Gyro to Mouse [Beta]: Spontaneous and sudden change/rotation of the direction of gaze/crosshair

[BørgØteč]

I had no problems with "Gyro to Mouse [Beta] @ Yaw+Roll" for the last four weeks until November 20th for sure. It just worked perfectly .

In the last few days , the following persistent error occurred: Suddenly the line of sight rotates abruptly and frequently.
The crosshair jumps/rotates spontaneously by up to 180 degrees.

Environment:

Steam on PC, Pro Controller and 8BitDo (as Pro Controller). No HW or driver changes. Playing with the same controllers and same Steam controller configuration since end of September.

I ran some tests under the same game conditions with the same controller configuration with identical, parallel action sets including action layers for the modes "Gyro to Mouse [Beta]", "Gyro to Stick Camera [Beta]" and "Gyro to Stick" (old default).

Observations:

- The error only occurs for me with "Gyro to Mouse [Beta]"
- The error does not occur with "Gyro to Stick Camera [Beta]" and "Gyro to Stick" (old default)
- The direction of gaze always changes abruptly (as if a flick stick had been used)
- The jumps occur in all directions (horizontally and/or vertically)
- Sometimes the direction of gaze only turns away by 10 to 15 degrees, but more often by 30, 40, 90 up to 180 degrees

- The error can always be observed at some point in time, but can be provoked:
- If my character is just standing around or walking and looking around, not much happens, maybe very rarely a rather small spontaneous rotation offset of maybe 10-15 degrees
- However, the error occurs almost certainly and frequently every 2nd-4th time the trigger is pressed
- if you run around with the left stick and press and/or hold the trigger, then the error can certainly be observed immediately
- If in addition action layer transitions and sensitivity damping upon trigger occur in the background, the effect is at its worst
- Any kind of heavy controller action seems to trigger the directional jumps

Assumption:

Looks like losing temporary timing sync due to a performance issue and then resync is way off – probably “sensitivity damping upon trigger” and “action layer transitions” are forcing an unwanted side effect of changes introduced with the November 20th or 22th beta updates.


Unfortunately, "Gyro to Stick Camera [Beta]" and "Gyro to Stick" (old default) are not real alternatives to win a match. The control and precision with "Gyro to Mouse [Beta]" is in a completely different league.

Please don’t hesitate to reply if you need further information or input.
Hopefully you will be able to fix this weak point quickly and effectively.

Many Thanks and best regards

[BørgØteč]

Supplementary information

In the meantime, I have determined the minimum (computing?) time required by the Steam Controller API to execute an RTrigger click at "Gyro to Mouse [Beta] @ 80% mouse sensitivity damping upon RTrigger click/press" before another action can be executed (e.g. adding an action layer) without these rotation jumps occurring.

Before November 20th: <200ms
Now: <500ms

To keep the mouse pointer/crosshair synchronized and stable after a trigger click, Steam now requires 2.5 times as much processing time as before.
After a RTrigger click at "Gyro to Mouse [Beta] @ 80% mouse sensitivity damping ", you now have to wait half a second before doing/triggering anything else or any substantial additionally action with the controller.

You should really take a close look at this. "Real time" code that takes half a second - that can't be right.


Best regards

[aubreyh]

Thanks. I've had reports elsewhere that it's related to layers being activated and deactivated, which internally, will reset some values (but I'm guessing I didn't catch all the values that are reset). So, one internal rotation gets reset, but not the "target" rotation. And as a result the values disagree. Correction only kicks in when you are actively moving.

That's my current working theory. It may be a quick fix so I'll get on it now.

[aubreyh]

Update: I have not reproduced this on an official Nintendo Switch, but I have on an 8bit pro Ultimate Bluetooth controller on firmware v1.03 while connected via bluetooth.

As you suggest, the gyro feed simply seems to stop reporting intermittently, so the last known values get used, and it seems to drift for a second or two. I'll look into it further and have someone else take a look if I don't find an obvious issue.

I was also able to notice the phenomenon on "As Mouse", so it doesn't seem to be isolated to "Gyro to Mouse"

Question: do you know what firmware the 8Bitdo controller is set to?

[BørgØteč]

Thank you very much for your efforts in investigating this!

The firmware on my 8BitDo is v1.06 (latest). It was like this already at the time when I didn't notice any "rotation jumps".

Best regards

[BørgØteč]

Feedback on the beta update from November 28

I have played with it for about two hours and have not noticed any more rotation jumps.
As well as in "Gyro to Mouse [Beta], Yaw+Roll", "Gyro to Stick Camera [Beta], Yaw+Roll" and "Gyro to Stick [legacy default], Yaw+Roll"

"Gyro to Mouse [Beta], Yaw+Roll" also seemed to be tighter again. It was great fun again.

Even under action-packed conditions, with changing action sets and layers as well as switching the mouse damping on holding the trigger (while holding it), I didn't notice any more jumps.
This also applies to changing the action sets on the fly from "Gyro to Mouse [Beta]" to "Gyro to Stick Camera [Beta]" or "Gyro to Stick [legacy default]" - I could no longer detect any offset of the crosshair or the viewing direction. Just perfect.


What still occurs sporadically - only per some steam sessions (persistent, during a steam session the behavior does not change): "Gyro to Stick [legacy default], Yaw+Roll" and "Gyro to Stick Camera [Beta], Yaw+Roll" then do not behave as parameterized.
"Gyro to Stick [legacy default]" is then much faster than usual and set and almost uncontrollably floating around.
"Gyro to Stick Camera [Beta]" then behaves rather the other way round and the direction of view/crosshair can hardly be moved, very sluggish and slow. Only upon large gyro deflections it does unwillingly move a few pixels.
"Gyro to Mouse [Beta]" basically works in such sessions - subtly less direct and tightly controllable but still OK.



Many thanks for the update and the significant improvements - great job!

Best regards

[aubreyh]

It sounds as if the jumps due to layer changing issues are fixed. Hooray!

However, I was not aware that we fixed the 8Bitdo's occasional drifting. I'm surprised to hear this. Please let me know if you notice the intermittent, long drifts happen, since I've seen it happen myself!