SYNOPSIS
During game play, at seemingly random intervals, all input seems to get "stuck" for a few seconds, and then you move as if you were controlling your ship three seconds in the future. This may not be specific to Windows/DirectX, but OpenGL doesn't seem to have the issue in my experience.

STATUS
Seems to be a NVidia driver issue, even with recent drivers. A workaround is provided here.

DISCUSSION
I used to get this in various games, including Vendetta, on my home Athlon with GeForce4 Ti4600. It happened all the time in full screen mode but was less common in window mode. VSync didn't seem to affect it. I finally found a fix. (It drove me completely batty in TrackMania so I actually looked harder)

Grab a copy of a program called RivaTuner. Run it, and under the Main tab, in the Driver settings frame, click the button next to "ForceWare detected - Customize...", then click on the DirectX logo. Under the "Blitting" tab, check "Limit the maximum number of queued blits to the frame buffer". You may also want to check the VSync tab and lower the prerender limit, but 2 or 3 should be OK.

((/me wonders if he should post here :S))

This happens to me on my Laptop, with an ATI Video Chipset (ATi Rage Moblity 8mb... Drivers from Compaq, ATi doesn
t supply drivers for mobile chipsets). Rivatuner doesn't support my driver.... So Im assuming there is no other workaround?

PS: I don't need this problem/bug fixed. And while everyone is downloading RivaTuner, you might as well Overclock your video cards :P.

Woo! Finally, that only took several months! /me goes to dig up his original post on the stubject.

I'm sure there are several ways to tell your driver to limit the queue of blits, or keep it from doing extreme prerendering. RivaTuner is just one program I found.

If you have this problem under Linux, for instance, you can probably set some environment variable.

The older drivers do not experience this problem.

Out of curiousity... what is 'Blitting' ? And does limiting the maximum number of queued blits to the frame buffer affect preformance in any way?

Ive very sensitive to numbers :P. Actually, I just have a small goal in 2 benchmarks... I want to hit at least 18,000 points in 3dmark01, and 6,500 points in 3dmark03 :P.


As for my laptop, its running Win XP Pro. I don't use it anymore because Vendetta is unplayable on it, and I have a FX5900 on another computer. If you ever plan to support that Video Chipset, Id be glad to test somethings out for you though. I *think* the 'invisible station' bug is still haunting that Laptop. Unfortunatly, ATi doesn't release drivers for its Moblie Chipsets, and Compaq/HP hasn't released any new drivers for a while now.

The Amiga had a chip dubbed the "blitter". Its function was to copy memory areas, in the background, to the screen. Thus any operation where you're copying memory to the screen, or clearing the screen with a constant value, has become known as "blitting" thanks to the Amiga demoscene.

What it means when a lot of blits are queued up is that it's rendering several frames ahead of what's visible on the screen. It will theoretically reduce frame rate, but probably not noticeably, and only in cases where the frame rate is astronomical anyway.

I did this way back when you posted it and it worked. But it doesn't work anymore- I still get the mouse lag and the box is checked and the prerender limit is 2! Should I just downgrade my driver? The upgraded one gives me a lot more performance, but if the only way to run vendetta is with teh older one, just tell me what version you guys are using and I'll find it...

Yeah, newer drivers probably don't respond to rivatuner's hacks anymore. I have no idea why it is allowed to render so far ahead of time in the first place. And I don't know what drivers I'm using under Windows.

The thing is that it isn't supposed to be allowed to render more than 2 frames ahead as per the WHQL certification tests that Microsoft runs.

NVIDIA Driver Stuff:

Version: 6.14.0010.5672
WHQL Logo'd: Yes

(edit - i am not in anyway computer friendly)

using same drivers as roguelazer with geforce 2 ti & win xp pro
was experiencing same problems (for first time)

heres my fix -
its working so far for a couple of hours straight playing

right click desktop
goto Properties
goto Settings Tab
goto Advanced

pull out teh geforce tab in its menu thingy
Perfomance and Quality Settings - expand...
More Direct 3D tab

here set max frames to render ahead at 2
Apply
OK

Now - INGAME

OPTIONS
VIDEO
VSYNCH ------ ON



edit - this isnt working

Performance and Quality has no subitems... Waaaah!


[edit]

Interesting. I created a custom Vendetta profile under the P&Q screen and now my problem has gone away. I forced AA and Anis filtering to 8x and Vsync to on.