Camera randomly rotates much faster than normal

CasgarTheSomnolent · July 2022

I recently shifted over from my old gaming laptop to a desktop I built last year, and that is when this problem started. I'll be playing the game, and randomly the camera will just swing wildly like it just got 2-4x more sensitive. Maybe more like 10x more sensitive at times it seems. I'll be running around or mounted or doing whatever, and suddenly instead of rotating proportional to my mouse movement, the camera will swing super fast. It might cause an entire rotation of the field of view vs 1/8th of a rotation, for example. This happens instantly and is very disorienting and then it goes back to normal. It's as if the the sensitivity on my mouse just multiplied many times for a fraction of a second. I have noticed no consistent gameplay pattern for what triggers this. It seems to happen randomly.

Here are all the details I can think of:

Old laptop:
Clevo P650RG
Windows 7
Intel Core i7-6820HK
GeForce GTX 980M
Samsung SSD: 850 EVO M.2, 500 GB, SATA3
48 GB DDR4

New desktop:
Windows 10
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Samsung SSD: 970 EVO Plus, M.2, 1 TB, NVME
32 GB DDR4

Troubleshooting I have tried:

Disabling all addons. Results: no change. Problems still persists.

Putting all game settings identical between the two machines. Results: no change. Problem still persists. The new desktop was running on Ultra video settings, but I turned them down to Medium like on the laptop. Also set Planar Reflection Quality = 2048 and Particle Suppression Distance = 100, because that's what they were on the laptop for some reason.
In Camera settings, both computers were set to First Person Rotation Speed = 24 and Third Person Rotation Speed = 60.

Starting eso64.exe directly and logging with my ESO credentials vs launching through Steam which then launches the Bethesda launcher and automatically logs me in. Results: no change. Problem still persists.

My old laptop ran the game in windowed mode at approximately 16:9 1080p (minus the Windows taskbar). The new desktop runs windowed at about 16:9 1440p (again, minus the taskbar).

I use Razer headphones, and I have actually run into problems with ESO interacting with the Razer software before on the laptop. See this thread. I had disabled some Razer services running on the computer and got that exact problem, and it went away when I reenabled them. However, I do not have any Razer software installed on the desktop, so I don't know how it could be involved here, and I suspect it is not.

I'm utterly lost on this. I've tried to control for every variable between the two computers. My gaming mouse is set to the same DPI. There is none of this violent, random camera swinging when I boot up ESO on the old laptop using the same mouse and keyboard.

Let me know if you need more information from me and if you have thoughts as to what might be causing this problem. Thank you.

cptscotty · July 2022

Do you use a mouse or controller? Which one?

cptscotty · July 2022

Since this form of communication is a bit slow to help with speedy fixes for these things:

1) Unplug your mouse/keyboard/controller. Plug in a different SIMPLE mouse and keyboard. One that just uses basic drivers and just a simple normal mouse with no extra buttons. Play with that for a bit and see if it happens again.

If you notice it doesnt happen again with the new hardware plugged in then you need to reset your gaming stuff to clear its onboard memory. A lot of gaming mice have on board memory that handles different profiles each with a different DPI setting. You could be triggering that profile switch.

2) Make sure you are running in exclusive fullscreen and not windowed to keep things static concerning scaling/resolution. (kind of weird how you mentioned "minus the taskbar" in your post...makes me think you are running windowed mode and that can have issues...especially with application focus switching)

3) Make sure windows gaming mode is enabled on your system to disable some background stuff

cptscotty · July 2022

Would help if you disable steam as well since it has some profile stuff as well as overlay stuff that can change settings for your cursor.

Great if you have a controller you need to manipulate, not so good with debugging m/k issues.

Micah_Bayer · July 2022

Is there a hair under your mouse sensor?

CasgarTheSomnolent · August 2022

cptscotty wrote: »

Since this form of communication is a bit slow to help with speedy fixes for these things:

1) Unplug your mouse/keyboard/controller. Plug in a different SIMPLE mouse and keyboard. One that just uses basic drivers and just a simple normal mouse with no extra buttons. Play with that for a bit and see if it happens again.

If you notice it doesnt happen again with the new hardware plugged in then you need to reset your gaming stuff to clear its onboard memory. A lot of gaming mice have on board memory that handles different profiles each with a different DPI setting. You could be triggering that profile switch.

2) Make sure you are running in exclusive fullscreen and not windowed to keep things static concerning scaling/resolution. (kind of weird how you mentioned "minus the taskbar" in your post...makes me think you are running windowed mode and that can have issues...especially with application focus switching)

3) Make sure windows gaming mode is enabled on your system to disable some background stuff

Thanks for the troubleshooting ideas.

So, here's what I learned. It does appear to be related to this mouse. It's a Logitech G402 wired mouse. I unplugged it and played for a while my simple Logitech M325 wireless mouse, and I did not notice any camera issues like I described in my original post. I tried plugging the G402 into different USB ports, and nothing changed.

I think it's also specifically related to Windows 10. I never noticed this playing on Windows 7, and I've hundreds of hours up to this week on Windows 7 with my G402. Doing a little digging, it appears that Windows 10 has a "Game Mode" to do whatever it does to enhance games; it is toggled on by default. So I toggled it off. See here how to do that for anyone that doesn't know.

I also stopped and disabled all Xbox services running in the background. If nothing else, I think I'm going to have to go find all the other little "improvements" Windows 10 has slipped in that I'm currently not aware of.

I haven't tried running ESO in fullscreen. I have always run it in windowed mode with no problem. But I will keep it in mind, though.

I cannot find any option of resetting my G402's memory. That might have to be done with the Logitech software that's used to customize profiles for it. I don't and have never had that software installed on any of my computers. But I'll keep looking if things pop back up

It seems stable now in game with the G402. I'm not 100% sure, but I have been running around zigzagging back and forth, and it doesn't seem like the camera is wildly swinging anymore. Just to really check this, I lowered the DPI to its lowest setting, so I couldn't accidentally swing the camera myself too fast. It seems better.

I will continue to observe it and will update in here if it is not stable and I'll list any additional troubleshooting that I did. But it does seem better, so fingers crossed. And at least it has been narrowed down to the specific mouse and OS.

Thanks again for the help.

CasgarTheSomnolent · August 2022

cptscotty wrote: »

Would help if you disable steam as well since it has some profile stuff as well as overlay stuff that can change settings for your cursor.

Great if you have a controller you need to manipulate, not so good with debugging m/k issues.

I've run the game with and without Steam in the background a few times, and I don't really notice a difference. But I will trying it with and without Steam in the background over the coming days to get more data points to be conclusive. I don't see a need for Steam to be running for me, so I probably will think about disabling it, but for now I'll just keep observing. Thank you for the idea.

ZOS_Bill · August 2022

Thanks for the update that the camera issue is mouse related. With the issue mostly resolved, we are going to close out this discussion.