[michail71]

Just got a surface 3 today and I was trying out Cut the Rope on it. I began to have a bit more difficulty than I remember having and then I realized the tracking was lagging well behind my finger. So much lag that it was throwing off my timing on the moving parts.

I tried it on my phone, Lumia 1520, and there was no lag. Tried the same on my pc and there was no lag either. The game was much easier to play.

So is the Surface 3 not able to keep up with a game like cut the rope?

* Edit - Added link to video *
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resi...int=file%2cmp4

[michail71]

I just tried a mouse and it seems about as bad. There appears to be about a 200-250 ms lag between input and system response. You can see it in the game because of the touch trail. 250 ms may not seem like much but it's excessively slow when it comes to having a responsive UI.

Not that it's my primary purpose but it seems odd the Surface 3 can't play something like cut the rope when phones handle it just fine.

Could there be some settings that can be tweaked?

[cygnus11]

Are you noticing lag in any other application on the Surface 3? I haven't played Cut the Rope, but I have not experienced any touch lag on my S3. Maybe it is just that game that has a bug related to the Surface 3 hardware.

[michail71]

Tried fruit ninja and it's worse. The lag is so bad I miss everything unless compensating for the slow response.

With fruit Ninja I can see a trail that is dead on, looks like a system touch trail. Then the game response follows with a noticeable delay.

Can anyone here confirm? I found a bunch of youtube videos reviewing the Surface RT and it looked to be working so much better. This is the 3rd generation product.

[michail71]

Spent a bit of time with MS Surface support on this issue. So far no resolution but did find some interesting things. We aren't sure if it's a defective unit, driver problem, API issue or something specific to the LTE version. They only had a SP3 available to test on their end.

The issue is a delay in registering the swipe. The swipe itself can handle quick changes in direction and speed. It's just always off by an amount of time. There is a system level visual trace that is always spot on. It's the relay of the swipe to various apps that the delay happens. This impacts touch, pen, mouse and vestigial track pad. It's bad enough that it makes touch based games unplayable.

Here is a video, sorry it's kind of big, I think I made it 4k. But you can see how the game lags far behind where my finger is.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resi...int=file%2cmp4

[michail71]

Are you noticing lag in any other application on the Surface 3? I haven't played Cut the Rope, but I have not experienced any touch lag on my S3. Maybe it is just that game that has a bug related to the Surface 3 hardware.

I've seen it so far on
Cut The Rope
Cut The Rope 2
Fruit Ninja
Fruit Slice (not related to Fruit Ninja)
Fresh Paint (not a big issue there as latency doesn't impact painting, lol)
Also, Microsoft Solitaire seems super sluggish but I'm not sure if that's the same issue. But the cards don't keep up when being moved.

Some apps don't do it. OneNote has no pen lag that is perceptible. SketchBook for Tablet also seems ok.

My take is pen specific input works. It's swipe type maneuvers, even with pen, that have a delay.

[michail71]

I went to Best Buy and the other Surface 3 64s were not exhibiting this problem. In fact they seemed faster overall.

All I could compare was Fresh Paint as Darrin DeYoung does not appear to be able to download apps.

So either there is something in these AT&T versions or my Surface has some sort of defect.

[illegaloperation]

Does this happens in Windows 8.1?

[michail71]

It did. That's one reason I put 10 on. I also did a Reset PC last night. Interesting thing there is the reset PC installed a different set of apps than what came with the AT&T setup. But no change.

I keep thinking my digitizer may be bad but then why would the system visual feedback work?

MS support probably spent a good two+ hours with me yesterday. They seemed concerned about there being a potential issue with the LTE model. That's why I'm trying to see if anyone here that got another LTE model can test. But they didn't even have one on hand to test so they are escalating the issue internally and want me to follow up with the Windows 10 support group.

The Surface 3s in the store worked so much better.

[cygnus11]

Wow, sorry you had to deal with this. It really sucks to have such a widespread problem like this on a brand new device. It sounds like MS is trying to figure out what is going on. Is there any way to replace the unit at the store that you purchased it? It sounds like this is isolated to the LTE models, and there just aren't many people with those models yet.

Good luck.

[michail71]

Thanks!

So far I've been impressed with Microsoft's support on the matter. The woman I was working with seemed to take it hard that she couldn't get it resolved. She really bent over backwards and didn't seem to be following any "***** scripts".

The AT&T stores have very sparse supplies. I may see if I can swing by today and exchange. But I doubt there will be any stock. I just don't want to roll back to 8.1.

I hope it's just a defective unit but it's such an odd defect. I doubt most people wound notice the issue. I'm just demanding and picky when it comes to things working smoothly. But after seeing what AT&T did to the Lumia 1520 I could see them messing up the internals to get a bigger margin and drive people to upgrade again, lol.

At least I can test the LTE models in the store.

** Edit **

The word "id**t" gets censored and I just saw someone use the "f" word in another post, lol.

[michail71]

I managed to find an AT&T store with one in stock. Turns out it was defective. I have no idea what was wrong with the old one but this new one is so much faster!

[cygnus11]

Glad to hear it was just a defective unit. Enjoy your S3.

[michail71]

Thanks, it's so much better! If I wasn't so picky someone might have picked it up and had no idea it wasn't up to par. I've never seen an issue quite like that before. Some internal communications bus, chip or something must have been bad. Hopefully this thread will help out anyone else that gets a bad unit like this.

Even the people in the AT&T store agreed the instant they saw what was going on with the delay.

[Jonathan Harris1]

Wow, sorry you had to deal with this. It really sucks to have such a widespread problem like this on a brand new device. It sounds like MS is trying to figure out what is going on. Is there any way to replace the unit at the store that you purchased it? It sounds like this is isolated to the LTE models, and there just aren't many people with those models yet.

Good luck.

Yea I have the same issue but was just going to live with it until Wednesday to see if there were more updates to come with Win10 that would maybe improve it. If not I am going to take it back and get the non lte version to get the 4gb...

[michail71]

Is yours doing the same thing mine did in the video I posted? My new tablet doesn't have the problem now. My main issue was input lag.

[michail71]

When my surface gets slow I've found it to be more cpu related than memory. Not sure if more memory would be a huge boost on this device but would help some with multitasking.

[michail71]

Well, that was too soon. I must have imagined the problem existed before the upgrade on my other system. I got 10 loaded and fully up to date on the S3 and the input lag is back. So it's definitely a Windows 10 issue and not related to hardware issues.

Solitaire runs poorly in Win 10 as well, I think it's the same issue with input lag.

So if you like to play games or sketch and have a Surface 3 you may want to hold up on Win 10.

[cygnus11]

So it is a windows 10 issue. That is disappointing. I was looking forward to getting Windows 10 on my Surface 3 as soon as it was available. Could it be just an issue with Windows 10 and the lte version of the tablet?

Can you keep us updated on this issue as you learn more? This type of bug would drive me crazy, so I am very hesitant to move to Windows 10 until this gets resolved.

[michail71]

I will, I had the attention of the Surface support group and submitted feedback with screen shots. Drawing fast circles in fresh paint results in perfectly straight interconnecting lines. You'd think the Surface group would be on top of this kind of stuff as a reference Win 10 device.

It's not an issue that will impact web browsing and documents, just games and sketching. I find it irritating but I prefer keeping Win 10. I'll just ride MS till they fix it :).

[sfhawye]

i recently purchased a surface 3 4gb ram 128gb drive, non-LTE. i bought the 4gb ram version because i felt it would help the response and speed. what i immediately found was there was an immediate lag in the response of the touch using any application. slow to the point of thinking "did that input, take?" i got to the point where i waited figuring the interface would respond in a few seconds. and it typically did. but it is a very annoying lag that isn't acceptable to any user. i am getting ready to purchase the LTE version so I am very glad to hear that your replacement fixed the problem and if I come across this again, I'll ask the Microsoft folks to check it out. thanks again.