Hi you guys!

So, I recently got my new tablet cover for my new tablet (Wacom CTL-472), which I'm excited about since I've been waiting very long for them. My old tablet was a VEIKK S640, which I bought a little over a year ago when I actually started taking osu! seriously. However, I wasn't sure if I wanted a tablet or not, so I bought the cheapest one I could find that still had alright reviews, which ended up being the S640. After playing with the S640 for a little over a year, I've obviously grown used to it, as with most stuff. The biggest and clearest difference between the tablets that I have noticed so far is the surface texture. The surface of the S640 was extremely smooth, almost like you'd drag your pen over a piece of glass. The CTL-472 on the other hand, has a much rougher texture. The tablet cover I got from Horo (Foxbox) has reduced this rough texture a bit, which I suppose is a good thing for me, since I was used to the little more glidy surface area. However, there are a few things that I've wanted to bring up regarding tablet drivers. I used to use the Hawku drivers, I've now switched over to the Devocub drivers at request of my friend, which I've used for a few days. If I didn't already say it, I should mention that I drag and do not hover, which I think is a reason that some people switch to Devocub due to the antichatter feature when hovering. Now let me get into the main topics:

Smoothing filter
Supposedly, the VEIKK S640, along with a few other cheaper but popular tablets, have what's called built-in hardware smoothing. I can't say for sure that I'm knowledgeable in the subject, but from my understanding, this is a thing that per say the popular Wacom tablets don't have, and is something that you generally don't want for osu! gaming.

So smoothing filter supposedly adds a bit of latency to the input, as the tablet drivers suggests:



I previously played with this disabled for my S640, because I didn't really understand what it meant when I first got the tablet, and then I never really thought about it. I have now though both heard and seen from many others that smoothing filter is something that a lot of players enable. I know that you should obviously play with what feels the most comfortable, and don't worry, I have done this up until now lmao, but if I'm going to be completely honest; I still haven't gotten very comfortable with my new tablet yet since it's only been a few days, so I want to experiment with different things to see if there is something new that I find interesting and comfortable.

Based on playing with the filter disabled for my entire time playing with a tablet, I've always recognized my cursor as very smooth, and it follows my movement relatively precisely. With my new tablet though, since I think my old one had built-in hardware smoothing, I realize that I tend to overaim a little bit, and sometimes even aim too fast. This is why I've wanted to try turning on some of the filters to experiment with what could be good. The main problem I run into though is that when I enable any combination of the filters, my cursor gets really choppy and laggy in-game, when doing bigger and faster gestures. The smoothing and input latency works very well for slower and more flowy aiming, like streams for example, but when I want to try doing jumps, my cursor seems to lose the smoothness that the filters (presumably?) should provide. I've tried variations from low latency and higher rate, lower latency and lower rate, and higher latency with higher rate; all with similar choppy results on faster cursor movement. This might be what it's supposed to be like, and then I'd feel like a complete fool (xD), but it feels like it shouldn't be as laggy as I'm experiencing it to be. I'm primarily wondering, what are some common values for smoothing filter, and why would you want to add latency to your cursor in-game? And to add onto what I stated earlier, is it supposed to be a bit rough when doing bigger, faster movements with the filter on, or is there some problem with perhaps my computer/tablet/monitor or whatnot? Essentially what I'm trying to say is that I would like to be able to add a teeny-tiny bit of delay, but without it resulting in my cursor being laggy.

Antichatter
So my understanding of antichatter is that it prevents your cursor from shaking as much, especially if the tablet doesn't have built-in smoothing. I can definitely see how this is more relevant to players who hover, but is this completely irrelevant for players who drag, or should you turn it off if you decide to enable smoothing filter? Based on the information included in the drivers, there are also different "presets" that you can enable, depending on the settings:



Since I've only wanted to add a small bit of latency to my cursor, I've gone with the "Low latency" preset at the bottom, but this might be much less of a deal for drag players. I don't really have a clear question regarding antichatter, but I suppose it's like stated before, if I should even have it turned on if I drag, and if it is related to the lagginess that I'm experiencing with the latency and smoothing filter?

Prediction
I am also curious about "prediction". From what I've googled up myself, it essentially predicts where I would want to move my cursor and moves it to there, which from what I can see has resulted in a majority of players turning it off, since you'd rather want it to move where you actually want to go; not where it thinks you want to go. However, I talked to my friend about this, and he linked me to the Devocub driver website, https://github.com/Devocub/TabletDriver, where these videos are located:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMrSGq8IvaU
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vimw1kihegk

From what I can see with these videos is that having prediction turned off, but smoothing enabled, might result in the cursor not actually having enough time to go where you originally aimed, which obviously would cause a missaim in real-time. I might've missunderstood this, but my questions about prediction are simply; when should you have it on, when should you have it off, and is it true that a vast majority of players play with it off when having smoothing filter and antichatter enabled?

I apologize, this ended up being quite the lengthy post, and I apologize if I've stated some things that are incorrect. I just want to say that I am aware that I am not super knowledgeable in these subjects, and that I am just stating what I have seen from my perspective! :3 If there is one clear question that I want to ask based on the entire post, it would be about if adding a low latency (5ms and like 250hz perhaps) should result in my cursor being not only a bit delayed (obviously) based on my movement, but also much choppier? I am asking this because I want to add a bit of latency, but while doing so, my cursor ends up being much laggier than with the filter disabled. I'm looking forward to any answers, and thanks in advance!

You have to have the smoothing filter enabled for the antichatter (and prediction) to work. It might not be as relevant for players who drag but plenty of them still use it. Sure it might not be as noticeable while dragging but it still makes a difference in how stable the cursor feels and even if you drag you can still shake. Antichatter can also make things such as noise and interference with the tablet signal less noticeable.

The prediction feature is ususally kept disabled. One reason is that it might mess with muscle memory since it can make cursor movements less predictable.

The choppy cursor might be because a windows update broke the filters a while ago, it doesn't work properly anymore. Afaik there are two forks of the driver with a fix for the devocub filters:
https://github.com/Pizzabelly/TabletDriver/releases/tag/v0.1.5.5
https://github.com/AbdShullah/TabletDriver/releases

Still since the hawku/devocub drivers aren't currently being updated I would suggest you try OpenTabletDriver: https://github.com/OpenTabletDriver/OpenTabletDriver which also has adjustable filters. This is also the driver that is integrated into osu!lazer, which is neat.

You could even try the Wacom ones since you seem to like some amount of smoothing.

tykork wrote:

You have to have the smoothing filter enabled for the antichatter (and prediction) to work. It might not be as relevant for players who drag but plenty of them still use it. Sure it might not be as noticeable while dragging but it still makes a difference in how stable the cursor feels and even if you drag you can still shake. Antichatter can also make things such as noise and interference with the tablet signal less noticeable.

The prediction feature is ususally kept disabled. One reason is that it might mess with muscle memory since it can make cursor movements less predictable.

The choppy cursor might be because a windows update broke the filters a while ago, it doesn't work properly anymore. Afaik there are two forks of the driver with a fix for the devocub filters:
https://github.com/Pizzabelly/TabletDriver/releases/tag/v0.1.5.5
https://github.com/AbdShullah/TabletDriver/releases

Still since the hawku/devocub drivers aren't currently being updated I would suggest you try OpenTabletDriver: https://github.com/OpenTabletDriver/OpenTabletDriver which also has adjustable filters. This is also the driver that is integrated into osu!lazer, which is neat.

You could even try the Wacom ones since you seem to like some amount of smoothing.

Thank you for the response!

I tried downloading the drivers from the second link you sent, after talking to my friend after this post he also recommended me the and linked me to that same page, which actually seems to have had a bit of a positive result! From playing around with different prediction settings, I've honestly come to the conclusion that it makes minimal difference for me, so I suppose I'll just play with it turned off for now at least. It might've been that windows update that caused the choppiness, but like I said, AbdShullah's fix for it seems to work for now at least. If I feel like it comes back though I might try the Wacom drivers instead, I actually downloaded them to try it out but I was probably too tired to be able to come to a clear conclusion about it, since it was late, and my cursor kept getting stuck in the top left (which I know there are ways to fix, so don't worry :p), and I couldn't be bothered fixing it.

Still though, I am curious as to why people would want to enable latency for their cursor. I know that you have to enable smoothing filter for antichatter (and prediction) to work, but can't you just enable it but leave the latency at "0"? Or is there some deeper reasoning behind adding a latency to your cursor?

I mean, the amount of latency is just preference and it's hard to speak for everyone. Some people might simply be used to having some latency since a lot of people start of with official (Wacom/XP-pen/Huion, etc) drivers for their tablets and those usually have some smoothing/latency. For some it might help with synchronising their aim and tapping. These are just the ones I could personally think of.

I haven't actually really looked at how the code works but I suppose in order to reduce the shakiness it has to calculate some kind of average position for the cursor and also filter jittery movements. Now in order to calculate an average position you need multiple values, if you leave it at 0 it won't have any buffered values to calculate the average position of. With a higher latency you get a bigger buffer of position values and therefore a more accurate average position. I'm pretty much guessing though .

tykork wrote:

I haven't actually really looked at how the code works but I suppose in order to reduce the shakiness it has to calculate some kind of average position for the cursor and also filter jittery movements. Now in order to calculate an average position you need multiple values, if you leave it at 0 it won't have any buffered values to calculate the average position of. With a higher latency you get a bigger buffer of position values and therefore a more accurate average position. I'm pretty much guessing though .

Ah yeah! I looked into it a bit, and you're actually forced to have some latency on with the smoothing filter for the antichatter to actually work:

So then I would assume that for hover players, that's the primary reason for them to have it enabled. For drag players, it's probably like you mentioned; that people might want to have it on to facilitate their aiming abilities or something of the kind.

It's a little interesting though, now I have gotten a bit more educated when it comes to tablet drivers and filters, so I guess that's always something!

how do i enable smoothing?

Sdan wrote:

how do i enable smoothing?

First, launch OpenTabletDriver, then go to plugins, it's in the top left.
Second, install the plugin called ''HawkuFilters''.
Third, go to interpolators and it should be there.

Enjoy!!