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[Archived] How to enable windows cursor?

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Topic Starter
Dexus
I want to test cursor latency to see if osu! is actually following my cursor to a point or not but I can't see a way to get it to show. I noticed that before I started streaming one time I moved my cursor around before tabbing into osu! and I saw that the cursor wasn't following my windows cursor to a point (I know this was because I was tabbed away from osu!). This is just something I want to be able to see to have ease of mind.
Oinari-sama
You mean showing both osu cursor and window cursor at the same time?

The only time that can happen is when you're spectating, either another player or watching osu replays. But in that scenario you have no control over in game cursor.
Topic Starter
Dexus
Yes. I want to be able to show both cursors to determine if there is any input latency in my movements.
MillhioreF
You can record your gameplay with Camtasia. The framerate isn't the best, but it forces the Windows cursor to be visible in the recording, so you can check and see if it's desynced from the osu! cursor. It shouldn't be, though.
Topic Starter
Dexus

MillhioreF wrote:

You can record your gameplay with Camtasia. The framerate isn't the best, but it forces the Windows cursor to be visible in the recording, so you can check and see if it's desynced from the osu! cursor. It shouldn't be, though.
That would cause delay by recording, plus I don't have the software. (You have to buy Camtasia right?)

Edit: alright I installed the trial for Camtasia and I recorded as you said. I can defiantly see a delay in my cursor.

Edit: http://puu.sh/1ZJ1q http://puu.sh/1ZJ0x http://puu.sh/1ZIZM screenshots

Any way to fix this?
Topic Starter
Dexus
Bumping post because no resolution still.
MillhioreF
Please don't bump posts so soon. If somebody has a resolution, they'll post about it.
Full Tablet
You can easily record 120fps with Camtasia with the right codecs (I use Lagarith, it is free, fast and lossless)(For audio I use uncompressed PCM, otherwise there are audio desync issues) and a decent PC. I don't notice any cursor delay with it if osu! fps is high enough (~125fps or more).

Edit: after testing it a bit, it seems there is a slight delay even with frame limiter 120fps (though only visible seeing it frame by frame). Playing with osu! at ~4000fps there is still some delay, but the distance between the 2 cursors is smaller (testing recording at 480fps in a small part of the osu! window).

In fullscreen the situation is similar. Even with 4000fps, it seems osu! is always at least exactly 1 poll behind the input device's polling (Wacom Bamboo CTL-470, 133 polls/second). 7.5 ms of input delay. That delay is not even visible in most screens.

If this happens with keyboard input it may be more significant (I can't test it reliably, because my keyboard polling rate is 1000 pps).

It may be Camtasia's fault, but that doesn't sound very likely, because it was set to not add any overlay to the game during the recording.

@Dexus: In your profile it says your Bamboo tablet is 1000hz, how do you manage that? If you did that by increasing the USB ports polling rates, can you check if it really works? http://www.cybergamer.org/files/2260/ (try mirror 2). (In that test my tablet averages 133Hz, with some readings telling ~800Hz and some less than ~100Hz).
Topic Starter
Dexus

Full Tablet wrote:

@Dexus: In your profile it says your Bamboo tablet is 1000hz, how do you manage that? If you did that by increasing the USB ports polling rates, can you check if it really works? http://www.cybergamer.org/files/2260/ (try mirror 2). (In that test my tablet averages 133Hz, with some readings telling ~800Hz and some less than ~100Hz).
Yes I did modify the USB port polling rates, I also installed custom HID drivers over the tablet ones by mirroring them but modifying their polling rate. It does work but that application reads it incorrectly. I've tested it with a lot of people so far and they all say that the polling change works.

You can find my guide on how to change the polling here

It was surprising to me that changing the polling would work. There is however still issues of when I miss it really makes my cursor fall behind but then it snaps straight to where it should be.

Almost forgot to add that I did the polling change after making this thread. The delay is at an extreme minimum now.
Full Tablet

Dexus wrote:

Full Tablet wrote:

@Dexus: In your profile it says your Bamboo tablet is 1000hz, how do you manage that? If you did that by increasing the USB ports polling rates, can you check if it really works? http://www.cybergamer.org/files/2260/ (try mirror 2). (In that test my tablet averages 133Hz, with some readings telling ~800Hz and some less than ~100Hz).
Yes I did modify the USB port polling rates, I also installed custom HID drivers over the tablet ones by mirroring them but modifying their polling rate. It does work but that application reads it incorrectly. I've tested it with a lot of people so far and they all say that the polling change works.

You can find my guide on how to change the polling here

It was surprising to me that changing the polling would work. There is however still issues of when I miss it really makes my cursor fall behind but then it snaps straight to where it should be.

Almost forgot to add that I did the polling change after making this thread. The delay is at an extreme minimum now.
Ok, I followed the guide. It seems this does not increase the polling rate of the tablet, but makes it more consistent (the test gave readings of only ~130-140, no readings of about ~800 or ~100).
peppy
The latency you are seeing here is frame latency in osu!. Use unlimited frame limiter if this concerns you, though generally you should not be seeing such variance with 120fps limiter, unless your graphics card is forcing pre-render frames (make sure to check this setting is you are using an nvidia card especially.
Topic Starter
Dexus

peppy wrote:

The latency you are seeing here is frame latency in osu!. Use unlimited frame limiter if this concerns you, though generally you should not be seeing such variance with 120fps limiter, unless your graphics card is forcing pre-render frames (make sure to check this setting is you are using an nvidia card especially.
How do I control this with an AMD graphics card? Also with 120fps limiter it feels as if though the cursor doesn't respond as fast as it should, it is stable though. Unlimited feels much better but has the issues of having bad slow downs on certain maps and parts of songs. So it's either have a consistently slow cursor or have really bad spikes on certain songs.
peppy
Are you running full screen? That will make a relatively large difference, especially if you have desktop composition turned on.
Topic Starter
Dexus

peppy wrote:

Are you running full screen? That will make a relatively large difference, especially if you have desktop composition turned on.
Desktop composition is disabled and I do not play full screen. However I will try to switch around some settings so my tablet plays the same while full screen.
TakuMii
BTW, you can see the cursor by unplugging your mouse while osu! is running, then plugging it back in. But you shouldn't see much latency unless vsync is on or if you're having framerate issues.
Topic Starter
Dexus
Still getting delay issues even though I switched my flip queue to 0 and run unlimited frame rate. only happens during sliders and clustered maps still.
Rokk
The game has a slight amount of mouse lag. Deal with it. It's because osu! draws its own fancy cursor on the screen. Here's a quote from the XNA developer forums:

This is nothing specific to XNA...it has to do with the fact that with D3D whenever you submit a draw call, the results aren't reflected on-screen at the time that code runs on the CPU. Instead your CPU code might be up to 2 frames ahead of what the GPU is doing, and the commands are queued up by the driver. And even if you're CPU-bound and you're not working 1 or 2 frames ahead of the GPU, you still need to wait for the the back-buffer to be flipped and presented onto the front-buffer. Ultimately you're always going to be at least frame behind the cursor, hence the lag.
Topic Starter
Dexus
I researched it and found that it is XNA's fault and no matter what is done if he keeps using the current cursor rendering method it's going to be delayed. Just saying deal with it is a horrible and god awful way of going about things. Games these days are able to render their cursor's much better than the way they're being done in osu! because osu! is running on XNA and it's mouse support as I said is not up to par. Don't take this as an attack on osu! it's more of a complaint on XNA.

Peppy can you allow a hardware cursor option in the Beta build for me to test out to see if it'd work well or not for my computer?

The custom cursors can still be used with the hardware render but the fancy stuff like spinning and clicking effects can't be used. I think the quality of the cursor would degrade as well, but it's going to be moving around so no one would really notice. The cursor trail can still be used with it's current rendering method since it doesn't really take priority.

With such an accuracy demanding game if the game isn't reading your input device correctly how can this be played? This delay is only really noticeable at really high speeds and at the current abilities I have right now XNA is hindering this.
TakuMii
If the above post by Teraku is true (that latency reaches up to 2 frames with vsync turned off), the easiest way to avoid it would be to have your framerate 3 times higher than your screen's refresh rate. Usually this can be fixed by setting the framerate to Unlimited, but since you're having stuttering issues, you might want to try setting a custom framerate. Open up the osu!.username.cfg file in your osu! install folder, find the "CustomFrameLimit" line, and replace that number with a 180 (assuming you're using a 60Hz refresh rate; if not, then set accordingly). The number you set will then replace the 120fps limiter in-game.
peppy
nothing to do with xna.
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