Seems like it doesn't properly handle mouse events on Safari in macOS and only shows "frames with no pointer events". I assume it's because "pointerrawupdate" event is not supported there.
Also it's interesting that with ProMotion enabled it reports 16.67ms per frame (indicating 60Hz redraw rate) in Safari, but in Chrome it's 8.33.
I can buy that humans can see at least 120hz at a minimum. 60Hz is the generally accepted threshold, but I’ve long suspected that 120Hz has mostly imperceptible effects that are still noticeable, if rarely.
I can’t buy this:
> I've also learnt I do benefit from the 8 kHz setting of my mouse, as even at 3200 DPI with fast & smooth motion, some frames still miss a pointer update
It may be true that pointer updates were being missed. But does that really affect anything?
It turns out that there’s a way to test this experimentally. Do a double blind experiment, just like in science. If you can tell which monitor is 240hz more than randomly, then it matters. Ditto for the pointer updates.
The corollary is that if you can’t tell with better than random chance, then none of this matters, no matter how much you think it does.
Experiments like this have decisively settled the “Does higher sampling rate matter when listening to music?” debate, among other questions. People still swear that they can tell that there’s a difference, but it’s expectation bias. They’re mistaken.
(10ms drops every few seconds would definitely be noticeable though; that wasn’t the point.)
I bought a Logitech wireless mouse called the Marathon which boasted an amazing three-year battery life on two AAs. I initially thought it was broken; it had a maddening delay where the sensors turned off after a short idle time, so when I wanted to use the mouse, it didn't register the first movements since it had to "wake up".
This delay wasn't present on the Logitech gaming mouse I previously used, probably a combination of a high polling rate (500Hz) and a much longer idle delay. The battery life was also much shorter, only 250 hours on high-performance mode, but I just recharged a set of AA batteries every week so it was never an issue.
Several years ago, a coworker made an Arduino "mouse" that traced a square with a 1KHz report rate. Multiple systems running Windows 10 and reading mouse updates via either regular window events or the Win32 raw mouse API would occasionally lose events, meaning the square would drift over time. We tried both with a custom app and with drawing programs like Paint.
We could not reproduce the issue on systems running macOS or Linux, and we chalked it up to a bug in Windows. It was hard to know if it affected real mice but I expect it did. I haven’t tried retesting with more recent versions of Windows to see if it is fixed, maybe it has been.
Anyway, I’m not disputing OPs claim, I can totally believe it, but I always thought it was funny that pro gamers on Windows with high end mice could be losing the occasional movement and apparently nobody noticed that.
10 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 26.9 ms ] threadAlso it's interesting that with ProMotion enabled it reports 16.67ms per frame (indicating 60Hz redraw rate) in Safari, but in Chrome it's 8.33.
I’m curious if there is a USB hub that I could buy of higher quality as my mac doesn’t have too much i/o
I can’t buy this:
> I've also learnt I do benefit from the 8 kHz setting of my mouse, as even at 3200 DPI with fast & smooth motion, some frames still miss a pointer update
It may be true that pointer updates were being missed. But does that really affect anything?
It turns out that there’s a way to test this experimentally. Do a double blind experiment, just like in science. If you can tell which monitor is 240hz more than randomly, then it matters. Ditto for the pointer updates.
The corollary is that if you can’t tell with better than random chance, then none of this matters, no matter how much you think it does.
Experiments like this have decisively settled the “Does higher sampling rate matter when listening to music?” debate, among other questions. People still swear that they can tell that there’s a difference, but it’s expectation bias. They’re mistaken.
(10ms drops every few seconds would definitely be noticeable though; that wasn’t the point.)
Why do you think the brain has such limits? Youve drawn them from where exactly?
This delay wasn't present on the Logitech gaming mouse I previously used, probably a combination of a high polling rate (500Hz) and a much longer idle delay. The battery life was also much shorter, only 250 hours on high-performance mode, but I just recharged a set of AA batteries every week so it was never an issue.
I ended up returning the Marathon mouse.
We could not reproduce the issue on systems running macOS or Linux, and we chalked it up to a bug in Windows. It was hard to know if it affected real mice but I expect it did. I haven’t tried retesting with more recent versions of Windows to see if it is fixed, maybe it has been.
Anyway, I’m not disputing OPs claim, I can totally believe it, but I always thought it was funny that pro gamers on Windows with high end mice could be losing the occasional movement and apparently nobody noticed that.