's very easy for me to go through this passage flawlessly if I want to.

As a side note, I currently have hit sounds activated and it makes it harder to play by the music because it's distracting me away from it, but easier to correct my timing to suit the messed up map. >_> So I advise turning hit effects off for this test, for best effect.

I've also made my own map, which is still a work in progress because it needs some fine tuning, but it's complete and better than a lot of the clutter in that forum section, so I know my way around the editor. I know that I can simply let it play with hit effects on and compare them to the music. I can also hit Test and press Tab to make it autoplay. Setting the map's offset is annoying, but it's usually done around the start, if the song's beat is constant.
This specific map has two red bars, so two different offsets, because of an eventual click in the music... but the second bar has an offset of 2,198, which is needlessly high. It shows that the person making this map hasn't set it manually and just let the program do it.

I'm perfectly aware that there is a delay caused at the press of a keyboard button, and mine is especially bad for this because I need to press too hard and travel too far to be accurate. It's a non-factor here though, because I always had the same results. On a specific map, I was always 5, 7 or 10 ms late... on another map I was always 25, 30 ms late... The difference in my own timing was much lower than the difference of timing between these maps.

For clarification, each section used for my test was for 20-30 taps... basically a section of the song that I was comfortable going through very accurately.

By the way, in the editor, if there is a more precise way to set a map's offset than to just let it play with hit sounds at slower speeds, I would love to know it.

Bro, sorry but:
You are newbie, you don't have real knowledge how to efficiently use both offsets (global and local).
How about you just focus on playing, come here in a year when you will be able to consistently FC 4*+ od8 maps and then try to make any "research".

Seriously, OD2-4 what is a normal value for your skill level is not even close to be a place for this kind of tests.

There is not really a better way than slowing down although people experienced in timing will notice it when it is off by more than ~3ish ms.

I just checked Kiroku no Kakera and I think I can agree with you that it should not have been ranked like this but it is not even close to as poorly timed as you are saying.
The main issue is really the intro part. The offset is clearly late there, but it snaps back into time when the singing starts. It appears to have slipped through somehow which is definitely bad to see because as you've pointed out it is off by quite a margin (offset being about 30ms late for me). It's even audible without slowing down which just makes me shake my head. Then again, it is rather rare for songs to reset the offset so I don't think this is a large scale problem.

For the rest of the map however I don't see the issues you are talking about. I get about 3ms late on average on the Kiai part and I also don't notice any other significant deviations when listening closely in the editor.

There are roughly 3 things that can give you a wrong impression:
1. The song is very slow. Generally speaking, the less keypresses per second you have to perform, the higher your standard deviation will typically be. The sparse instrumentalisation intensifies this issue because the beats are not as clear as they would be on a song with a strong drum base.
Which brings us onto the next issue:
2. Attack points. Especially when taking a look at string instruments like violin and acoustic guitar there is a difficulty of telling when the note actually starts because there is that moment when the string starts to swing and when it is accentuated. People can happen to hear the attack point differently which can cause a different perception of the timing by 10ms or so. This may have a small impact here as there are strings although they play relatively clean in that regard.
3. Deviation within the music. Well kind of obvious but it may also distort perception of the beat.

^ all of these should barely matter when checking timing in the editor but when playing and testing like you did they are quite significant. Especially the first point is massive when playing very easy difficulties as the intervals between each tap are crazy high.