[P3Dv4] C172 yoke input lag

[N46AN]

For a long time I've been plagued with yoke input lag. It feels almost like vsync is on. There is a noticable delay between physical axis movement and the animated yoke on the screen.

In certain scenarios such as a windy approach, it feels that such delay is severely interfering precise yoke handling.

Recently I came across a thread that says this could be because the yoke animation is smoothed, thus appear to lag behind. If this is the case, is it possible to remove the smoothing effect? Visual feedback on the screen is very important for me.

Thanks!

[Nick - A2A]

Hello and welcome to the A2A forums.

The first thing to check is that the sensitivity of your yoke is set to maximum in the P3D control settings, and the null zone is set to its minimum value.

This topic provides a bit more more info imclusing a short video. The vid shows FSX, but exactly the same principal applies to P3Dv4.

Thanks,
Nick

[N46AN]

The first thing to check is that the sensitivity of your yoke is set to maximum in the P3D control settings, and the null zone is set to its minimum value.

Thanks for the quick response. I forgot to mention that long ago I've tried these settings to no avail. Also tried switching between DirectInput and Raw Input but cannot observe any change either.

Note that this issue is specific to A2A C172. Other aircrafts such as default P3Dv4 models does not exhibit such behaviour.

Thanks!

[Nick - A2A]

Hmm, you shouldn't really be seeing any 'smoothing' provided your control setting are as shown in the video. Does your yoke input differ significantly from that shown. Also, any chance you have a link to the thread you mention?

One thing that can creat noticeable input lag is low frame rates in the sim. What frame rates are you seeing when you have this issue?

Thanks,
Nick

[N46AN]

Hmm, you shouldn't really be seeing any 'smoothing' provided your control setting are as shown in the video. Does your yoke input differ significantly from that shown. Also, any chance you have a link to the thread you mention?
One thing that can creat noticeable input lag is low frame rates in the sim. What frame rates are you seeing when you have this issue?

Thank you very much. In the video the demostrator is comparing physical controller input and control surface movement in external view. In my case, I also found that actual control surface movement does not show much lag, it's the yoke in the VC that displays a significant latency. Thus I suspect the theory in "that thread" actually makes sense.

Jerk controller rapidly as shown in the video. but switching to internal view with visible yoke should demostrate the lag.

The thread: viewtopic.php?t=39847

My hardware is pretty decent, combined with good optimization of P3D, I'm getting a solid 60fps on high settings. Also I'm using Rivatuner's scanline sync to limit framerate so vsync latency is not an issue.

In my experience visual feedback of yoke movement is very important. Thus I'm raising this issue.

Thanks for taking time to look into this!

[Nick - A2A]

Ah, I follow now - thanks for the link and explanation. In terms of the animation of the yoke in the virtual cockpit, it's possible its animation is smoothed to provide more convincing movement when the pitch and roll servos are controlling it when the autopilot is engaged. This feature doesn't tend to be included in default aircraft.

You could always try hiding the virtual cockpit yokes if the effect bothers you.

Thanks,
Nick

[N46AN]

...its animation is smoothed to provide more convincing movement when the pitch and roll servos are controlling it when the autopilot is engaged...
You could always try hiding the virtual cockpit yokes if the effect bothers you.

Thanks. Considering that such a smoothing effect is mostly beneficial when autopilot is engaged, is it possible to consider restricting this smoothing effect to only activate when AP is engaged? Such an effect would not have much positive effect when flying manually. My naive guess is that this would be trivial to implement.

Also as stated above, personally I would like to have a visual feedback of controller movement on screen so turning off the yoke would mess with my head even more Of course this is only my personal experience, other users' mileage may vary.