An update to Ear WatchPublic Test Area (PTR) brings Nvida’s latency reduction technology, called Reflex, under the popular esports title (via Engadget). The technology aims to reduce the amount of time between when you click the mouse and when you see the resulting action on the screen, so that the game responds more. The fact that it comes Ear Watch was announced in January, but is now available for players who have access to the PTR and the latest Nvidia drivers.
If you have not yet got hold of one of Nvidia’s latest graphics cards, there is still hope that you will be able to try Reflex yourself Ear Watch – the technology was announced along with the 30-series graphics cards, but works on cards going back to the GTX 900 series.
Nvidia has an incredibly in-depth explanation of how the technology works, but the overview from the surface is that the game will work with your GPU to make sure the framework is made ‘just in time’ to show on your monitor, so you should theoretically always see the latest information.
It is noteworthy that latency can have some meanings, especially when it comes to online games. Reflex is not designed to improve you network delay, so if you have a bad internet connection, it probably won’t help to improve your gaming experience that much.
Whether the difference in delay will be noticeable depends a lot on the type of equipment you use, how much better it is and how eagle you are. If you’re one of the testers, it’s probably worth turning it on to try it out and see if you notice any improvement. For everyone, this is something to look forward to in a future update.
AMD also has a feature meant to reduce the input delay on its graphics cards, called Radeon Anti-Lag, which can also be turned on for Overwatch.