Camera freezing when controlled w/ mouse

[Eekiki]

I made a video that shows what's happening. Sorry for the low quality (and for not editing out the loading screen).

http://youtu.be/XvsJVQ9HhRE

When using the mouse to move the camera, every five seconds or so, the camera freezes for a split-second. However, during this instant when the camera freezes, the game is still processing input from the mouse, so every few seconds, the camera will freeze, then jump to catch up to where the mouse moved. I use the camera to control which direction I'm moving in when running, and this makes it extremely frustrating to do that.

This does not happen when controlling the camera with the keyboard or gamepad. I've tried two different mice with the same result.

Date & Time:
March 29th, at around 7pm EDT

Frequency:
Always


PC Manufacturer & Model Number:
Homebuilt Computer

Operating System:
Windows 7 x64

Graphics Card:
EVGA GTX580 (SLI - 2 cards)

ISP:
AT&T

Type of Internet Connection:
DSL

[Truce]

I was having some major issues with the game after my first install. I don't know why it would be the cause, but after disabling the 'Enable Mouse Hardware' option (something along those lines) all of my problems have been resolved. (constant frame jumping / client freezing / disconnects)

I'm not sure if it will work in your case, but I just wanted to let you know.

[Eekiki]

Hmm...I'll give that a shot tonight. Thanks!

In my first iteration, I always used a gamepad. Since my wireless 360 gamepad suddenly decided to stop working last week (no idea how that happened), I switched to mouse & keyboard when I rerolled following many months (and patches) away from the game.

[Eekiki]

No dice.

I unchecked "Enable Hardware Mouse Cursor" -- same thing happens. Using the software mouse cursor, the problem is even more apparent. It's not a camera thing, it's got something to do with how the game is processing input. With the software mouse, the cursor itself will freeze in place every few seconds, then instantly jump to another place on the screen.

I disabled SLI -- no change.
I turned off my virus scanner -- no change
I switched to Windowed mode -- nothing (seriously guys...is it that difficult to tell your program to render a borderless window?)

I also see the problem when I click and drag UI elements around the screen. They'll follow the cursor, but every few seconds they freeze in place for a half second, then jump to catch up with the cursor. As I type in the chat log, every few seconds it locks up, then all the letters I typed during that half second freeze will suddenly appear all at once.

I know this looks like a minor issue, but it's one that makes the controls so frustrating for me to use, the game is unplayable. I'm completely at a loss as to why this is happening, and it looks like I'm the only one seeing it. I don't know what else to try.

[Halchart]

I had the exact same issue. The only way I could fix it was to uninstall the game and delete the ffxiv file folder in the my documents folder that were left behind then reinstall the game.

[Eekiki]

Yeah. That's my next step. It feels like the game is trying to load something, and having a tough time of it. I thought a full defrag of the hard drive may help it along, but that didn't work either. I'll give reinstalling a shot.

[Halchart]

Remember to delete the FFXIV folder in your "My Documents" folder because just uninstalling wont get rid of it and you'll have the same issue if you don't.

[Sajittarius]

TLDR: plug in a gamepad if you have one and havent been using it.

Story:

I went through everything i could find online to try to fix my stuttering. I have a decent rig, fps was 50ish steady. It just stutters every 6 seconds or so when you rotate the camera with the mouse or noticeably while gathering (which screws you up when bad chopping at trees).

I have an SSD so i knew that wasnt the fix (but it might help people who dont have one, helps a ton with loading the stuff you see onscreen)

I tried vsync on, off, triple buffering on/off, vsync 1/2 refresh (new nvidia drivers have the option..), fps cap 60/30 through game and other numbers through nvidia inspector app. Change the frames rendered ahead between 0-3. Tried a few different nvidia drivers ranging from 285.xx-301.10. Nothing worked.

I dont run an antivirus, so it wasnt an AV slowing me down. Im a network administrator and i havent gotten a virus in several years, although i do still scan my pc regularly just to be safe.

I disabled headphone detection. I have an Auzen XFI (sound blaster based card). For me that meant renaming CTXFISPI.exe so it wouldnt load at startup. No change.

I changed my mouse polling from 500 to 333Mhz (using a logitech gaming mouse though maybe it was too fast for ffxiv). No change.

I disabled my homegroup in win7. This helped marginally. At this point i was running ffxiv windowed with my task manager on the side watching page fault deltas. Not to get to technical but this shows you if another programming is slowing down the game by jumping in and using your cpu (which then makes the game stutter). I started checking windows logs and it pointed at the firewall/homegroup. I had already disabled the firewall so i disabled my homegroup in the Network and Sharing Center and in windows Services i set HomeGroup Listener to Disabled. The page fault number changed from 5000 to 3000 but the stutter was still there. It seemed a tiny bit better so i knew i was on the right track.

Then the error in the log changed to a plug and play thing. I googled it online and someone somewhere said that event pops up when the computer is looking for a device. Hmmm... what would the pc be looking for when ffxiv starts up? Lemme plug this here xbox controller into the computer. Started up FFXIV... Viola! NO STUTTER. In fact the game runs so smoothly now, i might even turn AO on....

Apparently the SE programmers in their infinite wisdom have FFXIV poll the computer every few seconds for a gamepad... EVEN IF YOU DISABLE GAMEPADS IN THE FFXIV CONFIG.

This is probably to make it easy to use one if the game is already running and for some reason you had forgotten to plug it in beforehand or if the gamepad gets disconnected/reconnected. I dont know if theres a fix that doesnt involve plugging in a controller. Sorry.

My PC:
CPU: i7 920 2.67Ghz
Video: Nvidia GTX570
Mem: 6GB Ram
HDD: Corsair SSD