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Andy,

I got the same result with my full low test.
My theory is the following
It doesnt matter what is the FPS. The delay is always the same amount of frame. Lets say 15 frames. What happens when you set everything to low, that the FPS goes out of the roof so that 15 frames takes shorter time to show on the screen. So the lag seems to be shorter, but in fact it is still the same regarding the number of frames.

My config

C2Duo 3,2@4,0Ghz
4Gb RAM
9800GTX
Audigy gamer
Win7 64bit

Hotas cougar
CH PRo pedals
TrackIR4

I don't know why it would take a set number of frames (rendering) to get the input data. If it's directly related to rendering I think it should always be one frame. Which actually I don't think it is, 30-40fps shouldn't produce much lag at all if it was just one frame. I think. It would be useful to actually measure what kind of lag I'm getting, but that would take a high-quality video cam, which I don't have.

It has been said earlier in this thread that this doesn't seem to be a very common problem. I solved my freetrack issue with lag by changing the 'avarage camera fps' value in the camera settings in freetrack itself. Maybe it would be worth re-installing your controllers drivers, if only to eliminate that as a possible cause before you start changing all sorts of esoteric settings within the game itself. I know it seems unlikely given the many bugs and problems this game has had but it's worth a try..

Mmeister, having re-read your original post I now understand that it is not just your stick which has lag, but your mouse+keyboard as well, obviously its not a driver issue. Guess I should RTFP

One needs to remember that ave FPS means little when working on Performance issues. The key is minimun FPS (when the delay occurs).

One method is set all settings to the lowest (trading quality for performance) and check to see if the issue still occurs. If you have the issue on lowest setting then the issue is a component of your PC (processor, video card, memory). If you do not have the issue on lowest settings then move setting up one at a time and test each to find the sweet spot.

One thing just occurred to me and I think MMaister might actually be correct in his estimate. I still don't see any real reason why input should take a set number of rendering frames, but I just remembered a peculiar thing I noticed earlier.

Check the video I made earlier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7HSR452ttA

I noticed that the control stick seems to be rendered at a lower FPS than the rest of the game. Actually you can't see that very well in the video posted, because FPS is generally quite high, but it's still quite visible. Now if in fact the controls are actually calculated at the rate they are rendered (which is of course not necessarily the case) and that rate is for example 1/3 of the rendered FPS you would get as much as 100ms lag already at 30FPS. That would in fact completely explain the problem I and some others are having. Previously I thought that the control fps would be a hard coded number that is not tied to the general fps, but perhaps this isn't so.

The problem with this hypothesis is that again just about everyone would be suffering from the lag. From personal experience I can say that both computers I've tested have the lag and two out of three online buddies I've told how to recognize the issue have noticed it, the third one being inconclusive. He also happens to have a monster computer so his frames are probably higher than what the rest of us are seeing (my machine is no sloth either, but I'm running a very high resolution). However, based on the discussions in this thread and elsewhere, it appears that not everyone is getting the issue.

I still have to wonder how widespread the issue really is, because as the original poster wrote, he didn't notice it at first, thinking that it was just modeling inertia or something purposefully included in the modeling. Also one of my flying buddies initially said he had no lag, just trouble hitting anything. When I told him how to look for the symptoms he noticed it right away. I also showed the game to a friend of mine with a lot of simming background and he was disgusted by it, but when I told him to have a go a the game to test the damage modeling, he had a blast doing so inspite of the issue. Even a fairly bad lag doesn't render the game completely unplayable and when I was playing it a lot for a (p)review I wrote I kind of got used to it (and in the beginning I only had a nagging feeling that something's wrong but couldn't put my finger on it until I noticed the delay in firing). It's only when I went to fly a '46-campaign with squadmates when I noticed the incredibly crisp feel of the good old '46 when I fully realized how bad the lag problem in iCoD really was. It doesn't make the game unplayable by any means, but at least for me it means that every single simulator out there is more fun to fly.

Anyway, back to the original discussion. If in fact the issue is a low poll rate for input devices that is tied to rendering speed, it must be extremely simple to fix. It could in fact be one line in the conf.ini file. I tried fiddling with some of the values earlier, but they didn't seem to have any effect. If the hypothesis is correct the bad thing is that everyone will suffer from the lag at times (I don't believe it's possible to keep the fps at 80+ all the time), but the good thing is that there's an extremely simple fix. Of course you have to ask why they would put such a delay in input polling in the first place, so there's a good chance it's not actually that simple.

the control stick seems to be rendered at a lower FPS than the rest of the game

Interesting spot Andy

This is how I tried to describe this oddness, dislocation: rendering seems to be er, loosely prioritised/ordered, parts to a scene



http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3266147/Re_Kegetys_cockpit_rendering_w.html#Post3266147

Hmm is it simply a vsync thing maybe, cleared up by enabling vsync

Check for vsync enabled dear reader is: inspect framerate looking at the sky. If fps ever gets higher than your monitor's current refresh rate then vsync must be disabled. With vsync enabled, fps is capped at monitor refresh rate

Ming

I really appreciate everyone`s help on this topic.

Andy,

the only problem with your theory, that if it is a general programming issue or a setup in the config.ini, then everyone should be effected by it. The lower fps of the virtual control column can also be the result of a simplified animation of it, but I am only guessing.

What is sure by now:

- the lag effects ALL input controls (joystick, keyboard, mouse, trackir ect..)
- The lag is FPS sensitive. The higher FPS you have the lower is the lag (but never 0)
- It is not hw specific (We have reports from very different setups)
- It is not related with the prerendered frame buffer of the graphic card (prerender set to 0 doesnt help)
- For the majority it doesnt exist or so minor that it is unnoticable.

well...Im not a programmer nor a PC expert, so I am quite stucked at this point.
Does the CloD require some installed background programm like Visual C+++ or similar? (I am asking becouse I can see in my programm list a stupid lot of versions installed)

Cheers
MM

Ming, I believe the reference to vertical sync is a reference to tearing, which is sort of related, but not the same issue. Actually, for those getting fps-related lag, turning vertical sync off is an absolute must.

MM, I absolutely agree with the problems you mentioned. I hope more of my flying buddies buy the game so that I get to try it our first-hand and see if they also have the lag. As I said before, the lag may not be immediately obvious and people suffering from it may not realize what's going on unless they know exactly what to look for. Also since it seems to be fps related, you can test for it when things are quiet and fps high and not notice any problems, but still suffer from it when you fly into the thick of the action wondering why you can't seem to hit anything.I could try to install on my laptop to get a third first-hand experiment, but frankly it's so ancient that control lag would be the least of the issues.

You're also absolutely correct about the control animation fps, it doesn't have to have anything at all to do with actual updates. However, I know that it's an fps issue, not an animation problem, since you can move it very smoothly. Anyway, the only thing that makes me wonder is the obvious question of why the virtual stick has such low fps, when for example the gauges are smooth. Even that wouldn't bother me the least bit, but I have the mysterious control-related lag problem and I can't help but wonder if it's related to the seldom-updated virtual controls.

Have any of yo ualso noticed the control stick animation being updated less frequently than the rest of the simulation?