[2020] Input lag

Often we'll get somebody with horrible latency on the input thread and when we troubleshoot the issue with them, it seems that at this point in development, the input latency (sometimes in acute episodes, sometimes sustained) seems to always be due to something external that hooks into our multi-threaded input thread. (Unless we are talking about really low spec systems.) We are talking about any kind of software that hooks into the game process intrusively either to show some information, to record some information or for security purposes, that has some bug making them block excessively during this hooking instead of releasing quickly. Note that not all software that follows this pattern causes issues, just some of them.

One that came up recently was that Comodo has an advanced "active protection" detection mode that is a bit more intrusive than the normal one that was causing this, once this user disabled this advanced mode and left just the antivirus running the latency became instantly good. The version of Comodo where we saw this was 12.0.0.6818. It may be that this is fixed in new versions of Comodo, so do not assume that you need to stay away from Comodo or this kind of setting because of this in general.

Now, we have a short list of some things that have caused issues (apps and drivers) where removing them made the latency issue go away, but it is a tricky subject. I don't want to say "X app" will ruin your input and contribute to giving these apps a certain reputation that may be undeserved, because they may be able to fix this pretty soon for all we know, these things have a way to stick in gaming for a long time. We do have unusual runtime requirements due to our multi-threaded input feature, and it's understandable that there are a few apps out there still doing things incorrectly and getting away with it, because the delay they are creating wouldn't be noticeable in non-concurrent input games that poll input at a very low frequency.

So to sum up:

• For input delay issues, suspect anything that hooks into or interacts with the game process somehow. Turn anything belonging to that category off to start with and see if that fixes it, then turn them back one by one to locate the problem, and if you locate it we'd love to know. Diabotical with multi-threaded input On requires a clean, well-functioning OS environment much more so than other games. (This is another reason why MT Off is still there as an option).

• We are hesitant to publish a full list of apps that have contributed to problems before we give them a chance to fix these issues, this is an ongoing process. Let's come up with an arbitrary deadline now for them to get back to us and say they'll look into it: October 10th.

• If the process above doesn't go anywhere with some of the offending apps we can start detecting these apps when the game starts and give the users a warning once that they can dismiss, we will also put the list somewhere.

I wouldn't want to trigger an obsession over the issue of antivirus software packages that compels some people to relax their security practices. If you haven't experienced trouble with a certain software, don't worry about it. Just because some software is intrusive in nature it doesn't mean that it will cause trouble, in most cases things will be properly done. If you want to make sure you are not missing on anything for your peace of mind, just turn it off briefly and if the game doesn't feel suddenly amazing then things were probably OK already (at least as far as the impact of that piece of software is concerned).

But no, we haven't seen any issue with any of the Windows Defender (or Windows Security) levels of protection. I also just briefly analysed the impact of "Real-time protection" and "Tamper protection" in the Windows Security settings of Windows 10 and I can't see any impact so the Microsoft stuff seems pretty clean, at least in the version I'm running.

It sounds significant that both EQU8 is slow to load and EGS slow to authenticate, those are completely different infrastructures, have you tried turning off Tinywall completely for a test?

With AMD chipsets (also with Intel but frequently this comes up with people using AMD) there's sometimes timing issues (i.e: you may need to enable HPET or vice versa).

Also would you mind checking with this tool what's your timer resolution atm?

https://vvvv.org/contribution/windows-system-timer-tool

(Also I don't like to tell people to update their drivers before understanding the issue completely, but in this case since it's a relatively new install, an AMD system and the problem is likely to involve timing issues, make sure you are updated, in terms of chipset and BIOS especially).

If you have delays with multi-threaded input I wouldn't suspect GPU usage. Also do you have a specific reason to try to keep the GPU usage below 100%? Is it getting too hot? If not, you should want it to stay at 100% if playing with uncapped FPS, it's the CPU that you want to stay low. If a game is uncapped and the GPU is not at 100% it means you are CPU-bottlenecked and that's usually bad because CPU operations have more variability from frame to frame in the time it takes to perform them, leading to inconsistent frame time and stuttering.

I would first suspect anything external if you get this floaty feeling in the input while playing in multi-threaded (refer to my first post to this thread). And yes, a low resolution like that is what you want. If you are on Discord and same goes for OP I can help you troubleshoot this.

oh I'm nowhere near cpu bound

I know, didn't mean to say that you are. Just wondering why you seemed to be concerned about the GPU usage. Now I understand why you want to keep it low, didn't realise what that link was.

I wouldn't worry about what's being explained on the video in your current case.

If you DM me on discord I can send you some things for diagnostics and look into it.