Game engines that make your mouse feels sluggish

There are some games out there, either due to graphic settings or the game engine itself where using the mouse feels rather sluggish instead of nice and snappy. The current game I’m playing, Train Fever, is one of those. Many old games where you add extra graphic options to make them look better are the same way. My computer can handle the game(s) just fine.

Are there any tricks to fixing this? Sometimes setting a very high mouse tracking rate just makes the mouse skip and the accuracy too poor to work. But I was wondering if there was some combination of advanced mouse settings or something else that can help alleviate this?

Aren’t you gaming in 4k? Maybe it’s an issue with games that don’t scale mouse input based on resolution correctly?

Anyways, you could buy a mouse with a button that changes your dpi, like the Logitech G502 I have or a million other options.

Wish I could help, because I did quite enjoy Train Fever myself.

EDIT: wait, no, I was thinking it was Train Valley. I’d probably like Train Fever if I tried it though. (I like train games, what can I say)

I know exactly what you mean jp. The Witcher 2 was terrible for this and most Bethesda games I’ve played, namely Fallout 3 and New Vegas and Skyrim. Could never get those feeling right.

That’s the mouse I have I think (at appointment right now so can’t check). But I appear to not be very good at the configurations. For instance I tried per game auto launching and the special bindings never work even though I save them.

I’m not gaming at 4K. In the case of Train Fever I’m only gaming at 1920x1200. My default resolution is 2560x1600, and playing train fever at that resolution would be even worse. But it’s not just Train fever. Lots of games, especially older ones have that sluggish feeling like your moving your mouse through thick syrup. The frame rates are fine it’s just the mouse (any brand mouse I’d bet) feels that way unless there’s some trick to overcoming it. Most AAA games are excellent in this regard and I never have an issue.

@geggis does it kind of lessen your enjoyment of a game too? Losing that accuracy and responsiveness has a negative side effect.

Many gaming mice that let you set the speed in dpi (dots per inch) have a little button you can press to increase/decrease as needed instead of trying to set it per application.

Hell yeah. I’ll spend ages trying to sort it out (and with those games I couldn’t). I have a mouse with adjustable DPI too but that doesn’t really fix the problem, though it helps somewhat. It’s like dragging the mouse pointer through some viscous goop, sluggish and delayed. It’s pretty horrible, and from AAA games too. I get used to it after a while but exiting to Windows and using the desktop pointer brings the feeling that it’s not right back.

If you’re getting laggy mouse input in a game, Vsync is almost certainly the culprit, so force it off in your driver settings, and also in-game just to be on the safe side. I can’t stand playing mouse controlled games with it enabled, and it’s been that way basically since I started playing games with mouse control support 20+ years ago.

Yeah I don’t remember that helping either, either in-game or via Nvidia control panel, with or without triple buffering, not that I’d tolerate screen tear anyway. What kind of monster are you?

Likewise. I know exactly what you mean, however I haven’t had this happen for a long time now for some reason.

IIRC, I would notice it much more in the Menu screens, and then sometimes the game itself would be fine, and other times it would affect the game as well. I could count on it every single time with the affected games. Never could get it fixed. I think I had enough games in my backlog that I either just put up with it, or moved to a different game.

One other thing: Whenever I’d buy a completely new rig, I’d try those same games, and most of the time those problems were no longer there. So I have no answer, except I bet when you get a new rig, you’ll probably not have those troubles. :)

I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve been a PC gamer for 28 years and literally every single time I’ve had a laggy mouse in a computer game it was caused by Vsync being enabled, and was completely remedied by disabling it.

I’m not exactly making it up.

Oh, and I will take screen tearing any day of the week over laggy controls. Why would you even care if your game looked slightly better if it meant not being able to control it worth a damn?

One thing I’ve noticed is when I crank up some forms of FSAA it makes everything, especially mouse response, quite laggy. The higher levels and more features, the worse it gets. Of course for old games where you really need FSAA and AF to appreciate it in all its glory 10 years post release, it’s a downer to we you’ve held back, by all things, your mouse performance!

I’m using all in game defaults in Train Fever so when I get a chance I’ll start testing in deeper levels. Is there any way to test laggy mouse performance outside of just “feel”?

I’m aware of vsync mouse lag but it’s never been severe enough to warrant putting up with screen tear (which I find incredibly distracting; my brother seems to tolerate it fine though somehow) and I say this as someone who plays plenty of online shooters.

What I’m experiencing with the aforementioned games is much worse than anything I’ve ever had with vsync, and by some margin too. I’ve still got The Witcher 2 installed so I may do some more testing to be sure.

SGSSAA and other types of heavy AA almost always gives me lag hence why I usually plump for something a bit less demanding. FXAA does the trick most of the time.

Yes, it is strange that a super old game, when you put on FSAA so it finally looks it’s very best, turns into a pig. I JUST remembered the other game that was doing this something terrible. Silent Hunter 5. I’ve had Cold Waters for quite some time and put a lot of hours into it. It made me want to go back to get more “up close” with other sub sims. But Silent Hunter 5 is just horrendous to play due to the mouse behaving like a 50 lb weight.

Okay, just forced vsync off in The Witcher 2 and it did improve mouse movement but there still seems to be some lag which may explain why it’s so rough when vsync is on as well. Bah!

Edit: I’m not actually playing it now, but I’ve kept it installed after a number of tweaks I made to it.

In the Nvidia/AMD control panel can you force “hardware cursor” or something similar? (I’m on an intel laptop right now so can’t look)