Hi.

Could be it's commonly known, so it's probably a "doh!" post from me

I was having alot of mouse skipping on BF2, and after raising my cap to over 100 (using 250 now), the skipping dissappeared.
Actually was allready noticable better at 120 fps cap.

I've had some of the same symptoms in other games aswell when using 100 fps cap. cod4, css/csgo etc i get microstutter at 100 fps. Could be that new graphic cards don't like that 100 clean cap.

But anyhooo, just a heads up if anyone else is experiencing mouse skipping/microstutter. You could try raising the cap.
game.LockFPS 0 = off, or any number.

Cheers!

Thank you very much for your report! I personally have game.lockfps 200 and renderer.drawfps 1 in my Video.con file, and I have made it read-only.

EDIT 2020: I don't have that setting anymore, only thing it was good at was overheating my GPU for no additional benefit as most of those extra frames are skipped anyways (I have a 60Hz Laptop Monitor).

Staff Officer S_h_a_r_k_93 

Hi i have the mouse skipping issue and its very annoying it only happens when im standing still and turning horizontally but it doesnt do it when i walk forward or backwards i raised my fps but it didnt do anything.

Are you using any overlay software? If so try to close it completely.
Does your problem look like the one in this video? Scope lag during/after aim-down-sights?



If that's the problem, there are some fixes to try; but if this "mouse skip" that you are talking about is different, I don't know if it's going to be the same result. Do you have this problem both in Singleplayer and Multiplayer?

Staff Officer S_h_a_r_k_93 

Yes it happens in single player and multi player it almost feels like im skipping frames it only happens when i walk side ways or stand still look horizontally also jitters also when i jump and move left and right i get laggy movement also. And no its not like that video its more like this youtube.com/watch?v=CpAeUD7ZYMs

Tried to help on Discord, to the best of my stored knowledge, but this seems like it's going to stay flat.
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEDIC!!!

Staff Officer S_h_a_r_k_93 

In the video I didn't spot the problem, looked like normal gameplay to me; but recently somebody came up on Reddit with the exact same issue that Daw3dx is describing (well, only when turning the mouse view around horizontally, didn't talk about moving sideways) and this video that the poster has recorded describes your problem perfectly, am I right?

We've had a very interesting comment by Manekk that I hereby quote: So I have been trying to fix this problem as well for ages. I came to the conclusion, that it is intended and has to do with the soldier animation. He will turn sideways without moving his feet and once you turn far enough, the feet will have to move. Let a friend do what you did in the video and watch him. If you find how to remove it, I'd love to learn how.



Perhaps not hope is lost, I have asked in our Discord to the users running with a 144Hz monitor if they experience the same issue, but so far it looks like there is no real solution for this problem; to a lesser extent, I do experience the same type of "skip" when looking around horizontally and standing still.

Best regards,
Staff Officer S_h_a_r_k_93 

EDIT: Manekk has posted a clip here, where he adds that this problem also hinders his aiming ability: streamable.com/vk77p.

 Stutter or input lag?

Locking your frames can create quite a lot of input lag, depending on what kind of frame limiter is used. Many ingame frame limiters do a bad job and I feel like the one in BF2 is not particularly good. Newer Nvidia drivers offer an inbuilt frame limiter, which is not too bad, but the best frame limiter by far is RTSS.

The thing with RTSS is, that is adds exactly one frame of input lag. In turn it creates very stable frametimes which gives you a pretty smooth experience ingame. Frametimes are defined like this:

 Frametime (ms) = 1000/fps

So if you run the game at 100 fps, you get a new frame every 10 ms. These 10ms are ADDED to the chain of input lag you experience. Since FPS are an average value, this could mean that one frame takes 15ms to render and then other one 5 ms, giving you an average of 10ms. This will cause perceived stutter.

 Where to put your money on

So what you want is STABLE frametimes; but BF2 makes this hard. Due to the hardware limitations at release of the game, only things in front of you will be rendered properly. You can check this by observing FPS and looking at the "action" and then looking away from the action. So if you are turning fast in battle, frametimes will become unstable for a split second which can cause mouse skipping and rubber banding.

So you can basically choose whether you want smoothness or input delay/lag. The statement that locking fps at the value your monitor supports is enough is wrong though, since higher FPS shorten frametimes and the frames will get to your PC faster. So what you see will be a bit less "in the past".

People seem to have the assumption that everything is instant, but in reality you will see everything that happens in your RAM/CPU around 10-200ms later, with 10 being on top notch Intel Hardware with a perfectly optimized system.

To get you in the ballpark, 35ms is around a head's length of a running soldier. In general BF2 is a rather CPU heavy game, so on modern hardware the bottleneck will always be the CPU. GPUs have evolved much faster than CPUs since 2005.

 So what do I do now?

I personally unlock my FPS with game.lockfps 0, because I crave that input lag reduction. You have to note, though, that doing so will tax your CPU more and you will need to optimize your windows environment so that not only the game, but also the OTHER components run well.

These other components are the windows infrastructure needed to run the game, including things such as USB drivers, mouse/kb drivers, Network protocols and drivers, graphics drivers, etc.

There's still no official fix for this I've been experimenting but nothing I'm clueless right now but from what I found out it's not the mouse that causes the lag but the soldier movement animation since this is only an issue as infantry and this has been a problem for some people since the release of the game.

My 2cents on this,

when I play BF2 I sometimes feel that my game is jerky. Sure, I was looking for a solution on the Internet to see the frame rate, came across the console commands and entered renderer.drawfps 1 in the console to see whether the frame rate slumped.

But as it is, I'm human and being lazy. That's why I often didn't do it and now I was looking for a solution for a permanent display to find out when the drops happen.

To always display the FPS in the game (top left in red), simply go to the Documents \ Battlefield 2 \ Profiles \ 0001 folder (repeat for every other profile), open the Controls.con file with the editor and at the end the line, renderer.drawfps 1
To keep the frame rate constant it makes sense to add the line game.lockfps 0. As Manekk mentioned already

Game on!

++ copy and paste ++
renderer.drawfps 1
game.lockfps 0