Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.

TooBeaucoup

I'm just curious if there's a thread or faq for some typically used settings for reducing controller input lag? I know that with any kind of emulation there's going to be some kind of lag, but damn, I just built my Pi to play retro games and I'm pretty astonished how noticeable my lag is. Every Mario game I try and play is pretty much impossible, due to having to push the jump button at, what feels like, a full second before I want to jump. The same thing goes for controlling Mario, he's awful and sluggish in every game I've tried. It seems like a lot of my shoot-em-up games suffer this same fate as well. I've Googled and searched these forums, but there's so many different threads and areas of the site and sooooo many options within the emulator menus that it can be pretty daunting trying to figure this out.

I'm not a stickler about input lag either. I've never seemed to have any trouble on any of my PCs over the last 10+ years when I've played emulators. I was so excited to finally finish my Pi, but damn, any platformer or shooter that I try is pretty much unplayable. I've tried what, I think, seem to be the typical things, enable hard sync, disable multithreaded video, set frame delay (Which only seems to make my games run choppier once you turn it up past the first few notches), etc... I just read that you should run Dispmanx for your video driver and I think that seems to help, although, that could just be a placebo from me reading that it helps. I'm just wondering if there's any other obvious tweaks or settings I'm missing. I find it hard to believe that gamers who build these think this would be acceptable lag, because like I said, lag has never bothered me, but this is making most of my games unbearable to play. This is affecting my NES and SNES games.

I apologize if there's some big, universal thread for this, but I couldn't seem to find much. I did find a couple threads, but there was SO MUCH info contained within that I was just kind of lost as to what I should even attempt to change, as far as settings are concerned.

I'm running a Pi Zero v1.3 with the latest version of RetroPi installed, I've tried every SNES emulator that comes with RetroPi and they all seem to have the issue and I'm using a Buffalo Classic USB SNES gamepad, which works terrific with emulators on my PC.

Forgive me if I'm missing an obvious thread, but my search results didn't seem to yield a whole lot other than a couple threads that were just ballooned with tons of different info, tests and lines of code tweaking that it was making my head spin.

UDb23

@TooBeaucoup I'm not an expert in lag matters but it may depend also from actual Pi hardware you're using. I got a Pi 3 with different controllers (all wired) including the Buffalo classic; I didn't find any noticeable lag.

Rion

@Brunnis Has made i great thread about this in the official libretro forums.

It's definitely worthwhile to read.

An input lag investigation

Gameboy_zero

Hi

after hours of testing with several settings i found my "issue".

In my PhilipsTV i can change the Mode from TV to PC or Gaming.
Activated "gaming" and all lags between input and display were solved....

Rion

@Gameboy_zero I have a Philips TV to in the Man Cave and a Plasma from Panasonic in the living room.

I have shut off all picture "enhancements" settings and activated game mode on mine to. Luckily flatpanelshd made a review if it before i bought it so i used the calibration settings that they've recommended.

My plasma hopefully will still run for a couple of more year's before i have to replace it.

I dread the day that happens cause the next best thing is a oled tv and they're to expensive as of now.

TooBeaucoup

@UDb23 said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

@TooBeaucoup I'm not an expert in lag matters but it may depend also from actual Pi hardware you're using. I got a Pi 3 with different controllers (all wired) including the Buffalo classic; I didn't find any noticeable lag.

You might very well be right. I know I've seen plenty of people running the Zero, claiming they don't seem to have a problem with lag, so I believe I need to tweak some settings.

@Rion said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

@Brunnis Has made i great thread about this in the official libretro forums.

It's definitely worthwhile to read.

An input lag investigation

That's a good thread and it looks like there's some good information that can probably get me started. I appreciate the link!

@Gameboy_zero said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

Hi

after hours of testing with several settings i found my "issue".

In my PhilipsTV i can change the Mode from TV to PC or Gaming.
Activated "gaming" and all lags between input and display were solved....

Yeah, it's definitely not my TVs. All picture processing is off and my PC games and other consoles work perfectly, so it's gotta be some settings that need to be tweaked, unfortunately.

Rion

@TooBeaucoup Modern Consoles are build with input lag in mind. The old consoles where not because crt tv's displayed the picture instantaneously without any lag at all.

TooBeaucoup

@Rion This is very true. It's just curious that every PC I've ever emulated on has felt very snappy and responsive and now, it feels like Mario is constantly moving through water. I know you'll never totally eliminate it when you're emulating, but something is definitely, abnormally, off with mine.

dankcushions

@TooBeaucoup said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

Yeah, it's definitely not my TVs. All picture processing is off and my PC games and other consoles work perfectly, so it's gotta be some settings that need to be tweaked, unfortunately.

careful - my tv (and i think most others) set 'game mode' per AV channel. eg, i can have it on for my PS4's hdmi AV channel, but i'll still have to go an turn it on for the pi HDMI channel also. also, any picture processing settings should be greyed out once you enable 'game mode' (that's basically all it does - force all that stuff to be off, and probably some other bits also)

mediamogul

These television post processing features are infuriating to me on all levels. I know it's really all marketing hype, but if there actually are any companies out there who have some misguided interest in improving audio or picture quality in this way, I'm struck at how arrogant it is that they can possibly believe their lousy one-size-fits-all algorithms will improve upon an image or sound design that was carefully crafted and engineered by the original production teams that created the source material. The absolute worst is "upconverting" to 48 FPS. If you've ever thought to yourself, "you know, I love 'Game of Thrones', but it doesn't look enough like 'Monday Night Football'" then there's a post processing scheme sure to please.

...sorry, it just really grinds my gears.

TooBeaucoup

@dankcushions said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

@TooBeaucoup said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

Yeah, it's definitely not my TVs. All picture processing is off and my PC games and other consoles work perfectly, so it's gotta be some settings that need to be tweaked, unfortunately.

careful - my tv (and i think most others) set 'game mode' per AV channel. eg, i can have it on for my PS4's hdmi AV channel, but i'll still have to go an turn it on for the pi HDMI channel also. also, any picture processing settings should be greyed out once you enable 'game mode' (that's basically all it does - force all that stuff to be off, and probably some other bits also)

You are correct. That's why I always run everything through the same HDMI port. Game mode, and everything else turned off. :-)

@mediamogul said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

These television post processing features are infuriating to me on all levels. I know it's really all marketing hype, but if there actually are any companies out there who have some misguided interest in improving audio or picture quality in this way, I'm struck at how arrogant it is that they can possibly believe their lousy one-size-fits-all algorithms will improve upon an image or sound design that was carefully crafted and engineered by the original production teams that created the source material. The absolute worst is "upconverting" to 48 FPS. If you've ever thought to yourself, "you know, I love 'Game of Thrones', but it doesn't look enough like 'Monday Night Football'" then there's a post processing scheme sure to please.

...sorry, it just really grinds my gears.

Agreed. 100% Frame-interpolation, noise reduction, color shifting. Just stupid. They make these pre-sets for Joe-Average who likes to just put their TV on torch-mode and think it looks good. I hate it.

edmaul69

@TooBeaucoup are you using usb extension cables? They can create input lag as well.

edmaul69

@mediamogul i absolutely hate feeling like im watching days of our lives/ home videos. I cant get used to this new crap. All 3 of my personal tvs are older ones that dont have this crap. My 50" is a plasma so as long as i can fix any electrical problem that might come up i should hopefully be good for a while. 100,000 hours is a really, really long time.

TooBeaucoup

@edmaul69 said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

@TooBeaucoup are you using usb extension cables? They can create input lag as well.

No, no extension cables, controller goes straight into the Pi and running about a 1 meter HDMI cable. I get the same crap on multiple TVs. I'm sure I just have to mess around with settings or something.

mediamogul

@edmaul69 said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

are you using usb extension cables? They can create input lag as well.

USB 2 cables begin to cause problems at a little over 16 feet, but even then they actually don't create any lag. Instead, the signal begins to degrade and there's a chance that the input will not be received at all.

@TooBeaucoup

Hah! I just noticed your name... Braggart.

edmaul69

@mediamogul i have some cheapo genesis and nes controllers that when on a 6 foot usb extension cable they have so much lag that mario bros is unplayable. And this is with thick usb extension cables. The cables on the controllers not so good. I know most controllers arent that bad but these ones are. I have never used an ibuffalo so i dont know anything about them.

Rion

@edmaul69 Have you tried to increase the the usb max current in /boot/config.txt?

Setting max_usb_current=1 sets the available current over USB to 1.2A (default is 600mA)

I know it's a Longshot but it could help..

mediamogul

@edmaul69 said in Best settings for reducing controller lag? I'm at my wits end.:

when on a 6 foot usb extension cable they have so much lag that mario bros is unplayable.

Six feet should be way too too short to cause an issue, but you can't argue with real world results. I know you have quite a controller/adapter collection. Is it just those particular genesis and nes controllers that lag in conjunction with the extensions or is it everywhere?

edmaul69

@Rion i wasnt even aware of that. I will have to try it if i ever have the problem again.

@mediamogul yeah i dont use those controllers now. They were what we were originally trying to use on the nes when i made the front controller ports adapt to usb. But yeah they were the only ones with issues. But the nes ports are on an nes to usb adapter now and i wired up some snes extension cables with nes connectors on the end so i could use them on the nes ports as well.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

Very keen!