Trying to use VCV on a Cintiq-like graphics tablet: any way to increase the sensitivity of knobs?

So, first things first: this is very much an edge case, but I’ve been running into a frustrating issue trying to play VCV with a graphics tablet: the knobs aren’t sensitive enough!

You can see the problem clearly in my participation to the VCP-44 challenge, I often have to grab a knob 2 or 3 times to turn it fully (skip about 50 secs in for the first obvious instance of it):

When using a mouse, View > Lock Cursor while Dragging solves the problem entirely, as you can make a motion larger than the remaining space for the cursor to travel. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with my tablet.
As you probably already know, when holding CTRL, you can make the knobs less sensitive, they require a wider motion to turn. What I’d need is the inverse of that, since it’s to perform songs rather than to dial in precise values.
What’s more annoying is that zoom doesn’t seem to affect the physical range of motion required. So even if I’m quite zoomed out, making a very wide and fast motion won’t allow me to fully turn a knob.

I understand Andrew objects to touchscreens for three reasons: they’re not precise enough, users of mobile devices aren’t willing to pay a fair price for music software, and the libraries VCV uses don’t support touchscreens. But graphics tablets are different: they’re a precise tool for serious multimedia artists, they’re quickly growing more affordable (I got this 21" device for 300 euro, a steal compared to prices 5 years ago), and they’re a very fast, fun and tactile way to operate VCV.

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No, there is currently no way to globally modify knob sensitivity.

Funny you would mention this. Glue the Giant’s Modular Bus Mixers finally reached 1.1.0 earlier today. And one of the last fixes was increasing knob sensitivity. This was inspired by my own use and, importantly, by watching your amazing videos a couple of days ago. The release is already submitted to the library and will be compiled soon.

[EDIT] By the way, the “Lock cursor while dragging” feature under the view menu can help with knobs when using a mouse. I don’t know if it will help with a tablet and stylus, though.

It sort of works, but for some reason, it has the tendency to make the knobs jump to the max or minimum position upon initial click. After that, you need a wide initial motion for movement to start registering. But it only solves the problem with a mouse, where the settings allows you to make a movement that would send the cursor past the boundary of the screen, on a tablet you’re limited by the physical space available to move.

I’m using the Wintab driver, which allows programs to see the tablet as a normal mouse. Using the Windows Ink driver doesn’t work at all in VCV (clicks don’t register most of the time), since Windows Ink tries to be “smart” with “useful features”.

So far the 3 hacks I have found to make it usable:

  • Double-tapping a knob to reset it to center before dragging
  • Starting with a motion in the opposite direction of the change, to have more room
  • Using TACT devices to control any knob that’d cause audio glitches with those techniques
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Frustrations aside, just wanted to say that is a beautiful piece, thanks for sharing. :+1:t2:

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With the tablet and stylus, that’s what I figured would be the experience. The piece still turned out great and it’s amazingly fun to see you control everything with a stylus in the video. I hope you find ways to continue working like that.

With the mixer knobs on Glue the Giant, I always intended to make them more responsive (more like the normal VCV slider widgets that allow you to get a full fade without dragging the mouse quite all the way across the screen). I just hadn’t had the time to figure it out, but after watching your video (and after wrapping up a feature list), it got done.

I created a module with different parameter speeds for the purpose of testing. It would be interesting to see if the different speeds make any difference on control. It is for windows.

save to plugin-v1 folder: https://github.com/Coirt/testParamSens/releases/download/1.0.0/Coirt_ParamS-1.0.0-win.zip

I can adjust the speeds if they are too fast/slow.

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Nice! Gave it a quick try on the graphics tablet, even the 2.5 knob makes a huge difference.

I don’t suppose the API exposes enough one could take over the default factor globally, does it?

Interesting and is that with or without “Lock cursor while dragging” enabled?

Currently there is no way to change that multiplier it is parameter and plugin specific. A global parameter would have to be written into the API with a user set value in settings.json. So if you have a setting that suits, you put this into the json and in the code it would be something like 1 * userMultiple, 1 being default speed userMultiple defaulted to 1 until changed, 1*1=1 no change.

Disabled, when enabled I ran into the issue I described earlier, where knobs “jump” to the maximum before being reactive.

(For reference, the device used is a XP-PEN Artist 22 Pro, an-entry level product without any unusual feature of note.)

Also there will be a json value to adjust sensitivity.

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:smiley:

Very cool! It’s gonna greatly improve the playability of my weird setup.

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