Surely if you have a gaming keyboard you will have read that it has anti-ghosting technology , although it is true that most do not explain exactly what it is for or how it works. This technology is essential in gaming-oriented keyboards , and in this article we are going to tell you why it is and, of course, how it works so that you can understand it precisely.
Gaming keyboards have a series of characteristics that normal keyboards generally lack, and among them we have the anti-ghosting technology that we often see expressed with the English term “N-Key Rollover”. This technology, as we will explain below, can have several levels of efficiency and is expressed by a variable before the “Key Rollover”, since not all manufacturers are capable of implementing it in the same way. In any case, we are going to start from the beginning, which is by explaining what ghosting is, which, as you will already suppose from the name of this technology, is something that we will always want to avoid.
What is ghosting and why does it occur?
When we talk about keyboards, ghosting is a phenomenon that occurs when you press more keys at the same time than the keyboard is capable of supporting. For example, in a keyboard that lacks anti-ghosting technology at the moment in which you press three keys simultaneously the keyboard will “lock”, and many times the equipment will emit a beep to let us know.
Ghosting or ghosting is defined as a problem in which certain combinations of three or more keys can cause an additional key to be registered, although most keyboard manufacturers use the term to refer to not registering any of the keystrokes. , and therefore we should call it blocking and not actually ghosting.
To simplify the internal circuitry of a keyboard, the keys are connected to a grid known as a matrix. The keyboard controller applies current to each column in the matrix in turn and checks which rows are emitting current; this indicates which intersections of the grid within the column are closed switches (which have been pushed), and ghosting occurs when current flows in the opposite direction around the matrix and causes a row to emit current when it shouldn’t.
However, as we said, the manufacturers attribute the term ghosting to key lock, but we have explained what ghosting really is because it is related; blocking is a means of preventing ghosting when the controller is programmed to detect combinations of keystrokes that can cause ghosting and to ignore all keys that could be the result of ghosting. Crashing is a simple and common way to solve ghosting, but it leads to keystrokes being bypassed / ignored, which is very troublesome for gaming.
Explained by way of summary, ghosting is actually an effect that, due to the design of the keyboard matrix, could cause keys that have not been pressed to be registered ; For its part, blocking is a remedy so that ghosting does not occur but, in reality, it is what is known as ghosting since its effect is that the keyboard cannot detect simultaneous keystrokes (which in turn is a remedy for ghosting).
How does anti-ghosting technology work?
Anti-ghosting technology is based on a matrix switch design that prevents hangs on certain key combinations. It does not remove the lock except in some cases and it is in fact a marketing exaggeration in many of them, but the quality of this matrix optimization means that we will be able to press a large number of keys simultaneously without crashing.
To explain the level or ability of the matrix to support simultaneous keystrokes we have the term ” Key Rollover “. For example, a keyboard that has 10-Key Rollover anti-ghosting technology means that it supports pressing up to 10 keys simultaneously before the lock level is reached, while a 5-Key Rollover keyboard will only support pressing 5 keys at the same time. time before we get to it. We can also see these abbreviated terms as 10KRO or 5KRO in the case of these two examples that we have put.
Of course we also have gaming keyboards with more advanced matrices that reach the so -called N-Key Rollover , abbreviated with NKRO . This term refers to keyboards whose matrix does not suffer from the effect of ghosting or blocking in any case and that, therefore, allows you to press as many keys simultaneously as you want, registering them all in the same order in which they were pressed. Obviously, this is precisely the most desirable thing in a gaming keyboard since it will allow us to hold down as many keys as we need at all times without blocking.
How to check your keyboard ghosting
When you use a keyboard to play games, you obviously do not want it to have ghosting (keylogger that you have not pressed) or crash when pressing various key combinations. Imagine that you are in a first-person shooter type game and that you are advancing diagonally (W + D keys for example) while you are sprinting (SHIFT key) and that you want to jump (space key). If your keyboard does not have anti-ghosting technology, a crash will occur when pressing the fourth key and, therefore, your character will not jump.
As a general rule, you can know if your keyboard has anti-ghosting technology and to what extent by consulting the packaging, instruction manual or the manufacturer’s website, but you can also check yourself if your keyboard suffers from ghosting or blocking in a very simple. You simply have to enter this web page and start pressing keys on your keyboard simultaneously to check if they are registered or not.
For example, here you can see an example that we have taken ourselves where we press the combination of keys that we have mentioned in the example above, but obviously you can press as many keys as you want to check it yourself.
If in this test you see that there are keystrokes that are not registered, you can count the keys that appear in green (although it is true that only pressing the left SHIFT also appears in green on the right) to know to what extent your keyboard has anti technology. -ghosting. If your keyboard is Full N-Key Rollover, which is the most normal thing in a gaming keyboard, you should be able to press as many keys as you want (or you can, rather) and there should not be a crash at any time.
