Bigbox lag

[noiseordinance]

28 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I went back to test on my slower machines, and as best I can tell, any remaining stutters in the controller navigation are just due to performance issues in general with the hardware not being able to keep up. So that's not to say that there's not improvements that we can make, but I think the controller implementation specifically is probably as good as it going to get.

I also think that overall, the performance is much better than in previous releases. The part that makes me wonder about hardware performance being an issue is that for me, when the stuttering is occurring, the videos are still playing, and it's still accepting input from the keyboards. And when this happens on an i7 4770 overclocked at 4.2ghz, I just can't imagine how this is a hardware issue, but I'm not a programmer so I don't know this stuff.

At any rate, thanks much for improving the performance; Bigbox is far more usable now!

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, noiseordinance said:

I also think that overall, the performance is much better than in previous releases. The part that makes me wonder about hardware performance being an issue is that for me, when the stuttering is occurring, the videos are still playing, and it's still accepting input from the keyboards. And when this happens on an i7 4770 overclocked at 4.2ghz, I just can't imagine how this is a hardware issue, but I'm not a programmer so I don't know this stuff.

At any rate, thanks much for improving the performance; Bigbox is far more usable now!

Glad to hear that it's much improved over the last release. Often times it is a priority issue that causes this kind of stuff. More often than not, when I fix performance issues in Big Box, it's just all about figuring out how to code in the priorities and the timing correctly. Big Box is vastly multi-threaded in order to keep performance smooth, which can make stuff like that complicated for sure.

[Rjay]

Thanks for your work on this one Jason. Yep the video's side of thing definitely seems related as when i see the jumpy / laggy behaviour its almost always around a game title with a vid, it generally improves the second time I scroll past it. I am not a programmer either so can't comment on the implementation but considering my system is pretty much current high performance specs and smokes most things, including applications I would typically think are more on taxing on hardware, it doesn't seem like it could be lack of grunt as the root cause.

Is there any thing I can do to improve the initial startup speed of Big Box, the "initialising Big Box" speech is always jittery, and just wondering if there is something I can do to make it smooth? @Jason Carr

[Jason Carr]

21 minutes ago, Rjay said:

Thanks for your work on this one Jason. Yep the video's side of thing definitely seems related as when i see the jumpy / laggy behaviour its almost always around a game title with a vid, it generally improves the second time I scroll past it. I am not a programmer either so can't comment on the implementation but considering my system is pretty much current high performance specs and smokes most things, including applications I would typically think are more on taxing on hardware, it doesn't seem like it could be lack of grunt as the root cause.

Is there any thing I can do to improve the initial startup speed of Big Box, the "initialising Big Box" speech is always jittery, and just wondering if there is something I can do to make it smooth? @Jason Carr

I honestly don't have any idea why you'd be experiencing hiccups. I don't remember your system specs (I'm sure you shared them at some point), but if it's hitching when videos are loading it could be a hard drive speed issue, or if they're on a network path that could be the issue. I will say that it's not normal to experience hiccups when videos load on a high-performance machine.

[Rjay]

7 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I honestly don't have any idea why you'd be experiencing hiccups. I don't remember your system specs (I'm sure you shared them at some point), but if it's hitching when videos are loading it could be a hard drive speed issue, or if they're on a network path that could be the issue. I will say that it's not normal to experience hiccups when videos load on a high-performance machine.

i5 8600k, 16GB DDR4, Samsung NVME Pro hdd, so yeh it wont be HDD issue. Its not so much the video glitches, its that is when I see the laggy / jumpy controller behaviour, usually around the first scroll past a Game title with a video.

 

Thoughts on the jittery initialising Big Box speech or should I just turn it off as their isn't any performance tweaks for that?

 

thanks

[Jason Carr]

The initializing speech does admittedly hiccup every once in a while for me on my machines as well. That kind of thing is really hard to get right unless I wait until everything is loaded before I play the sound (I don't want to delay loading Big Box just to play the startup sound). I still don't understand why you're seeing performance issues with the controller, but I'm out of ideas, unfortunately.

[Rjay]

18 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

The initializing speech does admittedly hiccup every once in a while for me on my machines as well. That kind of thing is really hard to get right unless I wait until everything is loaded before I play the sound (I don't want to delay loading Big Box just to play the startup sound). I still don't understand why you're seeing performance issues with the controller, but I'm out of ideas, unfortunately.

No problems, I can just turn off the audio I think there was a tick box from memory. All good as I said its very usable If I get a chance I will take a video.

thanks

[Eckers569]

I had this problem but think I've managed to finally resolve it for my setup. I'm doing a bit of a weird arcade build so my steps are more than likely going to be a bit different to yours, never-the-less I thought maybe this might help some of you or maybe put you on the right path...

One difference in my setup is that I'm using UCR to emulate xbox 360 contollers (but I do also have the same problem with real ones plugged in).

I tried all the steps mentioned in this thread and while I think some might have had a minor impact, I never felt satisfied with the outcome - especially since the 'true' keyboard (when I switched UCR off) was absolutely fine the entire time.

My system:

Intel I5 6600K

GTX 1080ti

16GB DDR 4 RAM

 

I was clicking around 'Task Manager' trying to see what else might be causing this lag. I came across the UCR application that I use to emulate 360 controllers in the 'Task Manager > Details' tab. When I right-clicked on this application I have the option to 'Set priority'. The default setting seems to be 'medium' for everything  so I changed it to high (could have gone up to 'Real Time', but decided against it). This has completely resolved it for me after a couple of hours testing (changing it back causes the same problem).

I couldn't however see any physical devices in this list, but perhaps if you know what your looking for you'll see something similar that you can change the priority you computer gives to it. I did notice BigBox was also shown and I had the same option of changing the priority on that too. Haven't tried that yet but might be worth a go if your still having problems with a physical controller and BigBox lag.

 

 

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, Eckers569 said:

I had this problem but think I've managed to finally resolve it for my setup. I'm doing a bit of a weird arcade build so my steps are more than likely going to be a bit different to yours, never-the-less I thought maybe this might help some of you or maybe put you on the right path...

One difference in my setup is that I'm using UCR to emulate xbox 360 contollers (but I do also have the same problem with real ones plugged in).

I tried all the steps mentioned in this thread and while I think some might have had a minor impact, I never felt satisfied with the outcome - especially since the 'true' keyboard (when I switched UCR off) was absolutely fine the entire time.

My system:

Intel I5 6600K

GTX 1080ti

16GB DDR 4 RAM

 

I was clicking around 'Task Manager' trying to see what else might be causing this lag. I came across the UCR application that I use to emulate 360 controllers in the 'Task Manager > Details' tab. When I right-clicked on this application I have the option to 'Set priority'. The default setting seems to be 'medium' for everything  so I changed it to high (could have gone up to 'Real Time', but decided against it). This has completely resolved it for me after a couple of hours testing (changing it back causes the same problem).

I couldn't however see any physical devices in this list, but perhaps if you know what your looking for you'll see something similar that you can change the priority you computer gives to it. I did notice BigBox was also shown and I had the same option of changing the priority on that too. Haven't tried that yet but might be worth a go if your still having problems with a physical controller and BigBox lag.

 

 

This is actually rather interesting. It does make sense that it could be a priority issue. I guess the next question becomes whether there's a way to change priorities on drivers for real Xbox controllers.

[Eckers569]

56 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

This is actually rather interesting. It does make sense that it could be a priority issue. I guess the next question becomes whether there's a way to change priorities on drivers for real Xbox controllers.

I've tried instead just setting the BigBox application to 'High' priority in Task Manager (obviously BigBox needs to be running in the background to show up in Task Manager) - and returning my UCR controller application back to 'Normal'...

Probably too early to say for sure, but I'm still not experiencing any where near the  same lag I once was and it also seems to have survived a system reset. Positive signs perhaps for those using physical xbox controllers plugged in...

Hopefully someone will be able to verify on their setup.

 

 

As an aside, I very rarely login to forums, but the work you guys do on this front end is remarkable. I've tried a few alternatives down the years and never got on with any of them - but Launchbox has proved to be the most worthwhile purchase I made in a long time and rejuvenated my gaming interests (even if it is now mostly dicking around with the perfect emulator settings rather than playing :-). Thanks for the hard work.

[Jason Carr]

2 minutes ago, Eckers569 said:

I've tried instead just setting the BigBox application to 'High' priority in Task Manager (obviously BigBox needs to be running in the background to show up in Task Manager) - and returning my UCR controller application back to 'Normal'...

Probably too early to say for sure, but I'm still not experiencing any where near the  same lag I once was and it also seems to have survived a system reset. Positive signs perhaps for those using physical xbox controllers plugged in...

Hopefully someone will be able to verify on their setup.

 

 

As an aside, I very rarely login to forums, but the work you guys do on this front end is remarkable. I've tried a few alternatives down the years and never got on with any of them - but Launchbox has proved to be the most worthwhile purchase I made in a long time and rejuvenated my gaming interests (even if it is now mostly dicking around with the perfect emulator settings rather than playing :-). Thanks for the hard work.

That is great to hear. Thanks for the kind words.

[Lordmonkus]

14 minutes ago, Eckers569 said:

(even if it is now mostly dicking around with the perfect emulator settings rather than playing :-)

lol, this part never ends

[Rjay]

Will give this a spin this eve! if you prioritize a process does it remember that prioritization level the next time it is executed or it is specific to that instance of the process running?

[Jason Carr]

@Rjay Have you tried the latest beta to see if it improves things?

[Rjay]

6 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

@Rjay Have you tried the latest beta to see if it improves things?

Not yet, I had turned off beta's after that last back and forth and we got things as good as we thought they could be at the time.

I do have a date scheduled with Streetfighter V new Season 3 content so maybe I will do a quick up and test of Launchbox before that

[Eckers569]

17 hours ago, Rjay said:

Will give this a spin this eve! if you prioritize a process does it remember that prioritization level the next time it is executed or it is specific to that instance of the process running?

No - unfortunately the priority resets back to ‘normal’ again in task manager when you close and reopen the application. 

After some more testing I’m pretty sure I’m getting better results prioritising my controller (I.e the UCR keyboard to controller app) rather than prioritising the BigBox app itself. I’m sure Both have given me better results though - but does make me wonder what all this other shit I have running on my computer is! 

I’m Gonna play around with my nvidia control panel settings tonight and make a BigBox specific profile (make sure there’s no vsync or other ‘enhancements’ running by default). Most of the time something is running bad I find it’s an nvidia GPU setting that’s causing the grief.

[Mr. RetroLust]

5 minutes ago, Eckers569 said:

No - unfortunately the priority resets back to ‘normal’ again in task manager when you close and reopen the application. 

After some more testing I’m pretty sure I’m getting better results prioritising my controller (I.e the UCR keyboard to controller app) rather than prioritising the BigBox app itself. I’m sure Both have given me better results though - but does make me wonder what all this other shit I have running on my computer is! 

I’m Gonna play around with my nvidia control panel settings tonight and make a BigBox specific profile (make sure there’s no vsync or other ‘enhancements’ running by default). Most of the time something is running bad I find it’s an nvidia GPU setting that’s causing the grief.

Also check screen refresh, how much Hz is it set at?

[Eckers569]

20 minutes ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Also check screen refresh, how much Hz is it set at?

Good point. I’m  Just running on my bog standard Sony TV - at 60hz I assume -but have never set any specifics computer side. Will also try with a proper monitor too see if that helps. Still strange the using the keyboard works flawlessly regardless.

i would try other controller types too but Windows has a habit of reprioritising all my controllers and crapping up my emulators if I plug anything new in or change the very specific routine I have to reconnect all my devices (controllers, wheel, gear stick etc) so I dare not go down that route again!

[DOS76]

If your TV has a game mode try setting it also.

[Mr. RetroLust]

56 minutes ago, Eckers569 said:

Good point. I’m  Just running on my bog standard Sony TV - at 60hz I assume -but have never set any specifics computer side. Will also try with a proper monitor too see if that helps. Still strange the using the keyboard works flawlessly regardless.

i would try other controller types too but Windows has a habit of reprioritising all my controllers and crapping up my emulators if I plug anything new in or change the very specific routine I have to reconnect all my devices (controllers, wheel, gear stick etc) so I dare not go down that route again!

Also check in your gpu settings (nvidia settings, the tab where you set the resolution) at which screen refresh rate its set. Maybe it's set at wrong Hz, worth a try to have a look as Ive read someone had problems with this before but it could be unrelated. Should be set at 60Hz as well as far as I know.