Smoother mouse movement under WinUAE

[hexaae]

Something I wanted to ask from a very long time...

@Toni
Is it possible to make the mouse movement smoother under WinUAE?
It looks quite jerky at Workbench (1080p@60Hz 32bit BGRA), especially in Picasso EMU. Is it normal? Games run perfectly smooth with G-Sync at 50Hz/FPS on my sys (see signature) but mouse at WB is always jerky... mmh

[Toni Wilen]

Perhaps it only looks jerky if you normally use high refresh rate displays? There is huge difference between 60hz and 100hz (for example) mouse movement, especially with high DPI mouse.

Check that both chipset and RTG mode use same refresh rate because mouse movement is read in vblank interrupt which uses chipset refresh rate.

[hexaae]

Mmmh… G-Sync won't help (NVidia GeForce Experience FPS counter says 60fps at WB)?
It looks quite laggy… MUCH more then Windows mouse over a 60Hz/fps screen as I tested in some Windows games.

I use PAL + Picasso EMU with a 60Hz WB. Here is my cfg: https://1drv.ms/t/s!ApMUGr0cuN39gcA4...JE9bA?e=ElmDBH

[Toni Wilen]

Test if both Game Ports panel "Windows mouse" and <name of your mouse> have same behavior.

Make also sure triple buffering is not enabled.

[Photon]

There are too many factors, and sometimes the factors (concepts) are not clear. If you can film the screen with your phone when it happens, it would give some clues.

I would try Toni's suggestions, and run WinUAE in fullscreen mode with G-Sync off and V-Sync on. It's also necessary to confirm from the log that WinUAE is V-syncing and check that your computer can output enough FPS. Turn on the built in FPS checker and/or compare with FRAPS or similar tool.

Because G-Sync alters the refresh rate of the monitor, it's an extra factor that can complicate matters. It's made specifically for heavy games with uneven refresh rates.

[hexaae]

Here is a video of my WB: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/453220699## (games won't look smooth because video was grabbed at 60fps and they run at 50fps/Hz thanks to G-Sync)
The mouse at WB is just a bit "jumpy" compared to smoothness of Windows mouse movements.

Setting Windows Mouse mode it changes acceleration and speed but don't make it smoother…

P.S.
… Maybe it's perfectly normal for an Amiga WB 3.9+ and I'm just paranoid/I can't remember how it was on my real A1200 + Blizzard 1260 at that time

[Photon]

It looks like you just have a normal modern 800+ CPI mouse. Have you set the factor in WB/Prefs? I have to set mine to lowest AND drag down Control Panel a step or two (and disable acceleration) when I use WinUAE, or it jumps everywhere just like this.

(This is with Windows Mouse selected in WinUAE.)

I don't think this is to do with sync, unless you can see something like 999 FPS in WinUAE.

[pipper]

Does the AGA chipset allow to use 35ns sprite positions independent of the screen resolution?
That would effectively allow for sub pixel resolution mouse cursor movement, in particular with high dpi mice. The other question would be if workbench actually makes use of it?

[hexaae]

Another issue: I've bought a gaming mouse (Corsair Harpoon Wireless mouse) and at resolution over 2400DPI, on 1920x1080 RTG Picasso Workbench it's like acceleration goes inverse!
Expected behaviour: when you move mouse suddenly and faster, pointer should accelerate accordingly...
Seen behaviour: over a certain mouse movement speed it looks like Workbench pointer slows down instead of accelerating. It's like acceleration is too much for old Workbench and mouse moves slower instead of accelerating.

I've set in Game Ports > Mouse speed: 100, and from WB minimum speed + Acceleration ON.

[Toni Wilen]

It is most likely UAE mouse counter overflow protection kicking in. Overflow would make pointer jump around very annoyingly.

AmigaOS only reads mouse position once per frame which means mouse can't move more than +-128 pixels/frame before it overflows.

[sonninnos]

Maybe it has something to do with the odd fact that "Cycle-exact" makes mouse jerky in some random games?

For example in The Settlers, there is an evident stutter in the mouse cursor, but it disappears right after disabling DMA/Memory Cycle-exact. And for some reason it only happens after the copy protection section, not before..

"Windows mouse" vs "HID-compliant mouse" has no effect and the display is doing 50Hz correctly. Same thing happens with the floppy version on A500 setup and the WHDLoad version on A1200 setup.

Analyzing a video recording frame by frame shows that every fourth frame of mouse movement is skipped.

[Toni Wilen]

It probably is game problem and has nothing to do with hexaae's problem.

Perhaps protection or whatever takes enough CPU time so that mouse coordinate updates gets delayed and is visible only in next frame periodically.

[Chrille]

Originally Posted by hexaae

Something I wanted to ask from a very long time...

@Toni
Is it possible to make the mouse movement smoother under WinUAE?
It looks quite jerky at Workbench (1080p@60Hz 32bit BGRA), especially in Picasso EMU. Is it normal? Games run perfectly smooth with G-Sync at 50Hz/FPS on my sys (see signature) but mouse at WB is always jerky... mmh

@hexaae
Maybe it has something to do with your mouse? USB or PS/2?

A standard USB mouse has a query-rate of 125 queries a second and this is a little bit jerky, also when you have 50 FPS. To avoid this, use a gaming mouse, which has at least 250 queries per second (or polling rate of 250 Hz). The mouse query rate should be a multiple of 50 when you have 50 FPS. If you have 60 FPS, the mouse query rate should be as fast as possible. E.g. 500 Hz or 1000 Hz. The fastest possible polling rate of a USB mice is 1000Hz and AFAIK this will be only reached by special drivers.

Once (20 years ago) I had simillar problems with DxBall. The bat was alway jerky and i had to set mouse and monitor frequency to the same rate, e.g. 100 Hz.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Chrille

To avoid this, use a gaming mouse, which has at least 250 queries per second (or polling rate of 250 Hz).

You must have misssed this part in hexaae's post:

Originally Posted by hexaae

Another issue: I've bought a gaming mouse (Corsair Harpoon Wireless mouse) and at resolution over 2400DPI

[Chrille]

Yes, sorry, I missed that part. But may be polling rate is not set to 1000 Hz in driver setup?

[hexaae]

Corsair Harpoon Wireless mouse can go up to 10000DPI at 1000Hz/1ms.
It seems "too much" for old Workbench when you do sudden accelerations

[sonninnos]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It probably is game problem and has nothing to do with hexaae's problem.

Perhaps protection or whatever takes enough CPU time so that mouse coordinate updates gets delayed and is visible only in next frame periodically.

Sure, most likely unrelated.

Looks like it happens also with the uncracked version. Also does not happen with a real Amiga, but thanks to my CRT being broken I only have a low quality LCD TV, which makes such small things not easy to distinguish, but I think I would remember if it had done that always back in the day.

I'm pretty sure it does happen on some other games too, but can't think of one right now, because it is such a rare thing after all.

[Misclegend]

the mouse movement in winuae never was really smooth , specially in interlaced screens ie PAL 640x512
I tried millions of different configs and refresh rates and I never solved the problem

using a workbench in P96, everything is fine and yes the mouse is smooth
but in a normal workbench 3.0 AGA using a pal high res screen the mouse movement is jerky is not smooth like a real Amiga

example1: workbench 3.0 - 640x256 (default) the mouse is smooth

example2: idem WB and config but 640x512 the mouse is very jerky and interlace effects are noted in the mouse movement

[Toni Wilen]

This isn't really what OP asked anymore but anyway:

Switch to some other mode than Display panel "double" interlace line mode. Double halves update rate in interlace mode. (Makes interlace progressive, like most LCD TVs do. Which is usually not what you want.) Select fields or fields+ (for authentic interlace)

Remove interlace artifacts option makes can make it more smooth than in real world (by internally emulating both fields at 50Hz) but it can only work if program does not use any display tricks.

[rutra80]

Toni what about native modes mouse lag I mentioned some time ago? It really feels better when beamraced, even though I have a FreeSync monitor. You once claimed that you feel the difference in Pinball Dreams when beamraced, then I bet you could feel the difference in Workbench mouse pointer too?