Posted December 15, 2012
I bought this game right on release and i never ever went past the first city.
Why?
Because frankly, the sluggish mouse makes the game completely unenjoyable for me.
Here are my specs for starters:
Core i7 2600K
Geforce GTX580
ASUS Sabertooth Z77
Win 7 64Bit on SSD drive
LG W2363D
(The monitor plays a role in this context)
The Problem:
Mouselag ... that's the short version. There have been alot of threads about it. But many "answers" where given due to people not even understanding or experiencing the problem.
So what is this mouse/input lag?
Most importantly, this is not the kind of delay that you experience when your PC cannot handle the game's GFX settings. It is however a performance issue. One of the opposite kind. Mouselag increases the faster your computer is in relation to your monitor's refresh rate. Whenever your computer is able to render a scene faster than your monitor's refresh rate, mouselag occurs. And the faster your hardware tries to dish out frames, the worse it gets. This is why many, many people experience increased (or only) mouselag in menus.
I have yet to find a viable, technical explanation on the net for why this happens. All i know is that somewhere between the game, the graphics driver and the monitor the signal processing gets choked up.
How can mouselag be prevented on the players side?
There are several possibilities to get rid of mouslag. Over the years i've grown very sensitive to it to the point where i even bought a new (smaller) monitor just to get rid of it.
- Solution 1: Turn of vsync.
This is the poor man's choice to get rid of mouselag. With vsync turned off in both the game and the gfx driver the choking point dissappears. However with your frames hammering your monitor at an unintended pace you are now subject to screen tearing. A problem that is just as annoying and also gets worse the faster your computer is. What's more important to me personally is that with completely disabled vsync my gfx card runs needlessly hot, reducing it's lifespan. I dont really care wether i have have 50 or 150 FPS i just want my game to run and my fans to be quiet. As do most people i recon (once they're aware of it).
- Solution 2: Turn off vsync only in the game. Force it in driver.
Often the GFX driver does the better job at managing vsync. It may give you an improvement. But it usually doesn't solve it completely.
- Solution 3: Buy a 120Hz screen
This is pretty much the opposite to Solution 1. If you are willing to dish out the money (like i was) you can go and buy a 120Hz (ie. 3D capable) screen. The 120Hz mode means you have much more breathing space before input lag becomes an issue. Many of these screens also come with additional input-lag-reduction features. However the game has to be able to select the 120Hz mode (most do from my experience, only some default to 60).
IMHO these are all workarounds the players shouldn't be harrased with because eliminating input lag on the developers side is really not that hard. So...
How can mouselag be prevented on the developers side?
- Solution 1: Hardware Mouse Cursor support.
The hardware cursor option means the cursor is drawn by the GPU instead of the software. Again, i don't know the technical details about why it works. It just does. I do have dozens of examples.. wich i wont bore you with. I am however pretty sure it's not a big deal to implement this in games. I've seen it patched in later for many others. (Witcher 1 did have hardware cursor support and did not suffer input lag btw)
- Solution 2: Fixed framerate through menu option or ini setting
Many games offer the option to limit the number of frames rendered by the game. By setting this equal to your monitor's refresh rate (or lower, whatever you consider fast enough..) you can reduce input lag aswell. Some games i played benefit from disabling vsync in combination with the fixed framerate.
I can't understand that TW2, to this day, suffers from one of the worst mouselags i've seen in gaming. There are 2 simple solutions for it and at least someone on the TW1 team was aware of the problem and put hardware cursor support in back then. Why not in 2? The team obviously cares about their game with all the patches. Why not fix something so obvious? (I do assume this is common knowledge among game devs)
It's just mind boggeling.
At the end of the day i still can't enjoy this otherwise fantastic game. :(
Why?
Because frankly, the sluggish mouse makes the game completely unenjoyable for me.
Here are my specs for starters:
Core i7 2600K
Geforce GTX580
ASUS Sabertooth Z77
Win 7 64Bit on SSD drive
LG W2363D
(The monitor plays a role in this context)
The Problem:
Mouselag ... that's the short version. There have been alot of threads about it. But many "answers" where given due to people not even understanding or experiencing the problem.
So what is this mouse/input lag?
Most importantly, this is not the kind of delay that you experience when your PC cannot handle the game's GFX settings. It is however a performance issue. One of the opposite kind. Mouselag increases the faster your computer is in relation to your monitor's refresh rate. Whenever your computer is able to render a scene faster than your monitor's refresh rate, mouselag occurs. And the faster your hardware tries to dish out frames, the worse it gets. This is why many, many people experience increased (or only) mouselag in menus.
I have yet to find a viable, technical explanation on the net for why this happens. All i know is that somewhere between the game, the graphics driver and the monitor the signal processing gets choked up.
How can mouselag be prevented on the players side?
There are several possibilities to get rid of mouslag. Over the years i've grown very sensitive to it to the point where i even bought a new (smaller) monitor just to get rid of it.
- Solution 1: Turn of vsync.
This is the poor man's choice to get rid of mouselag. With vsync turned off in both the game and the gfx driver the choking point dissappears. However with your frames hammering your monitor at an unintended pace you are now subject to screen tearing. A problem that is just as annoying and also gets worse the faster your computer is. What's more important to me personally is that with completely disabled vsync my gfx card runs needlessly hot, reducing it's lifespan. I dont really care wether i have have 50 or 150 FPS i just want my game to run and my fans to be quiet. As do most people i recon (once they're aware of it).
- Solution 2: Turn off vsync only in the game. Force it in driver.
Often the GFX driver does the better job at managing vsync. It may give you an improvement. But it usually doesn't solve it completely.
- Solution 3: Buy a 120Hz screen
This is pretty much the opposite to Solution 1. If you are willing to dish out the money (like i was) you can go and buy a 120Hz (ie. 3D capable) screen. The 120Hz mode means you have much more breathing space before input lag becomes an issue. Many of these screens also come with additional input-lag-reduction features. However the game has to be able to select the 120Hz mode (most do from my experience, only some default to 60).
IMHO these are all workarounds the players shouldn't be harrased with because eliminating input lag on the developers side is really not that hard. So...
How can mouselag be prevented on the developers side?
- Solution 1: Hardware Mouse Cursor support.
The hardware cursor option means the cursor is drawn by the GPU instead of the software. Again, i don't know the technical details about why it works. It just does. I do have dozens of examples.. wich i wont bore you with. I am however pretty sure it's not a big deal to implement this in games. I've seen it patched in later for many others. (Witcher 1 did have hardware cursor support and did not suffer input lag btw)
- Solution 2: Fixed framerate through menu option or ini setting
Many games offer the option to limit the number of frames rendered by the game. By setting this equal to your monitor's refresh rate (or lower, whatever you consider fast enough..) you can reduce input lag aswell. Some games i played benefit from disabling vsync in combination with the fixed framerate.
I can't understand that TW2, to this day, suffers from one of the worst mouselags i've seen in gaming. There are 2 simple solutions for it and at least someone on the TW1 team was aware of the problem and put hardware cursor support in back then. Why not in 2? The team obviously cares about their game with all the patches. Why not fix something so obvious? (I do assume this is common knowledge among game devs)
It's just mind boggeling.
At the end of the day i still can't enjoy this otherwise fantastic game. :(
Post edited December 16, 2012 by Hatman
