Still severe mouse skipping after 1.04.

[acrh2 0]

The new mouse smoothing makes the mouse movement a little better, but the biggest problem, mouse skipping, still remains.

By mouse skipping I mean an artifact in the mouse movement, where the mouse input is not registered when it comes in too fast for the game to handle. In other words, some mouse input is skipped when the mouse is moved fast.

The problem is especially severe for players who prefer low mouse sensitivity. For example, my mouse sensitivity in windows (xp) mouse control panel (native winxp control panel, no other mouse drivers installed) is about half the sensitivity slider. The mouse itself is Logitech mx518, in 1800dpi mode. When I move the mouse across the desktop space (1280x), it requires about 4 inches of movement to go from the left to the right side. In the game, my mouse sensitivity slider is all the way to the left.

What this configuration gives in the game is the following:

1) When I move the mouse at medium speed, it makes a 180 degree turn in about 3 inches of movement on the mousepad.

2) When I move the mouse fast, by the same 3 inches on the mousepad, it makes a turn that is more like 90 degrees.

3) And finally, when I move the mouse really fast, it makes a small degree turn and then locks up the movement on the screen completely.

Here's a couple of videos that demonstrate this behavior. The first video is mouse movement in quake3. The second, in arma2.

Now, the question is: are the developers going to fix this?

[Bulldogs 10]

I miss my mx518, man that was a good mouse...

Anyways, I'm not really sure about this issue. I noticed myself that if I move the mouse slower it seems to move faster, but that feels right to me (maybe it's just me), I know that mouse movement isn't meant to be anything like Quake, BF2, etc, being that it's not a traditional FPS, and we've all heard that tired old debate, but I think that may be the cause. In an effort to avoid traditional mouse movement it may have created this mouse jerk problem.

When I get a chance I'll give it a go at different DPI settings to see, but to me it feels right, doesn't play anything like other shooters, but plays like it should for me, but I'll see if I can replicate what you are explaining.

Just as a side note, the way it's meant to be (at least the way I think it's meant to be) is that you turn the mouse slowly and you turn slowly, turn the mouse fast and you turn faster to a limit point, that point being that you can't do a full 360 in a second (being not humanly possible). Obviously if it's moving faster at lower speeds then that's something going wrong there.

[acrh2 0]

I miss my mx518, man that was a good mouse...

Anyways, I'm not really sure about this issue. I noticed myself that if I move the mouse slower it seems to move faster, but that feels right to me (maybe it's just me), I know that mouse movement isn't meant to be anything like Quake, BF2, etc, being that it's not a traditional FPS, and we've all heard that tired old debate, but I think that may be the cause. In an effort to avoid traditional mouse movement it may have created this mouse jerk problem.

When I get a chance I'll give it a go at different DPI settings to see, but to me it feels right, doesn't play anything like other shooters, but plays like it should for me, but I'll see if I can replicate what you are explaining.

Just as a side note, the way it's meant to be (at least the way I think it's meant to be) is that you turn the mouse slowly and you turn slowly, turn the mouse fast and you turn faster to a limit point, that point being that you can't do a full 360 in a second (being not humanly possible). Obviously if it's moving faster at lower speeds then that's something going wrong there.

I noticed myself that if I move the mouse slower it seems to move faster, but that feels right to me (maybe it's just me)

That doesn't make sense, the feeling right part.

Just as a side note, the way it's meant to be (at least the way I think it's meant to be) is that you turn the mouse slowly and you turn slowly, turn the mouse fast and you turn faster to a limit point, that point being that you can't do a full 360 in a second (being not humanly possible).

That's a little better. I think that's what they were going for. I just measured the maximum speed of turning with slow and fast mouse movement (with fraps and virtualdubmod, I measured the actual speed). They appear to the be the same.

However, like you said, this feels completely counterintuitive when playing the game - you move the mouse faster, and it feels slower. It feels like the mouse is skipping and it doesn't feel right. I hope they would fix it.

[maddogx 13]

The explanation is fairly simple. Quoting myself from another thread:

Let's say the maximum turn speed in the game is 180°/s (one hundred and eighty degrees per second) and your horizontal mouse movement translates to 90°/cm (ninety degrees per centimeter), meaning you have to move the mouse 2cm to the right to do a 180° right turn.

This means that the fastest you can effectively move the mouse is 2cm/s. Anything above that will cross the turning speed threshold, meaning your turning speed will be calculated purely by the amount of time your mouse spends moving. In other words: the faster you move your mouse, the less you will turn - no matter how far you move it.

When you consider that the maximum turning rate (in our example) is 180°/s, slamming the mouse over the mouse mat at breakneck speed while only making contact for 0.2 seconds will cause you to turn a whopping 36°. If we factor in another 0.2 seconds to move the mouse back to the original position, we would need 2 seconds to make a 180° turn - twice as long as if you simply moved the mouse slowly. But since you slammed the mouse across whole the mat five times, you'll be wondering what the hell went wrong...

Please not that the example above is purely hypothetical and the values are imaginary. It is simply meant to explain how the limited turn speed causes the issue people describe.

[SaBrE_UK 0]

Anything (well, not anything) that subtly prevents Arma2 from becoming a twitch shooter is good in my opinion.

[MehMan 0]

I have the same problem too.

With an open ticket.

Anything (well, not anything) that subtly prevents Arma2 from becoming a twitch shooter is good in my opinion.

It's not about being a twitch shooter, but being able to corelate the movement of your mouse to the movement of your character. And I can't start to count the number of times I got killed in CQB because somebody appeared on my right and I tried to turn rapidly but got shot before I could reach him due to just that. It's just in the way and annoying. Every shooter since doom has been using this system and with a reason! In ArmA/ArmA2 it just feels like there's a bunch of bricks tied to the arms of my character, the faster I try to move him, the slower he does it. It's a big problem for me, because it just ruins the gameplay, it can be a problem to lineup on a target far away, or just react in a fast enough manner.

[maddogx 13]

It's not about being a twitch shooter...

Okay, if you say so.

And I can't start to count the number of times I got killed in CQB because somebody appeared on my right and I tried to turn rapidly but got shot before I could reach him due to just that.

Turning and shooting rapidly... you mean like in those twitch shooters? Or as you so deftly put it:

Every shooter since doom

I'm confused.

[acrh2 0]

Okay, if you say so.

Turning and shooting rapidly... you mean like in those twitch shooters? Or as you so deftly put it:

I'm confused.

The game skips mouse input. IMHO, any game that skips or ignores player input is a badly designed game.

A much better way to handle the "twitch shooter issue" would be to increase weapons sway if turning too fast. Say, if you start turning faster than the current maximum speed, your gun starts swaying, swaying more the faster you turn.

Edited September 18, 2009 by acrh2

[MehMan 0]

I'm confused.

Righto, having proper control over your character doesn't turn the game into Quake 3. What does turn it into Quake 3 is corridors, laser guns and rocket launchers. As you can see, we are far away from that. Besides, we're still missing a huge aspect for it to become a twitch shooter: jump. How can you call a game a twitch shooter without rocket jumps?

[Alex72 1]

By mouse skipping I mean an artifact in the mouse movement, where the mouse input is not registered when it comes in too fast for the game to handle. In other words, some mouse input is skipped when the mouse is moved fast.

Yes. I have the same problem. When there is a bit of action happening and FPS goes down just slightly - the mouse when moving it anything over snail speed skips almost an inch at the time. I have been trying to conquer that with different settings before i would come here and post about it. And i cannot get the mouse to function well again. As a reference beta v59008 worked good for me.

I was one of those that had awesome mouse handling before BIS started changing it around and the introduction of the slider made it pretty good - not as good as it was from start (since ArmA1 perfect), but i was ready to stop nagging about it as there is more people to think about. However from beta v59025 and v1.04 this problem has arrived as OP describes.

And it is a big mouse problem. It skips so much that i can not see whats on the screen when i turn/move. Im using the MX518.

EDIT: I posted this in the 1.04 thread. I thaught it might be bad performance first, but as you can read i thaught it had to do with the mouse.

Alex

Edited September 18, 2009 by Alex72

[MehMan 0]

The problem I'm having isn't FPS related. High or low FPS, turning speed is still shit.

[maddogx 13]

FPS are indeed irrelevant in this case. Fixing this "problem" is purely a matter of removing the turning speed limit, which I (among others) am against. Doing so might make character control feel more "natural" like in other games, but it would also make it entirely unrealistic. You simply cannot do a split second 180° turn and pop off a few headshots in real life.

And no, the term "twitch shooter" does not imply anything about jumping or whether or not there are laser guns and rocket launchers :rolleyes:. Nice straw man argument with Quake 3 though.

The key word here is "twitch", in the sense of "fast, jerky movement", as defined here. The turn speed limit discourages twitch shooter behaviour (i.e. run and gun CQB). This forces you to be aware of your surroundings, move with caution and preferrably have a team covering all angleso of approach. If someone manages to creep up on you, you're screwed - as you damned well should be.

[MehMan 0]

ArmA2 will still be a slow game after this change, it's not going to change, but when needed you can turn around quickly. I don't see why all the fuss.

There's still a ton more to be done to make ArmA2 a fast game. And I really don't see the point, as it worked perfectly well in OFP, so I don't understand why it shouldn't work in ArmA2.

[4 IN 1 0]

Fast is slow, slow is fast.

Thats a phase in the movie "Sniper"

and I quite like it

[-=seany=- 5]

mouse in game seems ok, I use smoothing at about half way, which I think is similar to how it was before these "mouse lag fixes". However, now my mouse behaves oddly when in menus etc, it's very erratic and jumpy some times. Occasionally I see multiple mouse pointers when I drag quickly.

[acrh2 0]

Fixing this "problem" is purely a matter of removing the turning speed limit, which I (among others) am against. Doing so might make character control feel more "natural" like in other games, but it would also make it entirely unrealistic.

No. That's not true. I can turn a lot faster than the fastest turning speed in Arma2. And so can anyone not morbidly obese.

You simply cannot do a split second 180° turn and pop off a few headshots in real life.

I ALREADY SUGGESTED how such a scenario can be remedied in the game w/o sacrificing consistent mouse movement.

WEAPON SWAY FROM FAST TURNING.

Please read post #8.

[Bulldogs 10]

Oddly enough it does actually feel right to me the way it is, but that's just me, I am strange after all.

The problem that acrh is defining isn't that he can't do a twitch turn, it's that when he moves the mouse very slowly he turns very fast, but the faster he moves the mouse the slower he turns. I can see how this would annoy people as moving the mouse slowly kinda makes it feel like a twitch shooter.

I guess it just feels right to me and doesn't bother me due to the fact that I don't ever really race my mouse across the pad, I'm slow and cautious with every movement, and to me it feels almost right, except that it's a little too sensitive when moving the mouse slow, so much that, as I mentioned earlier, it starts to feel like a twitch shooter which takes the feeling away.

So basically I think what's needed is to be less twitchy and sensitive and slower movement speeds, fortunately this can be accomplished (in most circumstances) by putting mouse smoothing to a certain level, the problem being that some people can't put mouse smoothing on without having mouse lag.

[Alex72 1]

I have the problem also without FPS hit. I wrote "slight FPS hit" because with just a tiny bit of drop (car moving by me) the mouse lag/skip becomse twice as skippy. And i have tried everything there is to try now - back and forth and in many combos. I can not get it to be smooth in 1.04. It's bad enough that i cant play 1.04.

*Maybe add more buttons along side the smoothing slider? I think there is more room there. Smoothing slider, button for bringing back the classic ARMA feeling and some other button for ...something. Not sure what. Could that help?

Well see in the next beta. I trust you find the problem BIS.

Alex

[maddogx 13]

I ALREADY SUGGESTED how such a scenario can be remedied in the game w/o sacrificing consistent mouse movement.

WEAPON SWAY FROM FAST TURNING.

Please read post #8.

No need to shout. Admittedly, I missed your post before, but now that I've seen it, yes it's a very interesting idea. In fact it could add an extra element of realism to the game if the weapon sway was scaled with the weight of the weapon in hand. Small, light weapons like pistols or SMGs could allow for faster turns, giving you an edge in CQB.

[MehMan 0]

That I can easily live with. The biggest problem I have is that I feel like it's messing up with the regular aiming. It all just feels odd in ArmA/ArmA2(felt completely fine in OFP) compared to other FPS's. Part of it can be atributed to the mouselag and part to this. And I'm not talking about waving my gun around the whole screen, but just small ones. It can still get a bead on things, but it all just feels like it's covered in honey or something.

Dunno, maybe it's just me?

[flake 10]

noticed very odd skipping when moving the mouse in sp and sometimes in mp. turning mouse smoothing to maximum seemed to fix it