what are your experiences using game controllers with linux, I’m especially interested in the xbox series s controller because it’s the one I have, but I’m also interested in other controllers. From my experience the latency is disappointing, but I have no way of proving it.

So, I primarily use this controller in bluetooth mode using xpadneo. There’s definitely noticeable latency, but in most games it’s fine, I played through a lot of games without bother… until I played Conker: Live and Reloaded. On the infamous race level, it took me like two days to pass it, and I only made some progress when i connected the cable and dropped BT. Even that was fine though, It was just one old game and just one level, there could be a number of things to blame for that. Come hollow knight, as the game got harder after beating Hornet, it quickly became apparent that I couldn’t get far without the cable, save for traversing the world, still, not that bad… until I got to fight radiance. It has been extremely frustrating, I tried it for days and eventually I started just doing a few attempts every few days, without any improvement, finding it hard to get to the second phase. Today I visited my parents and in the late evening decided to try it on a windows computer I left here, mind you, the last time I played was more than a week ago. So, I start the game, plug the same controller in, with the same cable, I beat Radiance on the fucking first try, with half health bar left…

It literally happened 10 minutes ago, I’m still riled up, this doesn’t make sense, this has to be latency, there is no way I got that better just like that, It is literally impossible.

So, after all that, I need to unfuck the latency of my controller someway… Ok, it’s fine on most games, but this situation is… frustrating

  • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
    2·
    1 day ago

    I used the Xbox 360 game controller for years on PC, then switched to Xbox One, then Xbox One S and then to the Xbox Series S controller. So we speak about decades at this point. I played extensively Steam games and emulation for all kinds of systems (where input latency is extremely important in some games). At the same time I also have used extensively a wired classic SNES like shaped controller that is wired connected and recently I replaced my Xbox controller with a 8bitdo wireless controller.

    So you see there is some experience in using and in comparison. Latency was never an issue and I never felt it. But the common theme here is, I never used Bluetooth and always use the (even if its proprietary) dongle by Microsoft for connection. That’s because it should provide superior connection stability and better input latency. I always had issues with Bluetooth before (I mean with any other kind of hardware connection) and always hated it and avoid it.

    Having said this, Bluetooth can be good. In example the Playstation consoles and their controller are using Bluetooth and its not an issue there. But you have to make sure that the driver and the Bluetooth dongle (or chip) is compatible and working fine, in combination with the controller. If you notice a difference between wired and wireless, then its a sign that the wireless connection doesn’t work properly for your setup. I think my best advice is to buy the proprietary dongle from Microsoft (as I hate doing this, but its the best for Xbox controllers). You will also need to change the driver from xpadneo to xone.

    However I switched recently to a different controller because I experienced a few issues with the driver. Because the driver wasn’t updated for a while and it broke with a new Linux Kernel update on my Archlinux based system.