Input lag

[CaptaPraelium]

Hi all,

I'm seeing massive input lag in this game. It is best demonstrated by pulling the trigger on the joystick to fire. There is a delay of about 400ms between the input and the game responding.
This does not occur in other games, or in the control panel. It also occurs with keyboard, so it is not an issue with the joystick. It is the same on two PCs in my home, so it is not an issue with the hardware. Framerates are high and stable, so it is not a matter of output lag from the monitor, it is actually the game being unresponsive.

I have logged a case with support but I thought I should ask for community advice also.

Any advice would be appreciated. It's basically unplayable as it is :(

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

2 hours ago, CaptaPraelium said:

There is a delay of about 400ms between the input and the game responding.

I am not aware of such an issue. What method are you using to test this?

 

In my test, the delay between the key press and trigger animation/muzzle flash is far below 400 ms. It sounds like something is wrong with your particular configurations. 

[CaptaPraelium]

Just pressing the button and noting the delay. It's huge. It does this with the default configuration.

[DD_Arthur]

20 hours ago, CaptaPraelium said:

 There is a delay of about 400ms 

 It's basically unplayable as it is

 

[CaptaPraelium]

So, no advice here and no response from support.... How do I get this fixed?

[Lemon]

hi @CaptaPraelium

 

what is your O/S ? hardware specs and ingame and video card settings, what cpu gpu ram vram % usage when you got those problems ? happening single player or multiplayer ?

Also if you are sure the problem is caused by input lag there is some ways to reduce input lag to a minimum with a fps limiter  under the monitor frame rate.

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/the-truth-about-pre-rendering-0.365860/page-12#post-5380262

https://www.blurbusters.com/howto-low-lag-vsync-on/

 

if this work for you and you don't want to use RTSS , you can try the nvidi inspector frame rate limiter, with ingame vsynch on 

or edit the startup.cfg game file frame rate line, like ( fps_limit = 59.593 , note this number depend of your accurate refresh monitor rate if you followed the guides above  ) with the NVidia panel vsynch ON.

 

all that said, I got the feeling with 400ms lag mean you got other problem than just input lag, and there is many tweaks found on the net to reduce latencies cause by drivers, bios setting like hyper threading on or off or high precision event timer on or off and the bios cpu setting like the c-state or the intel speed step etc.. , or your window settings like the power plan to high performance , the system timers or the mouse pointer precision etc...

just do some search and there is many good guide to optimize your system, if you do,  do a restore point before and tune your system .

I got a modest 6600k running 40-60% usage with only 8g ram and a gtx 970 running 40-75%  and I run all ingame setting to max, AA transparency ON with moderate density career and PWCG air density to high and ground to medium, on a monitor overclocked to 75HZ   and it keep a 75fps all the time with as much or better smooth gameplay than any il2 box video I can  find on youtube , unless someone got a really weak hardware  the sim should run smoothly on anyone system if mine can do like this ,   but you got to take time to seek and find

what slow down your pc.

In my case right now with all my tweaks done, only to switch on bios high precision event timer setting or switch window power plan to power saver make the game unplayable from the start, crazy lag and stutters, feel like 2-3 fps, maybe just this can help you ?

 

some essential tools for me to run il-2 box not just playable but  naturally smooth (know many need to run as administrator to run ) also  doing web search with those tool names can lead you to good guides to understand and tune your pc:

 

to check what cause latencies on your system

http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

this tool below  is free and easy to use, it run on the back ground and run all the time on my system and it is automatically adjust with the window power plan I use

https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

the best tool if you want the best frametimes as possible

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html

you may not want to use this but overclocking my monitor refresh rate from 60 to 75 make my frametimes shorter and mitigate effect of small frametimes spikes when I use the zoom in game.

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/cru-custom-resolution-utility-tips-tricks-and-monitors-oc-lcd-led-crt.410187/

MSI_util_v2.exe found on this page below, (that can be find here to tweak system interrupts ,this one help me a lot to reduce video and audio latencies) run as administrator to work

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/windows-line-based-vs-message-signaled-based-interrupts.378044/

to monitoring hardware cpu gpu ram and vram and lot more

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

 

sorry for the long post, but you asked for advices and there can be so many more reasons  having good fps but lag ,frame skipping or stutters problems, I just gave you some leads

You like it or not you may have  to do some search/work  to get the most of your pc and really enjoy the beautiful graphics in il-2 BOx .

 

good luck with this

 

 

 

 

 

[CaptaPraelium]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write that post mate. I really do appreciate it, I got this game to join my Dad who's a retired Vietnam vet who's just gotten into gaming and I wanted to be his wingman but we can't get it to work on his system or mine. We've only tried single player so far, and we're kinda stuck here. When it didn't work well on his system, which is very entry-level, I tried it on mine and was very surprised to find the exact same behaviour.

I usually play FPS games and my system is tuned pretty well, I'm a bit of a tryhard. I use an OC'd 1070 driving a 1440p GSync monitor at 165Hz, RTSS and Afterburner with a custom OSD which monitors frametimes (among other important stats), bitsum parkcontrol to set the 'highest performance' power plan (on always) for my OC'd 5820K@4Ghz (it can go higher but it does 4Ghz at stock voltages and that's plenty on this CPU), 16GB of overclocked RAM (3400C14) with tweaked timings for maximum bandwidth.....Being an X series motherboard the HPET is enabled and works well.  Latencymon is installed already and latencies are always low on my system and other games don't suffer from any input lag issues at all.

I'm quite comfortable with altering settings to achieve higher framerates (especially higher minimum frametimes to avoid stuttering)/lower latency/GPU limited behaviour/etc and always have success with other games but no change to the settings seems to make any difference here.

You've given some really good advice and I do appreciate it but it seems to be something specific to IL2 which is messing with me here. Even on Dad's slower PC, there's no input lag noticable between keyboard inputs or joystick triggers and windows itself, but the game just doesn't respond in the same manner as the rest of the system

[DerNeueMensch]

I have the same feeling on my system (no problems in other sims), but I always assumed, that the unresponsive trigger was a feature and had something to do with the wiring of the trigger mechanism in the planes modeled or something...lol

I've just gotten used to it and it's not bothering me anymore

[Ehret]

Check your GPU's control panel and look for the "maximum pre-rendered frames" option. Reduce it or just set to one - it should diminish the perceived latency at cost of some CPU/GPU utilization.

Edited June 13, 2018 by Ehret

[Lemon]

hi @CaptaPraelium

you surely have all the hardware needed to play the sim without performance problem, I m trying to think what else could cause this problem, maybe trying different  USB port for the joystick and remove all non essential USB connectors from your computer but the joystick for test, and surely I d would use MSI_util_v2.exe  (run as administrator) to make sure usb controller are set to msi (Message Signaled Interrupts) not ISA (know when you update windows or some drivers the settings can be reverted).

It s strange this happening only with BOx  ,  Let me know if you find how to fix the problem, I m curious

 

[Extreme_One]

If I were you I'd start by removing all USB devices and run the game using a keyboard keypress to fire your guns.

 

If you're still getting input lag at least you've eliminated the USB devices. If this shows no input lag then it's a case of figuring out why your USB device(s) are misbehaving.

 

If that achieved nothing, I'd then take all the GFX settings down to the minimum and test.

Hopefully you'll end up with a basic setup which runs the game with zero input lag, you can then begin dialling up the settings and testing to see which one affects the input lag.

Sorry if you've already done all this with no joy, it's just how I'd approach the problem.

Hope you get it sorted.

[CaptaPraelium]

Thanks guys. I'm already using MSI for everything that can, and have tested various graphics settings (including prerendered frames at 1 which is normal for my system) with no difference, and isolated controls to a keyboard which is known good in all other games... No success I'm afraid

It was after trying all this stuff that I contacted support but they just aren't getting back to me. It's too late to refund the game, I think I might be screwed ?

Edited June 14, 2018 by CaptaPraelium

[Extreme_One]

@CaptaPraelium have you tried running the game with your 1070 on stock speeds?

I seem to remember someone had a problem once. but only when OCing their card. I may be misremembering though, but it's an easy thing to try at least.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

@CaptaPraelium I assume you’ve tried a fresh Windows installation with nothing but Il-2 and a graphics driver? 

 

That would be the first thing I’d do to eliminate many unknowns.

[CaptaPraelium]

More good advice, and that's exactly what Dad's PC was He bought it specially for IL2

Edited June 14, 2018 by CaptaPraelium

[Bill1949]

So I guess there's no definitive answer to this problem.....? I have exactly the same issues as CaptaPraelium (IL-2 is virtually un-flyable with such massive input delays ) - and I don't get such issues with other flight sims.