This is a pretty specific issue, so I won't be disappointed if nobody has answers, but since I haven't been able to find a solution myself I thought I'd ask for advice.

Before I get started I want to make clear that I have tried every solution to osu pen/tablet issues that has come up in Google. I have flicks, taps, etc disabled, I've tried disabling the touch service, the pen polling time has been reduced to 2ms etc. Because the Surface runs Windows 8 I thought the issue might be related to the mouse problems other people have been having, but after those workarounds there wasn't any improvement. On the contrary, increasing the mouse sensitivity in osu seems to make the lag decrease a bit, but only to a point around 1.8 where the cursor goes crazy and is uncontrollable (literally jumping to random corners of the screen). Interestingly, there is no lag at all with touches, only the position of the cursor in relation to the pen. I suspect that the Surface Pro's pen has issues sending location of the cursor to other applications, but osu is the only culprit where there has been noticeable lag.

Anyways here is a short, poorly taken phone video of the issue. You can see that the osu cursor lags behind where my pen is by quite a bit at times, but always follows the exact path I take. I have task manager up to show that it isn't a performance issue as my CPU is hardly working at all. I move the mouse above osu to show that there is significantly less lag outside the game. I change the resolution to show that it persists across all settings (fps, resolution, etc), however the lag seems to be about the same no matter what resolution I play at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LgHdAefM1Y

Can't seem to get embedding to work...

Well, you can try disabling windows aero. I couldn't really tell by the video but disabling windows aero when you are using windowed mode can reduce lag.

iSpR1Te wrote:

Well, you can try disabling windows aero. I couldn't really tell by the video but disabling windows aero when you are using windowed mode can reduce lag.

Just tried it to no avail. Normally switching out of aero solves performance issues. The Surface has no trouble running osu (or even other, much higher demanding games). Seems to be a more technical issue unfortunately.

Seems like a limitation of the touchscreen. Capacitive touch screens usually have 50ms or more delay, so using them for playing osu! is not ideal.

Graphic Tablets that work by electromagnetic induction usually have 7ms of delay or less.

Full Tablet wrote:

Seems like a limitation of the touchscreen. Capacitive touch screens usually have 50ms or more delay, so using them for playing osu! is not ideal.

Graphic Tablets that work by electromagnetic induction usually have 7ms of delay or less.

While the actual touch portion of the screen is capacitive, I think the pen is handled the same way most Wacom Tablets are. Per wikipedia:

Surface Pro includes a digital pen and Wacom digitizing technology. This allows the pen to be contacted with up to 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity. To achieve highly precise pen inputs, the display produces a weak electromagnetic (EM) field, which induces a current in the otherwise passive pen, which in turn impacts the EM field. This allows the system to detect the position and angle of the pen starting at a distance of 1 inch (2.5 cm) from the display.

It would be important to mention the lag occurs even when hovering above the screen, but is harder to tape proof of, which is why I was touching the screen in the video. Sorry for not being more specific earlier!

Why are you showing this with your frame limiter set to vsync? You are adding at least 16ms latency by doing so. Please use either 120fps or unlimited. Also, if you want lower latency you will need to either disable aero or run fullscreen. This will get you about 8-16ms back.

The latency you are seeing looks normal for any capacitive or inductive touch device, for what it's worth.

Try again with Unlimited frame limiter and fullscreen mode and try again. Vsync just adds to the problem.

@peppy: the Surface 2 Pro uses a Wacom pen, so it's the same electromagnetic induction technology as the Bamboo/Intuos tablets. And he is hovering the pen in the video.

Surface tablets are not like Wacom graphics tablets. Even if the pen uses Wacom technology. Having used one myself for quite some time now, there is nothing you can do to reduce the delay. The cursor lags behind even in windows. The pen is used for sketching and navigating. Not clicking dots.

I hope you didn't buy this just to play osu

No worries I bought it for school, but it has gotten me back into osu recently. Thanks for all the advice, I didn't realize that playing a lower framerate would increase lag. Running unlimited fps makes it better, but it seems that fullscreen is the option that improves it the most. Kind of a disappointment because its much easier to play in a smaller window, but being able to make jumps is worth making the switch. Running it this way brings it to a small enough lag that it doesn't affect my play. Sorry for it ending up being such a simple problem!

1. Open regedit

2. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TouchPrediction

3. Change “sample time" and “latency” from 8 to 2.

4. Restart

This helps a bit if you're on windows 8. I have a touch screen laptop and this helped reduce it enough to be playable (while fullscreen with 360 fps limit). If your graphics drivers allow it you can use no scaling with centered timings and still enjoy a small play area.

Im "reloading" this, because i'm having troubles with my Surface Pro 3. I'm using a Wacom Pen % Touch with my surface pro 3 for playing osu!. But i'm getting lag while in osu!. With other apps, wacom works great.

I've tried everything: Low Osu! resolution, run in full screen, ser framerate unlimited... If I set osu in 800x600 res, lag dissappear a little bit, but is still unplayable.

Does anyone have some answers or some information about this issue? Its so weird...

Just for getting things clear, i'm using a Wacom tablet, not Surface Pro 3 screen. And the tablet works great, I have another PC and the tablet works as espected.