Mouse tracking in menus

anongw65 · Nov 5, 2014

Has anyone experienced mouse tracking problems? I generally use my HOTAS setup for everything. However, whenever in a station, and in the station services menu, the highlighted item is not always under the mouse cursor. As I move the mouse, the highlighted item (whether in the commodities menu, or outfitting menu, and, I'm sure, in others) could be two or more (I've seen a much as four) items away from where my mouse cursor actually is. It's not uniform, either, even during the same session; at one point, while perusing the commodities menu, the highlighted item changed from two spots away from the mouse cursor location, to fours spots away.

This was not, by the way, happening in the earlier betas. I don't recall ever running into this issue in either Beta 1 or 2, and I don't think I saw it in Beta 3.0.

I planned to put in a ticket for this, but I was wondering if anyone has seen this behavior during their own game play.

My setup includes the TM HOTAS, pedals, and an IR head tracker, if that info helps at all.

Satanski · Nov 5, 2014

Try unchecking "hardware cursor" in options.

anongw65 · Nov 5, 2014

Thank you, I will. Is that something new?

Satanski · Nov 5, 2014

No idea. Had the same problem recently and found the option. Hope it helps

Zalifer · Nov 5, 2014

It's the head tracker. The conversion of mouse co-ordinates to gamespace co-ordinates (as the menu's are in 3d, as they are holograms) does not take the head tracker into consideration, so if you are looking above the "default" position, then your mouse will still select the item in the position if you hadn't moved your head away from the default.

anongw65 · Nov 5, 2014

Thank you for the reply.

If that is, indeed, the case (I'm at the office so I can't test it), then it doesn't sound like a feature so much as a bug, and one that should have a ticket!

Zalifer · Nov 5, 2014

anongw65 said:
Thank you for the reply.

If that is, indeed, the case (I'm at the office so I can't test it), then it doesn't sound like a feature so much as a bug, and one that should have a ticket!

Yup, make sure you submit one if you experience it yourself after testing.

Athan · Nov 5, 2014

Zalifer said:
Yup, make sure you submit one if you experience it yourself after testing.

My ticket on this topic got closed "working as intended, post on the forums if you think it should change". When I posted on the forums someone quickly suggested I turn off the Hardware Cursor (as someone did above). This does fix it. It's obvious why. With 'Hardware Cursor' on some combination of the mouse and GPU drivers is handling the cursor and they don't know about the necessary 3D projection for anything other than looking straight ahead and level. Go to a software cursor and ED is handling it, so it can, and does, apply the correct projection.

anongw65 · Nov 6, 2014

Well, I did try turning off the hardware cursor. I don't know if one thing is related to the other, but when I did that (and the mouse seemed to work properly within the menus), all of a sudden, my thrusters weren't working as intended, and when I lifted off the pad and hit my "up" thruster, it slammed me against the "ceiling." A hefty fine and expensive repairs later, I turned "Hardware Cursor" back on, and followed Zalifer's suggestion of looking at or above the default (center) position of my head tracker. That solved both problems, although now I have to strain my eyes instead of moving my head when navigating menus. Working as intended someone said?? I sincerely hope not.

Athan · Nov 6, 2014

I can see it being possible that Hardware Cursor on/off could possibly change the way the mouse input is read and thus cause issues... but I doubt it would affect keyboard. So is your 'up' thrust on a mouse button/axis ?

Either way I'd report it as a bug, as no-one would really expect changing that Graphics option to impact on controls.

anongw65 · Nov 6, 2014

Athan said:
I can see it being possible that Hardware Cursor on/off could possibly change the way the mouse input is read and thus cause issues... but I doubt it would affect keyboard. So is your 'up' thrust on a mouse button/axis ?

Either way I'd report it as a bug, as no-one would really expect changing that Graphics option to impact on controls.

No, I don't use my keyboard/mouse for any controls. My entire control scheme, up to this point, has been on my HOTAS setup. The keyboard/mouse only serves the purpose of entering/navigating system names in the Galaxy Map.

The only reason I haven't put a ticket in yet is because it was mentioned earlier in the thread (Many thanks to that CMDR for that info) that the current behavior of the mouse/menu interaction with the Hardware Cursor set to ON is "working as intended," and that any dissatisfaction with that decision should be discussed within the forums themselves. Also, if it is "working as intended," I would assume that setting the Hardware Cursor to OFF is also working as intended.

So, here is a stupid question on my part. Does setting the Hardware Cursor to OFF then turn the mouse into a ship control? Please bear with me, as I can't test any of this until I get home, but if anyone already has an answer, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Athan · Nov 6, 2014

anongw65 said:
So, here is a stupid question on my part. Does setting the Hardware Cursor to OFF then turn the mouse into a ship control? Please bear with me, as I can't test any of this until I get home, but if anyone already has an answer, it'd be greatly appreciated.

It did not in my case. I believe at the point I toggled the Hardware Cursor I still had both mouse control axis set to 'Off'. I could mouse out of my windowed ED without issues when in-flight. However I since turned one axis on, and deadzones up/sensitivity down, to allow the Mouse Helper Widget to give me a centre dot.

But that's all by the by, as unless you've explicitly set something to do with the mouse to control strafe movement I can't see how turning Hardware Cursor off should affect it. Report the bug.

anongw65 · Nov 6, 2014

Athan said:
It did not in my case. I believe at the point I toggled the Hardware Cursor I still had both mouse control axis set to 'Off'. I could mouse out of my windowed ED without issues when in-flight. However I since turned one axis on, and deadzones up/sensitivity down, to allow the Mouse Helper Widget to give me a centre dot.

But that's all by the by, as unless you've explicitly set something to do with the mouse to control strafe movement I can't see how turning Hardware Cursor off should affect it. Report the bug.

Thank you, Athan, for the excellent feedback throughout this post.

Before I submit a bug report, I will need to do a little bit of testing. Being in the industry that I'm in, it's always a smart move to cover all of one's bases before coming to a conclusion. That's not to say that a bug doesn't exist, but simply that I need to know the mechanics of all my actions before trying to explain what I believe to be facts. Again, it'll have to wait until this evening when I get home and can do some proper testing.

chrisreb · Nov 6, 2014

I get this - using Track IR which seems to be throwing a few things on the interface and in cockpit a bit out of line. I found the menus non responsive until I found they were actually appearing out of forward view and I needed to turn my head. Track IR not covered at all in any guidance so all really undocumented effects

anongw65 · Nov 7, 2014

anongw65 said:
Thank you, Athan, for the excellent feedback throughout this post.

Before I submit a bug report, I will need to do a little bit of testing. Being in the industry that I'm in, it's always a smart move to cover all of one's bases before coming to a conclusion. That's not to say that a bug doesn't exist, but simply that I need to know the mechanics of all my actions before trying to explain what I believe to be facts. Again, it'll have to wait until this evening when I get home and can do some proper testing.

Well, I finally got into ED and checked out the Hardware Cursor changes. My previous collision (no pun intended) of issues, where changing the Hardware Cursor to OFF and my Sidewinder playing tennis ball with the station wall seem to be non-related. Looking around the menus, the Hardware Cursor option being in the Graphics sub-menu and the mouse move options being, obviously, in the Controls sub-menu, changing the HC didn't effect any of the control options.

So, that leaves the fact that Frontier believes that "mouse not tracking" issue when HC is ON is "working as intended." Personally, I don't like it. I may have to accept it if enough people don't complain, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. The visuals are different, as well. The most obvious difference is the size of the cursor. Why does it have to be made so large as compared when HC is OFF? Secondly, and I'd like some corroboration on this, the Station Services menu remains on the screen even if you look away. With HC set to ON, the menu would disappear when looking at a side panel. Again, I could be wrong on this, so someone please double check me on this (unless I can do it myself first).

So, Frontier, if you're listening, please change this! It was working well before the latest few beta iterations!