Re: [fullscreen] Problems with mouse-edge scrolling and games

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Florian Bösch <pyalot@gmail.com> wrote:

> Like I say, some usecases are fine with OS cursors. But that doesn't mean
> that somehow, vendors are absolved from improving input -> output latency
> issues even if pointerlock is updated to allow OS cursor showing, which I'm
> all for.
>

Only if low latency is important to the application.  It's very important
for some games (rhythm games), moderately important for some (first-person
games controlled with a mouse, which in turn is more sensitive than with a
gamepad), and not very important at all for others (turn-based strategy).
 How much time to spend on this is a business decision, since this can be
very time-consuming and can require visual tradeoffs.

 There are a lot of usecases that involve pointing devices, and pointing
> metaphors, or view controls, virtual helmets, and so forth, that cannot
> properly function with a high input -> output latency.
>
For this reason it's imperative not only to address the ability to make the
> OS cursor visible, but also to continue working on low latency input ->
> output.
>

True, but tangental.  :)  (My last job was making music rhythm games, which
are more sensitive to consistent framerates than any other game genre I
know of--one dropped frame can wreck someone's game--so I'm sympathetic to
the cause.)

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Ian Langworth <ian@artillery.com> wrote:

> The better option is to go fullscreen with the Fullscreen API, but this
> has problems as well. There are certain behaviors that occur when moving
> the cursor to the top and bottom of the screen,
>

I think that going fullscreen is the right approach, since locking the
mouse into the window while not fullscreen is really weird and rare, at
least in Windows.  By going fullscreen, this hooks into the same UI design
to allow the user to "escape".  Even if this was supported in a window,
there'd still have to be some UI to tell the user how to exit, which could
end up having the same problem.

I've been annoyed by the edge-of-screen browser behavior too.  It's a part
of the screen where you might want to put something, like navigation UI.  I
haven't come up with a better solution, though.  I don't think having a
"stronger" fullscreen mode that asks the user for more permission will fly.
 Browsers try very hard to avoid asking for special permissions--people
will just agree without reading it, then won't know how to escape from the
app.

I think that for your use case of edge scrolling, having a fullscreen
notice appear at the top is OK (if a little ugly), as long as it's
transparent to mouse events so you can still see the mouse moving around
(or else you might see the mouse move to 20 pixels from the top, then never
see it actually reach the top, so you'd never start scrolling).  Menus and
address bars appearing seems like a bug.  That makes sense for the
fullscreen you get by hitting F11 in Windows or Command-Shift-F in OSX, but
application fullscreen should just act like a game, and keep as much as
possible out of the way.

-- 
Glenn Maynard