[Admiral LSD]

Has any more work been done on this? I hunted around but all I could find was an old Xt build that taylor has since removed and none of the other builds I've tried seem to recognise the "mouse_test" option. I want to be able to play FS2 on my MacBook but not being able to keep up with so much as the Amazon drones in the training missions is starting to annoy me 

[chief1983]

Seriously, if someone knows how to fix his problem, please do it.  All he does on IRC is complain about it

[taylor]

Did "mouse_test" actually work?  I don't really remember, and the fact that I apparently never committed the code makes me think that something was wrong with it.  I ripped it out of later Xt builds as well which makes me sure that something was wrong.

I still have a diff of what that code actually did, so I can add it at any time, but I'm not going to unless it was confirmed to work properly.

[Admiral LSD]

Did "mouse_test" actually work?  I don't really remember, and the fact that I apparently never committed the code makes me think that something was wrong with it.  I ripped it out of later Xt builds as well which makes me sure that something was wrong.

I still have a diff of what that code actually did, so I can add it at any time, but I'm not going to unless it was confirmed to work properly.

Well, none of the builds I tried recognised it as a valid parameter and the one build you linked to that claimed to actually support it is no longer on your icculus space so I haven't been able to test it to tell you whether it works or not.

[taylor]

Hmm, ok.  I'm going to release a new set of Linux/OS X builds tonight/tomorrow, as soon as I commit the normal map code, so I'll just include the mouse_test code in the OS X build and that will give you something recent to test with.  I'm not going to bother adding the option though, I'll just make it default.

[taylor]

Here is the build: http://icculus.org/~taylor/fso/testing/20080717-osx.tgz

[Admiral LSD]

That didn't help. In fact, I think it's made things slightly worse

[Admiral LSD]

I did a little more digging into this and it led me to this:

http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/SetMouseAcclSample/index.html

It's a code sample showing how the scaling curve can be set, reset and adjusted from within a program. Variations of it are how other games get around the acceleration issue. I don't know how or even if it can be implemented neatly in FSO but hopefully it's a shot in the right general direction.

[Admiral LSD]

This may be a better example, it's from a real-world implementation (ioquake3).

The code you need to be looking at is in between the #ifdef MACOS_X_ACCELERATION_HACK lines.

[attachment stolen by Slimey Goober]

[taylor]

The fix(es) in the test builds was originally based on that ioquake3 code actually.  Not a single person has said that it worked however.  The original test builds included 4 different possible fixes for the mouse problem (3 cmdline options to activate the separate fixes, and a 4th option to enable all of them).  Although the acceleration fix did address a reported problem, it isn't a speed change.  It seems to be related too much to user settings and/or hardware, making it rather subjective as to what the "fix" would actually be.  I even considered a complete rewrite of the mouse input code as being one possible fix, though I hate to think of that as actually being the only/best way to fix the problem.

I have never really been able to recreate the problem on my Mac (in an obvious way) so it's pretty difficult to just guess at a fix.  What we are going to need is for a person with the problem to create a working fix and then submit a patch.  Assuming that it doesn't manage to break anything else then we'll add it to SVN.  Any volunteers?

[Admiral LSD]

Are you (or anyone else not seeming to experience this problem for that matter) using any 3rd party mouse drivers or any utilities that may be altering/disabling the mouse acceleration outside of individual programs. I'm using the standard OS X drivers but in my research I noticed a couple of references to Microsofts mouse drivers being able to disable the curve. There are also one or two other utilities that claim to be able to disable it (USB Overdrive seeming to be the most common even though it's USD$20 payware). I don't want to disable the curve, just prevent it interfering with games. I know it's possible as every other game I've ran so far hasn't given me a lick of trouble, it's only FSO that's giving me grief.

[chief1983]

I've gotten FSO running on a few older macs lately, a couple of G3s and a G4.  I've not used any special software on them, and I've run it on 10.3.9, 10.4 and 10.5.  I've used the same old iMac blue keyboard and 1 button Pro mouse on all of them, and haven't seen this issue.  So no luck here, sorry.

[taylor]

I'm not using anything special, just the standard Apple mouse with no special software or drivers.  But like I said, the build that you reported as not working did disable acceleration as per the docs from Apple, the ioquake code, and any other sources that I could find on the subject.  So that pretty much leaves just two possibilities: 1) accel simply isn't the main cause of the problem, or 2) the code fix just didn't work for you for some reason (perhaps a safety check failed or something).  You reported that it possibly made things worse though, so if that's the case then the previous fix must have worked code wise, it just didn't produce the desired results.

[Admiral LSD]

OK, this is weird - but potentially helpful. I compiled ioquake3 for kicks to see what would happen and it turns out the code doesn't work right there either. I get the same sluggish input I see in FSO even though ioq3 seems to indicate the scaling hacks are active (the cvars for them are set to 1). Another Q3 binary I have - which I assume was simply compiled from the regular Q3 source (which disables the acceleration but in a different and supposedly deprecated manner) - is fine. The Q3 binary that works also doesn't seem to respond to turning the cvars for the various scaling hacks off either. Very weird...

[Admiral LSD]

This is probably nothing but it may be something: I noticed that in ioq3 the mouse input is laggy everywhere: in the game menus and in the game itself but in FSO the UI input is fine. It's only once you get into the game that it becomes laggy and unplayable. Is the UI in FSO doing anything different to the actual game?

[Wanderer]

I take this still an issue?

And also that is the bug discussed in some length in IRC ?

If so... then those who have encountered this issue could you please report it here...

Including some information like FS2Open build number, hardware, type of mouse

[Echelon9]

If so... then those who have encountered this issue could you please report it here...

Including some information like FS2Open build number, hardware, type of mouse

Admiral LSD if you're able to give me enough specific information to reproduce the bug I can look at it, but so far all my testing has been unable to recreate anything similar to the problem being reported here.

[neoterran]

I found that I could solve this problem by using one of those really small mice they give away for free at trade shows and development conferences. It's a sun java mouse actually . It must sample at a really high rate or something because it gives much faster turning that the normal mice i use with the Mac do. So... that's my solution.

[Admiral LSD]

OK, the problem is that the sensitivity/acceleration/whatever is reversed: short quick movements are fine but long sweeping movements are as slow as molasses. This is on a Mid 2007 MacBook2,1 (2.16 Core 2 Duo, 945GM chipset) with various mice, OS and FSO versions. I'm fairly certain it's something to do with SDL input (I've found reports of and witnessed similar behaviour in other SDL games as I noted before) but haven't been able to find out exactly what. The other oddityt is, as I also noted before, it only happens while you're in-game. Outside the actual game and on the UI menus and such, it's perfectly fine. The other SDL games I mentioned were slow even in the game UI.