MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Flip Queue Size

> Have you played with the usb polling rate?

My keyboard isn't USB, it's the old style. Do you think this could have any influence? Are PS2 keyboards slower in fullscreen with vsync?

@Bryan Ischo:

Yeah, strange indeed those discrepancies.

> Thanks for testing this, seriously, it's been long since I wanted to know about some
> real measurement of the flip queue size issue, rather than the typical "I feel it
> lags" crap.

Ironically, when I first came into contact with input lag, it was when I played Nestopia. When I enabled vsync for smooth scrolling, I actually noticed the lag just by "feeling" it. So, I did a Google search and I actually found other people who experienced it as well.
I just find it strange that nobody ever got the idea with using Caps Lock and the LED. But, o.k., I didn't think about it either until I saw the person in the video testing input lag in the different "Street Fighter II" versions for PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and Saturn.

> It's just too bad that as soon as D3D_INTERVAL_ONE is activated, an unwanted flip
> queue seems to be created by ATI drivers. Unfortunately this, again, tips the scales
> in favour of the -deprecated- DirectDraw interface.

In the meantime, DirectDraw has become unacceptable for me. Not only does it decrease artwork size only to increase the small image again. But with bilinear filtering, it even mixes the artwork and the game screen image. For example, if you use an all black artwork image file and play a game with a white background, the border of the game and artwork will be gray since they are put into a single low resolution image and that image is then rescaled.

> Well, this is certainly possible. I admit it's an unexpected result, as it's a well
> known fact that modern visual features like Aero make windowed mode based emulators
> laggy, and you have to move to exclusive mode to avoid it. But this wouldn't apply to
> XP.

Even on Windows 7, I don't use Aero.

> What I wonder is if you're getting a good quality vsync while in windowed mode.

Yes, I do. DirectDraw fullscreen, DirectDraw window, Direct3D window and everything without vsync is fine. Direct3D fullscreen vsync is laggy.

> Anyway, what you're suggesting should be possible, but you'd be limited to the
> desktop resolution, so in order to switch resolutions (to run games on their native
> video modes) you'd need to use ChangeDisplaySettings instead of relying on DirectX
> mode switching and exclusive mode, which would be rather messy.

Doesn't MAME keep the native resolution as well? When I play "Street Fighter II" and my desktop is 1360x768, then MAME's fullscreen resolution is still 1360x768 with the actual game's screen increased by MAME. It doesn't switch to a real screen resolution of 384x288. Would this even be possible? Doesn't a monitor have just a few predefined resolutions anyway? Like 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1360x768? And isn't MAME configured to not change the screen's resolution unless you explicitly set it with -r and -switchres? Or am I completely wrong here? Or maybe I misunderstood what you were saying.

So, do you know where exactly the window is created, so that I can change it in the source code and don't need to search for it first?

What do you think, could the fact that I use a PS2 keyboard instead of USB have anything to do with the lag?