Mana Games

[Mori]

Hi all,
I just got a TE4 for Xbox, but I struggle with it. I have about 100 hours in TE4 on the PC and another 300 h in TE3. The problem is that I have a tough time playing on the Xbox. I do not know what it is, but the game feels less responsive. Is it a generally higher input lag on the Xbox? When serving and also for the groundstrokes, I do not hit the corners anymore and balls always end up poorly placed. I play on Pro 10 difficulty with XKT and WTSL mod activated. I replicated all my PC settings on the Xbox, also for the controller deadzones etc. I went through all the menus. The only thing that was not able to adjust is framerate. The Xbox version is locked on 60 fps. On the PC I play with 190 fps on a 165 hz monitor. For comparison, I hooked the Xbox up to the same monitor. I do win about 90% of my service games against P10 Kyrgios on PC while I have not yet managed to hold serve on Xbox (I did only try for like 15 min ...). It is just a crazy difference. I do not believe that this difference can only caused by the framerate situation. This would maybe account for 40ms in delay. I do think Xbox forces Vsync, but on my 165 hz Gsync monitor, Vsync should not add input lag since the framerate stays under the monitor's max refresh rate. I might be wrong here? Is it a general problem of the Xbox? Are these boxes known to be less responsive? What might I have missed?

Best,
Mori

[manutoo]

Hello,

on my setup, my PC and my Xbox play exactly the same : there's 0 difference (and the PC is 90 or 120hz against 60hz for the Xbox).

Normally, this should be because your TV is not on Game mode, which can add a big delay (likely ~100ms), giving the exact result you're describing. But there you say it happens also with your PC monitor..?!

Does it have a processing mode to make the picture more beautiful and could it be on only when you plug in the Xbox ? I can't think of anything else...

BTW, if you have a Xbox series, you may be able to switch to 120hz in the video options (but I'm not sure, no one reported it was working ).

[Mori]

Thanks for the help. The problem was that I might have used a different profile first and did not save the player selection. The AI setting was too high, and the player stats did not match the regular WTSL profile. Sorry for the confusion. It was just too late yesterday for me to notice. However, the problem with the display settings remains. My Xbox Series X is set to 1440p and 120 fps. TE4 allows only the selection of 4k or 1080p, 1440p is absent. Also, I can select from 30, 60, or 120 Hz in the in-game menu. According to the in-game fps counter, the game will run on 60 or 30 Hz, but not on 120, even if I selected 120. My monitor firmware allows me to show the fps the monitor is giving out; this confirms that the monitor itself is running at 120, as selected in the Xbox settings.

[Mori]

One more thing I just noticed. In the bottom right corner of the video settings menu, it is noted that I am using an "Xbox One". Could it be that I am somehow playing the wrong version of the game?

[manutoo]

It's the name of the GPU detected by the Unity Engine. The game is for the Xbox One ; on Xbox Series, the game thinks it's running on Xbox One X, so it's not surprising to see "Xbox One" for the GPU.

For the 120hz, I guess something is wrong with Unity. However its influence on the game responsiveness is minimal.

[EH008]

Hi Manu. I switched TE4 to 4K 120 FPS from the video settings. However, the in game FPS counter still shows 60. It would be a great deal to achieve 120 FPS and compare the game smoothness and responsiveness with the 60 FPS mode. Why do you say that the impact on responsiveness is minimal? I mean from my minimal experience with other games, 120 FPS makes a big difference. I play on Xbox Series X.

[manutoo]

EH008,
yes, unfortunately, it seems the frequency change doesn't work. I don't know why and I don't have an Xbox Series to test ; I already checked and I did everything as explained by Microsoft...

For the responsiveness, I gave it some more thought and you're right it has some notable influence : at 1st, I thought that because the game engine runs internally at 60 fps whatever the rendering is doing, then we were seeing the game engine frame with 1/60s delay in all cases. This is true, but actually, if you play at 120 fps, then you're going to see an interpolated frame between the previous game engine frame and the new one after 1/120s, and thus it is indeed more responsive, as you see movement starting ~8ms earlier even if it's not the full movement.

Thus said, it is not a massive advantage : in the very best case, human reflex is around 150ms, so 8ms is only a 5% boost. It's not nothing, but in terms of ELO, I guess it might be like 50~100 points at max... (I wonder if someone would care to test that, it'd be quite interesting ! )

[EH008]

Hi Manu. Since I have the Xbox Series X, is there a way I can help with troubleshooting the 120 FPS mode?

[manutoo]

Yes ; could you send me a Bug Report from Settings -> Video (with 120hz already selected and the game restarted at least once) by clicking on the top left little white icon ?

[EH008]

Hi Manu. Done. Did I send the bug report correctly? Did you receive it?

[manutoo]

I got your Bug Report. It seems the 120hz mode is set correctly.
I just asked Unity support what could be wrong, but I'm using Unity 2021 and normally they don't support it anymore so they might even not answer me...

[manutoo]

Unity support answered me and it was what I feared : it's very likely a bug in the Unity version I'm using ; and unfortunately, I cannot upgrade to a newer one because I'm using the last version supporting the Xbox SDK I'm using (yeah, their system is stupid).

[manutoo]

EH008,
could you try to switch to 1920x1080@120hz and tell me if the framerate counter stays at 60 or go up to 120 ?

[EH008]

Hi Manu. I tried setting the resolution to 1080p@120hz. The fps counter still showed 60. And when you restart the game, the resolution reverts back to 4K@120hz, which is strange.

Can you not use the latest Xbox SDK that is compatible with the latest Unity engine?

[manutoo]

In the new Xbox SDK, they changed many things and that would lead to redo a part of the port.

Plus it can be very risky to update to a new version of Unity : it could bring new bugs, hard to avoid...

You can play @120Hz with other games on your Xbox, right ? You need a HDMI 2.1 cable to do that in 4K (but likely not for 1080p).