Increased input lag in DX12 due to forced borderless fullscreen

[Bluranghi]

I'm having this issue in Kena: Bridge of Spirits just now and wondered if there was a way to make the input lag the same as DX11... or maybe it already should be and I'm doing something wrong.

The game already has quite a bit of general lag on movements and attacks, that + playing at 30hz means that the extra lag from DX12 pushes it over the edge of what is tolerable and makes aiming the bow feel really bad. I'm playing on controller but I can double check by moving the mouse and seeing there is a noticable increase in lag there too.

I set the game to exclusive fullscreen and disabled FSO on the exe, in DX11 this results in true exclusive fullscreen but in DX12 I can never get that working, its always this new fangled Windows interfering fullscreen afaik (its a borderless window is what I know).

Play in DX11 would be the best thing to do ofc but the thing is that DX11 constantly has not-small stutters (which show as large frametime spikes on the RTSS overlay, sometimes 80ms) as I pan the camera and move through the world. DX12 fixes a lot of that and frametimes are much smoother overall but now I have the added lag. Both things are distracting as heck but for different reasons, even though input lag is generally lower in DX11 I still get lag on my inputs from the stutters so theres that too.

I tried the registry fix in this thread but no change there, DX12 mode is still not true exclusive fullscreen. You can't stop the DX11 stutters by lowering resolution even all the way down to 1080p (I'm at 2160p).

Am I out of luck here and just have to pick my poison? Thanks for reading and taking the time to reply in advance to whoever does.

(massive) N.B. I have to say I'm pretty puzzled by the amount of PC games being released with stuttering the last year or so, its been really bad, different reasons for the stuttering as well but main reasons seem to be shader compilation issues (Unreal Engine), whatever the hell Unity Engine does and giving no option for exclusive fullscreen. Some 2021 examples being: Deaths Door, Psychonauts 2, The Ascent, Sable and now Kena.

Also, and this is probably more a specific Ubisoft engine thing I'm sure but I was also trying Far Cry 5 on PC for the first time recently (Played on PS4 Pro in 2018 with no issues like this, but its 30hz there so maybe was just covering it up) and its atrocious in terms of framepacing and general stuttering. The framerate is solid and GPU usage isn't near max (70% on average) but I had to use RTSS to cap the fps to stop the frametimes being absolutely all over the place, it was like a thick fuzzy line on the graph it was so bad!

Even after that though setting v-sync to 60hz has random and constant frametime spikes every few seconds and massive constant spikes when I look at a dense geometry or large collections of NPCs (even though GPU usage remains under 80%) unless I cap to 30hz, where all these problems are gone.

Is that CPU related? Its not maxed on CPU1 or anything, but its a good old 3770K which I know is quite old now.

[deama]

I'm having this issue in Kena: Bridge of Spirits just now and wondered if there was a way to make the input lag the same as DX11... or maybe it already should be and I'm doing something wrong.

The game already has quite a bit of general lag on movements and attacks, that + playing at 30hz means that the extra lag from DX12 pushes it over the edge of what is tolerable and makes aiming the bow feel really bad. I'm playing on controller but I can double check by moving the mouse and seeing there is a noticable increase in lag there too.

I set the game to exclusive fullscreen and disabled FSO on the exe, in DX11 this results in true exclusive fullscreen but in DX12 I can never get that working, its always this new fangled Windows interfering fullscreen afaik (its a borderless window is what I know).

Play in DX11 would be the best thing to do ofc but the thing is that DX11 constantly has not-small stutters (which show as large frametime spikes on the RTSS overlay, sometimes 80ms) as I pan the camera and move through the world. DX12 fixes a lot of that and frametimes are much smoother overall but now I have the added lag. Both things are distracting as heck but for different reasons, even though input lag is generally lower in DX11 I still get lag on my inputs from the stutters so theres that too.

I tried the registry fix in this thread but no change there, DX12 mode is still not true exclusive fullscreen. You can't stop the DX11 stutters by lowering resolution even all the way down to 1080p (I'm at 2160p).

Am I out of luck here and just have to pick my poison? Thanks for reading and taking the time to reply in advance to whoever does.

(massive) N.B. I have to say I'm pretty puzzled by the amount of PC games being released with stuttering the last year or so, its been really bad, different reasons for the stuttering as well but main reasons seem to be shader compilation issues (Unreal Engine), whatever the hell Unity Engine does and giving no option for exclusive fullscreen. Some 2021 examples being: Deaths Door, Psychonauts 2, The Ascent, Sable and now Kena.

Also, and this is probably more a specific Ubisoft engine thing I'm sure but I was also trying Far Cry 5 on PC for the first time recently (Played on PS4 Pro in 2018 with no issues like this, but its 30hz there so maybe was just covering it up) and its atrocious in terms of framepacing and general stuttering. The framerate is solid and GPU usage isn't near max (70% on average) but I had to use RTSS to cap the fps to stop the frametimes being absolutely all over the place, it was like a thick fuzzy line on the graph it was so bad!

Even after that though setting v-sync to 60hz has random and constant frametime spikes every few seconds and massive constant spikes when I look at a dense geometry or large collections of NPCs (even though GPU usage remains under 80%) unless I cap to 30hz, where all these problems are gone.

Is that CPU related? Its not maxed on CPU1 or anything, but its a good old 3770K which I know is quite old now.

You can try going down to 1080p @ 60hz, or higher.

[greenergrass]

Been visiting this website on occasion over the years but dreama's response got my blood boiling so much that i had to register an account just so i can respond. What an utterly pointless and idiotic response, and i am not saying this to insult, it is simply the only way to describe the overwhelming majority that has absolutley 0000000 clue about these issues and are completely oblivious and not bothered by them at all. What you have described is something i have been seeing and also testing and trying to resolve for years now but with no success. Truth of the matter is that there is always a minus for every plus. When it comes to input lag optimisations, there is always a tradeoff. If you want the bare minimum input lag, uneven framepacing is a given, ive seen this is csgo and quake champions also. My biggest gripe is also with d12 and their forced borderlass feature. Almost no one is talking about it and the devs see no issue with it because almost no one cares about input lag, and least not to the degree we do. We are a minority which the devs will almost never care about unless its a very popular "e-sports" game. Normal games, there is almost no point in even trying.

[RealNC]

What an utterly pointless and idiotic response

So your very first post on this forum is an insult. Well done.