Annoying Input/Cursor Lag

[Agent Scale]

Whenever I play, the game will either immediately feel sluggish when I enter a beatmap, or it will play well, then stutter for a second, and then it will revert to the high input lag where I feel I have very delayed control over my aiming.

I have ensured I am not in VR mode (I have -novr in launch settings but for whatever reason it sometimes works better to launch through the Steam desktop app and select Play on Desktop rather than opening the game through the taskbar directly).

Playing in fullscreen and other settings I believe are optimized to reduce input lag.

I have made sure to try closing Medal (clipping software) and disable my steam overlay but I still have issues.

Please help, I love McOsu so much better than Osu! but the input lag makes it very unfun.

[McKay]

1) What are your hardware specs? (GPU, CPU, RAM)

2) Windows version? (up-to-date?)

3) Driver versions? (GPU drivers)

4) Multi-GPU? (e.g. crappy Nvidia Optimus laptop with integrated + discrete)

5) Software which draws overlays on top of games, or which could otherwise interfere? (e.g. Discord overlay, Nvidia overlay, Nvidia Shadowplay, Razer Chroma, Razer Cortex, MSI Afterburner, RivaTuner/RTSS, Windows Game DVR, etc.)

6) Hit CTRL + F11 while in-game to show the visual profiler and then make a screenshot via F12

[Agent Scale]

Originally posted by McKay:

1) What are your hardware specs? (GPU, CPU, RAM)

2) Windows version? (up-to-date?)

3) Driver versions? (GPU drivers)

4) Multi-GPU? (e.g. crappy Nvidia Optimus laptop with integrated + discrete)

5) Software which draws overlays on top of games, or which could otherwise interfere? (e.g. Discord overlay, Nvidia overlay, Nvidia Shadowplay, Razer Chroma, Razer Cortex, MSI Afterburner, RivaTuner/RTSS, Windows Game DVR, etc.)

6) Hit CTRL + F11 while in-game to show the visual profiler and then make a screenshot via F12

1)EVGA RTX 2060, Ryzen 5 3600, and 16GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM. Its like half a year old so its a pretty new PC and no issues otherwise.

2)Windows 10.0.19042, yes it's up to date I believe.

3) GPU Driver Version: 27.21.14.6627
CPU Driver Version: 10.0.19041.546

4) Just one designated GPU

5) I've made sure all the Windows Game mode and other BS is turned off, Shadowplay is disabled, I disable MedalTV when playing and there's no change, Steam overlay disabled, Discord overlay is off, Nvidia overlay is off.

6)Idk how to insert a picture, but here's a link [photos.app.goo.gl] to a screenshot I took mid-map where it was playing smoothly before, then after a quick stutter it felt all sluggish again.

Thank you so much, hope this helps!

edit: Also the spikes in the graph on the picture (except probably not the first one before the input lag increase) were likely caused by me tabbing in and out of the application, not sure if that is obvious or not! :)

[McKay]

Originally posted by Agent Scale:

6)Idk how to insert a picture, but here's a link [photos.app.goo.gl] to a screenshot I took mid-map where it was playing smoothly before, then after a quick stutter it felt all sluggish again.

As expected, the lag is not caused by the game, but by some other program (or driver, or configuration) interfering on your system. Both the red blocks (SwapBuffers()), as well as the brown blocks (draw calls) are waaay too big for an RTX 2060 and that CPU.
On normal systems the red block should not even be visible in the graph (less than 1 pixel).

So now we have to figure out why this happens.

1) Driver and Windows versions are good, though this still doesn't exclude a misconfiguration somewhere.

2) You mention that it non-deterministically suddenly gets sluggish after playing smoothly. What happens if you run the game (fresh), and immediately as quickly as possible show the visual profiler via CTRL + F11, and then wait? How long does it take without doing anything for the lag to appear? Or does it sometimes immediately appear on startup? Or does it not appear when just idle at the main menu?

3) Take a look at this thread: Razer Cortex FPS Lag

4) Do you have GSync/FreeSync enabled? Try toggling them.

5) How many displays/monitors are you using, and in which configuration? (Resolution, Hz) If multiple, try disconnecting all but one.

6) Can you take a look at Task Manager and make sure there is nothing weird running which could possibly interfere with games? This also includes software like Display Fusion which fiddles with monitor stuff, or fan speed control software, or overclocking tools, or temperature monitoring software.

7) Just as a sanity check, close all other programs (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Discord, Steam, etc.) and just run the game directly via a shortcut to the exe as explained in the FAQ.

[Agent Scale]

Originally posted by McKay:

Originally posted by Agent Scale:

6)Idk how to insert a picture, but here's a link [photos.app.goo.gl] to a screenshot I took mid-map where it was playing smoothly before, then after a quick stutter it felt all sluggish again.

As expected, the lag is not caused by the game, but by some other program (or driver, or configuration) interfering on your system. Both the red blocks (SwapBuffers()), as well as the brown blocks (draw calls) are waaay too big for an RTX 2060 and that CPU.
On normal systems the red block should not even be visible in the graph (less than 1 pixel).

So now we have to figure out why this happens.

1) Driver and Windows versions are good, though this still doesn't exclude a misconfiguration somewhere.

2) You mention that it non-deterministically suddenly gets sluggish after playing smoothly. What happens if you run the game (fresh), and immediately as quickly as possible show the visual profiler via CTRL + F11, and then wait? How long does it take without doing anything for the lag to appear? Or does it sometimes immediately appear on startup? Or does it not appear when just idle at the main menu?

3) Take a look at this thread: Razer Cortex FPS Lag

4) Do you have GSync/FreeSync enabled? Try toggling them.

5) How many displays/monitors are you using, and in which configuration? (Resolution, Hz) If multiple, try disconnecting all but one.

6) Can you take a look at Task Manager and make sure there is nothing weird running which could possibly interfere with games? This also includes software like Display Fusion which fiddles with monitor stuff, or fan speed control software, or overclocking tools, or temperature monitoring software.

7) Just as a sanity check, close all other programs (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Discord, Steam, etc.) and just run the game directly via a shortcut to the exe as explained in the FAQ.

So you say that the SwapBuffer and draw cell blocks should both be much smaller at all times. When it is at its lower value (still referring to the picture I sent before), there is no noticeable input lag for me, or maybe there is lag but I'm just so used to it that it feels normal lol. [Explained a little more in #2]

1) Sounds good. I'll go through configurations to see if I can find an issue.

2) When I launch the game and turn on the visualizer immediately, the red and brown blocks stay at the "lower" (but apparently still too high) values from the previous picture. There is never any noticeable input lag when I am in the song select screen, it only occurs mid-game. Whenever I exit a map and return to song select it feels back to normal, and the visualizer matches this with a return to the lower values. The spike will always occur at some point after I begin a beat-map. Only other abnormality in the visualizer is scrolling through songs in song select for the fist time after opening, but I would expect this as everything is loading and it is not really an issue at all.

3) I don't believe I have any sort of Razer program running, but I understand the idea of the thread. I don't notice any change on the screen when this lag happens and I can't think of any program/overlay that could be causing this because I have also tried with everything disabled/turned off.

4) My monitor does not support G-sync and there is no option to turn it on/off in Nvidia control panel (so hopefully that rules it out, I don't know too much about G-sync). My monitor does support FreeSync and-

Alright at this point in testing with what you said, I realized that I did not in fact disable Nvidia overlay so I did that at the same time as disabling FreeSync and I haven't had an issue with lag spiking in like 30 minutes. I tried re-enabling both of them and individually testing them but there haven't been any issues at all lol. So it looks like it's at the point where there I notice no issues, but you said I should aim for the red block to not be visible? Would that be due to the same causes you already outlined?

I'll continue to see if the overlay/FreeSync actually fixed it and try to isolate which one it was if possible when I play more and I'll try to let you know! Again, thank you so much for your help, I really love this game and it's even better yet knowing that there is such a caring dev behind it!

[McKay]

Originally posted by Agent Scale:

So you say that the SwapBuffer and draw cell blocks should both be much smaller at all times.
...
but you said I should aim for the red block to not be visible?

Yes.
Here is a screenshot[imgur.com] of the visual profiler on my setup (Ryzen 7 3700X, GTX 1070), with the default in-game fps limiter (420 fps) in exclusive fullscreen mode. Notice how ~70% is "Sleep" (because of the 420 fps limit), and SwapBuffers is only 1 pixel high (meaning it only takes ~0.08 milliseconds). Your RTX 2060 should be even faster than my GTX 1070 overall.

If you can't reach those framerates then something is seriously broken with your setup, maybe even a hardware problem (overheating? bad connections?). Your monitor is plugged directly into the RTX 2060, yes? Not erroneously plugged into the motherboard HDMI/DVI/DP port?

Originally posted by Agent Scale:

Alright at this point in testing with what you said, I realized that I did not in fact disable Nvidia overlay so I did that at the same time as disabling FreeSync and I haven't had an issue with lag spiking in like 30 minutes. I tried re-enabling both of them and individually testing them but there haven't been any issues at all lol

See, this is why I'm paranoid about stupid unnecessary overlays. It works for 99.9% of all users, but then you get random edge cases like yours, which happen in random games at random times.

Note that there is nothing special in the game code which would cause it to misbehave with overlays, this is purely Nvidia's fault for bad programming.

[Agent Scale]

Originally posted by McKay:

If you can't reach those framerates then something is seriously broken with your setup, maybe even a hardware problem (overheating? bad connections?). Your monitor is plugged directly into the RTX 2060, yes? Not erroneously plugged into the motherboard HDMI/DVI/DP port?

I play with a global framerate cap (through Nvidia settings) of 150 fps. I'm new to PCs so I hope this doesn't sound dumb, but the other monitor I use is 144Hz so I see no reason to over-extend my computer and cap it. I also cap the framerate in in-game settings at 150 fps and play in exclusive fullscreen for all games.

Once again after writing this far, I decided to uncap my framerate through Nvidia settings, and here is what it looks like [photos.app.goo.gl]. That is to say, both the SwapBuffer and draw clell blocks lowered pretty significantly. Obviously not perfect but way better. I guess I just don't know how to really optimize my settings very well and need to work on that.
Anyways, my framerate hovers around 450-500 fps without limit and seems to run very smoothly. My HDMI cable is plugged into my GPU and not the motherboard :) It looks like the rest of the problem might just be down to fixing my settings? I'm not exactly sure though.

[McKay]

Originally posted by Agent Scale:

I play with a global framerate cap (through Nvidia settings) of 150 fps. I'm new to PCs so I hope this doesn't sound dumb, but the other monitor I use is 144Hz so I see no reason to over-extend my computer and cap it. I also cap the framerate in in-game settings at 150 fps and play in exclusive fullscreen for all games.

Please don't do that by default. The Nvidia Control Panel should be set to "Let the 3D Application decide", and you should only force setting overrides specifically per-game (i.e. in the "Program Settings" tab) if absolutely necessary (more details below).

1) The reason being that the way fps limiting works is different between when brute forced by external software, and when handled by the game engine itself. The game engine always has more accurate timing information available in order to limit the framerate more precisely with better frame pacing (pacing, not rate!) in 99.9% of all games. Frame pacing problems is what you would call "micro-stuttering".

So, if a game has an internal in-game fps limiter, or can be limited by editing a config file in the save/game folder, then always prefer that over any external limiters.

2) Never use multiple fps limiters. That's just insanity and you will have a bad time.

3) The default 420 fps limit (7*60) in McOsu is not just for the memes. osu! and McOsu both poll input devices once per frame, so if you limit yourself to 150 fps then you are unnecessarily introducing an extra ~7 milliseconds of worst case input lag (compared to ~2 ms at 420 fps). Internal beatmap timings are limited to millisecond precision, so 1000 fps is the "perfect" framerate for playing osu. Even for casual players I would never go below 240 fps (4*60) in this game.

Note that such extremely high framerates above 240 fps are specific to rhythm games (because they are very timing accuracy critical) and competitive eSports titles, whereas other game types like non-competitive first person shooters, RPGs/MOBAs or top-down strategy games are fine to run at 200 fps or lower.

Yes, you get an advantage the higher the framerate, regardless of whether your monitor is only 144 Hz, because the way almost all games work is to poll input devices once per frame and update the world state once per frame. The higher the framerate, the quicker you get feedback (visuals and sound) on your inputs.

Originally posted by Agent Scale:

Once again after writing this far, I decided to uncap my framerate through Nvidia settings, and here is what it looks like [photos.app.goo.gl].

Better, but still weird. Both red and brown should be way smaller.