Smoother pointer movement with CyberGraphX or Picasso96?

[Karlos]

patrik wrote:

@Karlos:
Tried a 60Hz mode, but the same sluggish feeling was there. Got curious if it synced with the 50Hz mains or something (a PAL Amiga), but I had some problems getting a 50Hz mode to work so I tried a 100Hz mode and the mouse felt more synced than ever, though still sluggish compared to when using AGA.

Kick your A4K in NTSC mode and try again ;-)

[Crumb]

And there would be any way to force AGA to run at 72hz for example so there's better sync with the gfx card? I mean, something that opens a screen on bootup and sets that mode... or a modified VGAonly to force every mode to be 72hz... and if it worked it would be possible to create with MonED a 100Hz mode (I don't mind if it's a 160x120screen) so there's even better sync?

[patrik]

@Crumb:

I am using _exactly_ the same screenmode for the two screens I am switching between, but it seems like the card drops the sync for a tiny tiny period of time. Have tried three monitors. On one monitor it results in a black image for about 0.5-1.0 second, on one monitor a slight flickering but nothing more occurs and on the last monitor is unaffected when switching. Am I the only one having wierd issues with graphic-cards, or is it just me being wierd? .


/Patrik

[Karlos]

@Crumb

Possibly...

The whole 60Hz thing was something brought up by some other guy who discovered that when his AGA / GFx card were both operating 60Hz, all graphical operations suddenly bacame beautifully synced, including stuff like solid window dragging etc. IIRC, he was using a CV64 or CV3D.

Personally, I haven't noticed any real sync problems with my bvision though, but I dont tend to use solid window moving. The mouse seems fine.

[Karlos]

@patrik

I have found that switching screens that dont have both identical refresh and depth causes the same sync switch. I guess this could be a bug in CGX?

All my defined modes are VESA2 compliant (bar a few odd ones), and switching from a 85Hz 16-bit screen to another is fine. But if change depth as well (all other things being equal), I get the resync thing.

[Crumb]

@patrik:
It sounds strange, the monitors that take so much time to switch are very old?
I tried that when I had a CV64 like you and it worked without problems with an old c= 1942 and a Hyundai Deluxscan15G+.
Now I have a Picasso4 and I didn't have problems with a 17" Medion or my current 20" Eizo...

Mmm I think you should disable Screen dragging, it slows down switching and doesn't look as good as aga... for example drag down a 256 colour opus screen if you have a 16bit WB under it... colours will look crap. I have disabled screen dragging (well, now I use P96 and don't have that option anyway)

[Kronos]

@Crumb

ECS-Agnus and Alice can only directly work with 50 or 60Hz modes, everthing
else is done by a useing a copperlist triggering a premature sync.

So no I don't thing Euro72 and suchlike would help.

Also:
VGAOnly does NOT force anything to 72Hz (little point when standard VGA
GFX-mode is 640x480 in 60Hz), but will set force hsync to 31kHz (normal
"double"-modes are only around 29kHz, too little for cheap VGA-CRTs).
Thisis done by useing part of the overscan area, but since those cheap VGAs
won't allow much Overscan anyways ... :-o

[patrik]

@Karlos:

*rejumpers the A4000 to NTSC*

It definately syncs the mouse-pointer update to the PAL/NTSC refresh - now when using a 60Hz CyberGraphX screenmode the mouse-pointer moves smooth as ice.. erm well.. as smooth as 60Hz can make it move atleast ... But if I increase the refresh-rate of the screenmode to for example 75Hz it starts stuttering, resulting in a sluggish movement again.. but as I mentioned, I am very picky and I dont like mousepointers when they dont sync with the refresh-rate. The positive thing about making the A4000 a NTSC-machine is that now the mouse-pointer gets 60 updates per second instead of 50, but there should be a better way!!


/Patrik

[Crumb]

@Kronos:
"VGAOnly does NOT force anything to 72Hz "
Yeah, but what I mean is that it could probably be modified to be "72HZOnly" if you like to force all modes to be 72Hz at least (which is little useful because it only changes the copperlist). Anyway thank you for the explanation about the ECS-Agnus and Alice...

I guess that using 120hz or 100hz should result in smooth movement too

[patrik]

@Crumbs:

Yes, the monitor is very old, but I am not switching between different screenmodes. They are the exact same screenmodes with the same name, resolution, bitdepth and refresh-rate. Dragging is disabled and as I mentioned the switching is indeed very fast, that is not the problem, the actual problem is that the card disables the sync for a very short amount of time and this monitor does not like that at all. It results in a totally black screen for about 0.5-1.0 seconds which makes the switching feel slow even if it actually is fast. I have tried the same switching on two other monitors and with those monitors the switching feels fast as the monitors doesnt blacken the picture inbetween switching. On one of the other monitors nothing was noticed when switching and on the other one a slight flickering occured when switching indicating that the sync was lost for a little amount of time - still switching between exactly the same screenmodes.


/Patrik

[patrik]

@Kronos:

Would it be possible to write a program whose sole purpose just is to set the refresh-rate of the "chipset"?


/Patrik

[Crumb]

@Patrik:
have you disabled screen dragging?
try it, switching should be faster

[Kronos]

@Patrik

I even had such a programm once  :-o

Came with DeInterLace from MacroSystems (FF for A2000), but that one only
worked under 1.3  :-x

And I have no idea where it is gone :-(

[Karlos]

It seems I dont really get this effect much, or am I just not noticing?

Surely its possible to patch whatever code update the mouse position to sync to the vertical blank of the display card? WaitBOVP() should do the trick, no?