How to Meaure Hand-Eye (Mouse-Monitor) Input Lag in Your Gaming Rig

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gustep12

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Nov 21, 2004
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Do you ever feel as if there is some lag in your system, i.e. you move the mouse, and the cursor seems to follow a little sluggishly? Wouldn't you want to know how fast the cursor *actually* responds to a mouse movement? I certainly would.

The most advanced type of measurement I could think of to test out gaming rigs would work as follows, but unfortunately I haven't been able to pull it off quite yet. Maybe someone can help:

1.) Tape your optical mouse to your monitor
2.) Write some software that displays and then suddenly moves a mouse-recognizable pattern on the screen
3.) The stationary mouse, being fooled by the moving pattern on the monitor, will think it is being moved suddenly
4.) So in total, the program moves the pattern on the screen and measures how much later the mouse reports back with a Mouse.Move signal.

5.) Voila: This would be the total input delay of your rig, and it would account for almost ALL delays, mouse driver lag, display driver lag, monitor lag, and whatever else.

The catch is that I couldn't dupe any optical mouse into registering a moving pattern on my monitor yet. I guess the DPI mismatch is just too great, something like 72dpi for the monitor and 3000dpi for the optical mouse... But who knows, with a special lens, or a dedicated optical mouse this should work. And THEN we'll be talking business... We'll be spec'ing out and pricing gaming rigs by the milliseconds, and not by the GHz. :)
 
The only delay I've ever seen is as a result of low framerates. USB is fast enough for almost any mouse.
 
Bona Fide said:
The only delay I've ever seen is as a result of low framerates. USB is fast enough for almost any mouse.
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With V-Sync on I can't bare to move the mouse around the screen, even if it is playing Quake 3 at 85fps Synched.

I can still notice that lag, which makes me unable to kill anyone in that game, I much prefer the screen tearing than mouse lag.
 
I dont think its the mouse but much more likely the game's fps. The mouse will move, just your not going to see it untill the screen is redrawn.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
I dont think its the mouse but much more likely the game's fps. The mouse will move, just your not going to see it untill the screen is redrawn.
Click to expand...
This is true.

I just can't play games with V-Sync on, it feels slow to me, I prefer the tearing.
 
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