Controller lag and inaccuracy

Shiels · January 2013

Is anyone else getting general controller lag in the sticks and buttons? I seem to be getting about a .1 or .2 second wait before getting input in my game (even more so when two controllers are being used!). Does anyone know how to fix this?

Xaak · January 2013

I've also noticed a very slight lag with it on the console, but from what I've heard the Unity plugin hasn't had the input optimized yet and was sending excessive amounts of data. Not sure if that's still the case, though.

tgraupmann · January 2013

With pinned memory that lag will go away.

yankijp · January 2013

Heya,

Do you know of a short term solution? I have a 4 player game for Create and I am worried that it will choke. Sorry if I am asking a silly question. Sleep dep. :)

tgraupmann · January 2013

Who isn't in the Sleep dep state? :)

If you search the forums there is a faster solution floating around that could be put into a package.

They were basically taking the Java and skipping the json encoding to send direct key codes.

yankijp · January 2013

Thanks! I will search around and see if I can set aside the time to figure it out by Wednesday. I have a laundry list of stuff I gotta hit. I can't wait till Wednesday after midnight PST to get some extended sleep. :)

Shiels · January 2013

tgraupmann said:

With pinned memory that lag will go away.

What do you mean by pinned memory?

tgraupmann · January 2013

Pinned memory let's you share memory between C# and Java.

Shiels · January 2013

tgraupmann said:

Pinned memory let's you share memory between C# and Java.

Right, how can I use pinned memory?

tgraupmann · January 2013

I have yet another product in the works on the back burner which was native screen sharing in Unity. In the project I used pinned memory to share memory between C# and C++. I ran into lag with 3.X which will work fine in 4.X, and while troubleshooting I prepared an isolated project showing pinned memory and diving deep into DirectX 9. You can download and take a look here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/150847-Update-Texture2D-with-D3D-in-a-Native-Plugin-without-crashing

As it is an isolated project you should be able to find the "pinned" memory easily as it's named that.

badlogic · January 2013

Accessing that pinned memory from within the Java Activity has to go through JNI, either by wrapping it in a direct ByteBuffer or by providing a JNI method that accesses the pinned memory in straight C/C++. Why go through all the hassle if you can use Unity's AndroidJNI class.http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AndroidJNI.html

On the Android side, fill an array of floats or ints with event id/event value pairs in onKey and onGenericMotionEvent. Provide a method that returns a copy of that to the caller, use simple locked double buffering to handle threading. In C# call that method via AndroidJNI and process the events. For extra ease of use, make both the array and the method static, that way you only need to query the method via AndroidJNI without needing an object.

This will have the same performance characteristics as a pinned memory/direct buffer solution, without having to drop down to C/C++.

tgraupmann · January 2013

I'd like to avoid JNI if possible. That is the original issue any time we access JNI Unity appears to log GC stuff and slow things down. With pinned memory we can have instant access.

tgraupmann · January 2013

That said if you get a good example that has good performance, I'd be glad to include the example in the official release.

badlogic · January 2013

JNI won't produce garbage if you work with direct buffers or arrays, using critical locking for the later. As i said, you won't be able to avoid JNI. Packing things into a JSON string is pretty much the worst thing you can do in terms of GC.

i work on a different framework, and my time is limited, but maybe one of the Unity guys finds the solution above straight forward enough to implement and share.

tgraupmann · January 2013

JNI Unity/Android Expert, there's probably only 10 of those in the world.

Shiels · January 2013

Thanks for your comments! Ouya is my first time dealing with Android, so this stuff is beyond my knowledge :(.

goodhustle · January 2013

@badlogic @tgraupmann I am willing to investigate doing doing this next week. I don't know a lick about JNI but it sounds doable. I've already invested a lot of time into poring over the Unity ODK for my own uses and will take a look when I have a chance. I just might ask you questions if I get stuck on something ungoogleable. :)

tgraupmann · January 2013

@goodhustle sounds good. (/me steps into uncharted waters.)

Ayrik · January 2013

We hacked together a solution for this for Super Dungeon Bros. (I am only going to display the axis info in this post. I will post a full solution once we've created it)

Sorry apparently I don't know how to paste code in here anymore

OuyaUnityApplication.java:

@Override

public boolean onGenericMotionEvent(MotionEvent event) {

boolean handled = OuyaController.onGenericMotionEvent(event);

return handled || super.onGenericMotionEvent(event);

}

public static float GetLeftX(int playerNum)

{

OuyaController c = OuyaController.getControllerByPlayer(playerNum);

if(c != null)

return c.getAxisValue(OuyaController.AXIS_LS_X);

else

return 0;

}

In the Unity code:

AndroidJavaClass jc = new AndroidJavaClass("com.reactgames.dungeonbros.OuyaUnityApplication");

x = jc.CallStatic<float>("GetLeftX", 0);

You can do the exact same thing with buttons by overriding onKeyDown etc.

tgraupmann · January 2013

Okay now. Did you see any unstability when calling JNI? How long can the app run before exiting? You'll see in my java calls in the OuyaSDK.cs that I pop the stack after doing a JNI call. Now I was passing a lot more data with json so it may take more time to run out of memory. With JNI as soon as your stack fills up Davik pukes and closes the app. Anyway just checking on that...

tgraupmann · January 2013

Also you may have seen that the OuyaPanel when compiling Java and the plugin calls JavaP to output a signature. That's super handy because you use those signatures in the JNI interfaces. It makes it super handy for prototyping.

Autogenerating JNI signatures is a future feature in (yet-another Tim plugin for Unity) in my Standalone Plugin Maker:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/150453-Standalone-Plugin-Maker

Ayrik · January 2013

That's interesting. I don't know much about any of this stuff, it was someone else on the team that did it. But we have zero instability, and it got rid of ALL input lag with four controllers and lots of action constantly. Our play sessions are small though, so we haven't played long enough sessions to see any memory stack issues.

badlogic · January 2013

You should probably hold on to the class and method references instead of getting them all the time (assuming you actually do this). You will run into trouble if you dettach from the thread. You'll have to attach again and fetch the references anew.

JNI doesn't seem to be so hard after all, eh? :)

Ayrik · January 2013

It's really simple once you find out how to do it. And yeah, we are keeping a reference to it I'm not doing that every frame, that was just an example.

badlogic · January 2013

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/PluginsForAndroid.html is a pretty good overview of how to use AndroidJNI. Could come in handy to add more native Android functionality.

tgraupmann · January 2013

More links:

// Unity JNI reference: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/AndroidJNI.html
// JNI Spec: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/jni/spec/jniTOC.html
// Android Plugins: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/Plugins.html#AndroidPlugins
// Unity Android Plugin Guide: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/PluginsForAndroid.html

Litteratus · January 2013

Ayrik said:
OuyaUnityApplication.java:

@Override
public boolean onGenericMotionEvent(MotionEvent event) {
boolean handled = OuyaController.onGenericMotionEvent(event);
return handled || super.onGenericMotionEvent(event);
}

Ayrik - I attempted to implement this, and it's quite clear that I am not up to speed on my Java..

I believe the relevant error that I am getting is:

[Results] elapsedTime: 0.6164112 errors: D:\AirborneDynamo\ABD_Multiplayer\Assets\Plugins\Android\src\OuyaUnityApplication.java:368: cannot find symbol

symbol : class OuyaController

location: class com.Litteratus.AirborneDynamo.OuyaUnityApplication

OuyaController c = OuyaController.getControllerByPlayer(playerNum);

^

I know the OuyaController lives in the ouya-sdk.jar, and I was pretty sure import tv.ouya.sdk.*; would cover the entire library. What could I be missing?

Thanks

Shane

tgraupmann · January 2013

You are likely missing an import statement to add the OuyaSDK. Also you need to include the JAR in the classpath for the OuyaSDK. I need to make that configurable.

Litteratus · January 2013

tgraupmann said:

You are likely missing an import statement to add the OuyaSDK. Also you need to include the JAR in the classpath for the OuyaSDK. I need to make that configurable.

This only confused me more. Ok so I put import tv.ouya.console.api.OuyaController; in the OuyaUnityApplication.java. I don't know where to begin with the classpath stuff. Everything I read is specific to Eclipse, or command line..

tgraupmann · January 2013

The classpath is hardcoded in the OuyaPanel.cs right now. That's where the command line javac is generated that compiles your application java. Just make sure the JAR is included otherwise it won't find the import.

Litteratus · January 2013

Ok, so this is what I did (Hacky, I know):

OuyaPanel.cs (786):

RunProcess(pathJavaC, string.Format("-g -source 1.6 -target 1.6 {0} -classpath D:/OUYA-ODK/libs/ouya-sdk.jar;{1} -bootclasspath {1} -d \"{2}\"",

includeFiles,

jars,

pathClasses));

This allows me to compile just fine. At the top of my sLobby.cs (lobby scene) I used:

AndroidJavaClass jc = new AndroidJavaClass("com.Litteratus.AirborneDynamo.OuyaUnityApplication");

The game starts up, but crashes when entering the lobby scene.

I am too tired to debug this tonight, I'll try when I get home from work tomorrow.

Thanks for your help Tim!

Shane

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Controller lag and inaccuracy

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