Special K can drastically reduce latency

[Meowchan]

Did anyone released a guide to Special K? How to use it to get the lowest input lag etc.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special_K

then scroll down till you find "Manually install local wrapper DLLs" and it will describe to you how to install it manually.

I was unable to make it work with Overwatch, not sure what I'm doing wrong. OW is DX11 afaik and 64 bit so I copied SpecialK64.dll to Overwatch\_retail_ tried renaming it to dxgi.dll or d3d11.dll and Overwatch.exe refused to execute both times.
I tried global injection and executing OW and as far as I could tell it was not running in game.

[deama]

Did anyone released a guide to Special K? How to use it to get the lowest input lag etc.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special_K

then scroll down till you find "Manually install local wrapper DLLs" and it will describe to you how to install it manually.

I was unable to make it work with Overwatch, not sure what I'm doing wrong. OW is DX11 afaik and 64 bit so I copied SpecialK64.dll to Overwatch\_retail_ tried renaming it to dxgi.dll or d3d11.dll and Overwatch.exe refused to execute both times.
I tried global injection and executing OW and as far as I could tell it was not running in game.

I don't think special K works well with multiplayer games because of anti-cheat protection, overwatch might have something against injection stuff, though it might have stuff like RTSS or reshade whitelisted, special K is too unknown so it doesn't.

Try a single-player game just so you know how it's supposed to work.

[Meowchan]

Shucks ;/

Hopefully Kaldaien can get NVidia and AMD to implement it as part of their drivers. One can only hope.

[Digika]

I sometimes want to try it, but the baggage that comes with the tool and its developer always forces me to stop and back off.

[diakou]

I sometimes want to try it, but the baggage that comes with the tool and its developer always forces me to stop and back off.

This keeps getting brought up over and over again, yet to this day, there is not a single concrete evidence outside of trolls being trolls and kaldaien losing his temper after 1000+ messages of trolls. There's no baggage, there's no hoax. There's rumors after rumors however, which to this day is not proven, especially considering both Kaldaien and people who have supported the Special K project are open about almost every single aspect of it, I mean the entire thing is literally open source with a GNU GPLV2 license (go search it up)

it's so ridiculous to keep linking this and it genuinely makes me wonder if you're one of the trolls.

[jorimt]

I sometimes want to try it, but the baggage that comes with the tool and its developer always forces me to stop and back off.

This keeps getting brought up over and over again, yet to this day, there is not a single concrete evidence outside of trolls being trolls and kaldaien losing his temper after 1000+ messages of trolls.

I've casually followed this "controversy" from the beginning since the Steam forum days (and since lost track due to disinterest from sheer lack of evidence), and I still don't know where people are getting these ideas or how they've maintained them for so long; regardless of what anyone thinks on this, it's sheer conspiracy theory material, bar none.

[Digika]

He himself confirmed on Steam forums and bragged about it that his tool (I think back then it was called different) would try to detect if game's DRM is bypassed and gimp itself/stop working. Same for the blacklist (which, in some circles speculated, was one of the main reasons Valve axed him because people brought that up). It is possible that specific "feature" was removed but you never really know what else is there, given the history.

I mean the entire thing is literally open source with a GNU GPLV2 license (go search it up)

I really don't understand why do people keep bringing this up for every OS project without even giving a second thought to what it entails .
This argument never works and will never work and essentially just a fail-proof fallacy at this point that is used to silence opponent. I have about ~20 open-source apps on my phone and about as much on my desktop PC. They are all different, source code of 60% of them use distinct language, distinct architecture, libs and approaches. You need to have very dedicated and deep experience and knowledge on each and on the topics and science they use. For a person to read and understand and audit the code it would be a FULL TIME JOB until they turn 60. How many people do you think familiar not just wit language, codebase and architecture of SK, but also with all the background subjects it requires to understand how it works and what it does? I'd argue besides the 2 (?) devs that work on it - you can count the rest by the fingers of your single hand. It is simply not feasible to just quickly audit it between forum posts and no sane person will be doing it, even if he has enough knowledge and experience.

Look, I realize now we are going too deep into sh*tposting territory, I will stop here.

[jorimt]

He himself confirmed on Steam forums and bragged about it that his tool (I think back then it was called different) would try to detect if game's DRM is bypassed and gimp itself/stop working.

I personally don't see an issue with this particular aspect (which has probably since been removed?). If someone pirates AND uses his software, no one is forcing them into doing either.

Look, I realize now we are going too deep into sh*tposting territory, I will stop here.

Indeed. This subject has no doubt been beaten like a dead horse within the circles familiar with it.

I'm not saying there is/isn't any truth to any of this, I'm saying that, in my view, the way he's being and has been attacked is at the very least, disproportionate, and from what "I" have seen of this, it appears to be primarily driven by the wrong people with the wrong attitudes and wrong motivations.

E.g. if this were a "crime," it would be the difference between having a trial, jury, and judge, and being stoned in the street on the spot (a mentality the internet adopts all too often).

Just my take.

Regardless, there are plenty of other avenues for dissenters to vent on this, and I don't think this forum or thread should be one of them.

Let's keep this on topic, which is to discuss Special K's FPS limiting input latency for those who choose to use the software.

[EeK]

Reading this thread was like watching the latency Avengers converging. The only one missing is Battle(non)sense's Chris.

Glad to see Chief, jorimt and Kal are all getting LDATs. I assume Unwinder too? I know Chris did (and even published a video about it).

Curious as to what the recommendation for G-Sync would be, now that SpecialK has been thrown into the mix. I'm still using the tried-and-true method of forcing VSync "on" and limiting the FPS in the Nvidia Control Panel (for ease of use and more stable frame times, rather than reducing the latency even further by doing that in-game, when there's the option) to -3 (minimum) below the maximum refresh rate.

[jorimt]

Curious as to what the recommendation for G-Sync would be, now that SpecialK has been thrown into the mix. I'm still using the tried-and-true method of forcing VSync "on" and limiting the FPS in the Nvidia Control Panel (for ease of use and more stable frame times, rather than reducing the latency even further by doing that in-game, when there's the option) to -3 (minimum) below the maximum refresh rate.

My base tear-free G-SYNC recommendations remain the same.

The framerate limiting selection (regardless of any SpecialK FPS limiter findings) will remain a mix of individual user preferences and goals on a per-game basis.