The Xbox Controller bug is frankly ridiculous

[xagho]

I understand the point that this is a simracing game, and generally, any other input system besides a simwheel is going to have drawbacks, but the fact that the keyboard driving support for this game is (literally and figuratively) miles better than the controller support is outright ridiculous.

There is no rational reason as to why I should have to learn how to drive on keyboard just to get the licenses before my wheel comes in (thanks Moza US shipping). I mean, after some testing, I found that the timer delay or whatever it is that's caused by xbox controllers can result in almost a 30% slower time than on a keyboard (which makes it physically impossible to get some licenses on the controller, even driving perfectly).

And before any comments come in about "oh it's Early Access, there's gonna be bugs, blah blah blah". I play Star Citizen. That game is literally unplayable as of right now. Like unplayable unplayable. But I would rather try to enjoy that than struggle through the broken "Early Access" (more like pre-alpha) mess that's AC Evo. I'm sure that in a year or two's time AC Evo will be great, and I have faith in Kunos to come out of this on top. But right now it's god awful.

[The Frozen One]

Well...it IS early access and I'm sure XBox controller support isn't something they're particularly worried about. It works beautifully on my Fanatec wheel. Give it some time. Once you get your Moza you will have a much better experience for sure.

[FliXis]

Can you describe it in more detail? What is this timer delay?
We have a list of gamepad issues in this thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/3058630/discussions/0/756142482053410830/

Use it and describe the problem in detail, if other people have this problem too, i.e. it turns out that it is not a problem with your gamepad, then I will add it to the general list. I do not have an xbox gamepad, but I have an 8bitdo ultimae 2c gamepad, but I do not understand what delay you are talking about

[xagho]

Originally posted by FliXis:

Can you describe it in more detail? What is this timer delay?
We have a list of gamepad issues in this thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/3058630/discussions/0/756142482053410830/

Use it and describe the problem in detail, if other people have this problem too, i.e. it turns out that it is not a problem with your gamepad, then I will add it to the general list. I do not have an xbox gamepad, but I have an 8bitdo ultimae 2c gamepad, but I do not understand what delay you are talking about

The problem is not with my specific controller, I can guarantee you that. it's apparently pretty common for other xbox controller users from what I've seen

There's a post from 16th Jan, 2025 on the r/assettocorsaevo subreddit that showcases the bug in video form. Search for a post that contains "Game feels slow?" in the title and you should find it pretty quick.

The gist of it is that using a controller will cause the car to move physically slower than how it should as indicated by the speed displayed on the HUD/dashboard. And since the car is effectively moving in slow motion, but the timer is counting in "real-time", the laptimes end up wildly slower than what they should be, if the car was actually moving how fast the game says it is.

I've heard DualSense (PS5) controllers work fine, so it seems to be just an xbox controller issue, which frankly is even weirder. My guess is that the firmware for the xbox controllers are too slow to handle the FFB data from ACEvo, which causes the game to slow the car down to allow the controller to catch up

If you have an xbox controller on hand, I'd honestly recommend trying it offline, it's honestly pretty fun in practice mode with something like the BMW or mx-5 with TC off in the wet sliding around in slow motion. Alas it's a right pain in my rear when I'm trying to get my licenses

[FliXis]

Originally posted by xagho:

Originally posted by FliXis:

Can you describe it in more detail? What is this timer delay?
We have a list of gamepad issues in this thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/3058630/discussions/0/756142482053410830/

Use it and describe the problem in detail, if other people have this problem too, i.e. it turns out that it is not a problem with your gamepad, then I will add it to the general list. I do not have an xbox gamepad, but I have an 8bitdo ultimae 2c gamepad, but I do not understand what delay you are talking about

The problem is not with my specific controller, I can guarantee you that. it's apparently pretty common for other xbox controller users from what I've seen

There's a post from 16th Jan, 2025 on the r/assettocorsaevo subreddit that showcases the bug in video form. Search for a post that contains "Game feels slow?" in the title and you should find it pretty quick.

The gist of it is that using a controller will cause the car to move physically slower than how it should as indicated by the speed displayed on the HUD/dashboard. And since the car is effectively moving in slow motion, but the timer is counting in "real-time", the laptimes end up wildly slower than what they should be, if the car was actually moving how fast the game says it is.

I've heard DualSense (PS5) controllers work fine, so it seems to be just an xbox controller issue, which frankly is even weirder. My guess is that the firmware for the xbox controllers are too slow to handle the FFB data from ACEvo, which causes the game to slow the car down to allow the controller to catch up

If you have an xbox controller on hand, I'd honestly recommend trying it offline, it's honestly pretty fun in practice mode with something like the BMW or mx-5 with TC off in the wet sliding around in slow motion. Alas it's a right pain in my rear when I'm trying to get my licenses

What is the full model name of your joystick? (Xbox gamepad has many generations)

[Oggmeista]

Yeah it's early access, but one huge and i need to say intentional limitation, has been present on ACC for years and it still the same, so my logic infers to me that the passage of time isn't going to change this seemingly intentional restriction against controller players....i'm sure some of you likely already know what this is, if not just ask.. If only it were a bug i could "console" myself in the knowledge it will be fixed at some point, but it's not a bug i'm certain of it.

[xagho]

Originally posted by FliXis:

Originally posted by xagho:

The problem is not with my specific controller, I can guarantee you that. it's apparently pretty common for other xbox controller users from what I've seen

There's a post from 16th Jan, 2025 on the r/assettocorsaevo subreddit that showcases the bug in video form. Search for a post that contains "Game feels slow?" in the title and you should find it pretty quick.

The gist of it is that using a controller will cause the car to move physically slower than how it should as indicated by the speed displayed on the HUD/dashboard. And since the car is effectively moving in slow motion, but the timer is counting in "real-time", the laptimes end up wildly slower than what they should be, if the car was actually moving how fast the game says it is.

I've heard DualSense (PS5) controllers work fine, so it seems to be just an xbox controller issue, which frankly is even weirder. My guess is that the firmware for the xbox controllers are too slow to handle the FFB data from ACEvo, which causes the game to slow the car down to allow the controller to catch up

If you have an xbox controller on hand, I'd honestly recommend trying it offline, it's honestly pretty fun in practice mode with something like the BMW or mx-5 with TC off in the wet sliding around in slow motion. Alas it's a right pain in my rear when I'm trying to get my licenses

What is the full model name of your joystick? (Xbox gamepad has many generations)

Couldn't tell you the model name if my life depended on it, I bought it from Xbox Design Lab a few years go. Best guess is that it's Xbox One / Series X era. But that's the case for basically all xbox controller users so not sure why that's important unless you're a whiz controller repairman or something

[FliXis]

Originally posted by xagho:

But that's the case for basically all xbox controller users so not sure why that's important unless you're a whiz controller repairman or something

No, of course I'm not a repairman. I've met, for example, xbox elite users here who were happy with their controls in the game, so I'd like to find out the pattern of the problem. The xbox joystick is probably the most popular joystick in the world, but if every one of them didn't work in this game, there would be a wild howl of dissatisfied people here, but this is not happening. I wanted to indicate in the list on which models this problem was noticed, that's why I asked

[FliXis]

I read the topic on reddit, yes, this happens to many. I added the problem to the list

There they advised to enable or disable steam input to possibly solve this problem, but you probably already did that

[shadow82]

mmm reddit huh ? For sure this is a safe haven for truth. I have been messing around with Kunos titles on a lot of different controllers and never heard of such things. Regardless, anyone having this issue, please report it here https://fs30.formsite.com/505games/EVO/
Reddit or the Steam forum will not get those kind of issues resolved.

To oggmeista, just learn to drive without steering assists and your weight penalty will be gone.

[mec.infame]

Seriously i don't know what the OP is talking about, I actually play with an xbox elite controler and it works pretty good imo... just one bad point: I can't figure how to assign the shifting up and down. Besides that, it works fine

[Paradoxagi]

That seems to be a bluetooth issue. The only thread I found at reddit using the suggested search terms is this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/assettocorsa/comments/1i2x6ty/assetto_corsa_evo_runs_like_in_slow_motion/

And this is about frame rate issues caused by Xbox controllers (or more accurately, x-input controllers, which includes non-MS controllers as well that support the same API) connected via bluetooth. In the thread there are two solutions for this that seem to work:

1) Use a wired connection (fixes frame rate issue + improves latency on Microsoft controllers, latency may be different on non-MS controllers)

2) Use steam input (does not affect latency but allows to still use bluetooth, fixed the FPS issue)


But there is more about bluetooth and latency issues that might result in significant lag which can give a feel of the car 'driving in slow motion' if latency is very high.

a) There are lots of bad bluetooth recievers out there which cause a lot of input latency when using game controllers. Depending on the device, a Microsoft controller, usually at around 8 ms latency with cable or a better BT reciever, can have 16-32 ms latency and that definitively gives you a feel of slow motion when steering a car in racing game (the car feels much heavier with higher latency)

b) If you are unsure about your latency, there is a simple tool that can give you same basic information about this:

https://github.com/chrizonix/XInputTest

This tool can't measure the 'full' connection latency but only the polling rate so it's not as accurate as a real hardware driven latency testing system but it can point out if there are issues with your bluetooth devices. An original Xbox controller (Xbox One or later) should be at around 8 ms in average, if you get much higher values your BT reciever ist most likely to blame here (for example, at 9ms it will still be fine, if you get, let's say 15 or even higher values, it's really bad).

c) If you find issues with your BT reciever and want to replace it (an USB dongle is 5-10 bucks in the end so it can be replaced easily) but you don't know which one you should by, go for a TP link UB400 (or maybe later UB500 or newer, about 10 bucks). I have found this one in a YT video demonstrating 1ms latency with a Playstation controller using this device and then bought it myself, the UB400 supports these latencies and I guess the later TP-Link models will work as well. I also had another reciever before this one that gave me horrible latency with my Xbox controller at about 32 ms which was totally unusable.

d) If you have one of these fancy 8bitdo bluetooth sticks you will have worse latency too, it's not as bad as with a truly bad generic BT reciever but it's significantly worse than it could be, resulting in about 16 ms latency.


All values are based on the XinputTest software, so these can't be compared to other testing methods as used by many game controller reviews these days, it's only comprable if the reviewer also uses this tool.

[shadow82]

Originally posted by Paradoxagi:

And this is about frame rate issues caused by Xbox controllers (or more accurately, x-input controllers, which includes non-MS controllers as well that support the same API) connected via bluetooth.

Frame-rate issue is quite different to what the author alude to (i.e. the game engine slowing down entirely, while time goes by at normal rate). Hence my doubts of what this user is trying to identify as "bug" preventing him to beat timers. Sounds more like a skill issue...

[Paradoxagi]

Well... as I could not find exactly a thread about 'game feels slow' as descibed but only these framerate issues, I thought I try to give some more insights into that input lag stuff - because severe input lag actually creates this feeling of 'being behind' the game and 'slow motion' of the car's behaviour (although it's not actually slow motion as the game still runs at the same speed, but it might feel 'slow').

And, if a player has a feel of responsiveness when playing with a keyboard but 'slow' response when playing with a controller, this is very likely an input lag issue, especially with bluetooth involved without further information. I experienced really high latency issues with some of these recievers and the Microsoft controller, even wired but especially via bluetooth, always felt sluggish and 'slow' to me personally and I can definitively feel a difference between wired and a halfway decent bluetooth connection, but with a bad reciever, this gets absolutely sluggisch resulting in exactly what the OP is describing.

I don't think this is a skill issue, lower input latency is simply beneficial to the player, allows for more accurate inputs and also feels much better.

[a-y]

I had a problem where the alpine in one of the licence tests was very slow. It turns out a bug was probably causing the hand brake to be on. Once I turned it off the car went at normal speed lol.

[xagho]

Originally posted by Paradoxagi:

That seems to be a bluetooth issue. The only thread I found at reddit using the suggested search terms is this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/assettocorsa/comments/1i2x6ty/assetto_corsa_evo_runs_like_in_slow_motion/

And this is about frame rate issues caused by Xbox controllers (or more accurately, x-input controllers, which includes non-MS controllers as well that support the same API) connected via bluetooth. In the thread there are two solutions for this that seem to work:

1) Use a wired connection (fixes frame rate issue + improves latency on Microsoft controllers, latency may be different on non-MS controllers)

2) Use steam input (does not affect latency but allows to still use bluetooth, fixed the FPS issue)


But there is more about bluetooth and latency issues that might result in significant lag which can give a feel of the car 'driving in slow motion' if latency is very high.

a) There are lots of bad bluetooth recievers out there which cause a lot of input latency when using game controllers. Depending on the device, a Microsoft controller, usually at around 8 ms latency with cable or a better BT reciever, can have 16-32 ms latency and that definitively gives you a feel of slow motion when steering a car in racing game (the car feels much heavier with higher latency)

b) If you are unsure about your latency, there is a simple tool that can give you same basic information about this:

https://github.com/chrizonix/XInputTest

This tool can't measure the 'full' connection latency but only the polling rate so it's not as accurate as a real hardware driven latency testing system but it can point out if there are issues with your bluetooth devices. An original Xbox controller (Xbox One or later) should be at around 8 ms in average, if you get much higher values your BT reciever ist most likely to blame here (for example, at 9ms it will still be fine, if you get, let's say 15 or even higher values, it's really bad).

c) If you find issues with your BT reciever and want to replace it (an USB dongle is 5-10 bucks in the end so it can be replaced easily) but you don't know which one you should by, go for a TP link UB400 (or maybe later UB500 or newer, about 10 bucks). I have found this one in a YT video demonstrating 1ms latency with a Playstation controller using this device and then bought it myself, the UB400 supports these latencies and I guess the later TP-Link models will work as well. I also had another reciever before this one that gave me horrible latency with my Xbox controller at about 32 ms which was totally unusable.

d) If you have one of these fancy 8bitdo bluetooth sticks you will have worse latency too, it's not as bad as with a truly bad generic BT reciever but it's significantly worse than it could be, resulting in about 16 ms latency.


All values are based on the XinputTest software, so these can't be compared to other testing methods as used by many game controller reviews these days, it's only comprable if the reviewer also uses this tool.

It's not input lag, the car is literally in slow motion. If i had to best describe how it feels/looks, it's almost exactly like how Rocket League's slow motion feels in freeplay. But the thread you linked above mentioned turning on Steam Input on in the ACEvo steam properties, which I did, and that seemed to solve the issue