Magnet Region is slow to trigger

FMOD Studio
#1

Hi! Recently I swapped to using a single timeline and magnet regions to swap between ambiences and songs in our game. I’m using several magnet regions, some of which are quantized, and some of which aren’t, for things I want to snap to instantly. The region conditions are using a single “User: Labeled” parameter.

It works, but instead of being instant, the non-quantized transitions still take a long time to trigger, maybe something like 250-500ms if I had to guess. Is this just a limitation of magnet regions or is there anything we can do to make it react faster?

Our previous solution, starting and stopping events ourselves, was instant, so I don’t believe it has anything to do with buffer size.

#2

I’m afraid we’ll need more information to diagnose this issue. Does the issue occur only in-game, or can it be reproduced in FMOD Studio? Are you able to take a video of a session in which this occurs?

I should mention that ~20 ms of latency is expected when using transition markers or magnet regions with parameter trigger conditions, due to the unavoidable limitations of scheduling sample data playback.

#4

ok here’s a video, you can see the delay from clicking the scene to the audio changing

(make sure volume is on)

it’s the same ingame and in studio, and definitely much longer than 20ms. playing events is a LOT lower latency than switching between magnet regions.

1 Like
#5

image

also, this is the magnet region for “silence” which has no transition timelines or quantization or anything

also: this is FMOD studio 2.01.11, windows 10

#6

Probably one of 2 reasons: either you have a seek speed set on your Scene parameter, or the assets in that event are set to “Stream” which will always introduce latency as it loads/unloads.

#7

Checking both those things, it looks to me like it’s Instant, and none of the assets are streaming

image
image
image

#8

Is the following sufficient to explain the latency you’re seeing?

#9

The latency demoed in the video i posted seems a lot higher than 40ms, right? I can’t bring it into a video editor at the moment to get a precise number but its almost a whole quarter note at 138bpm, which would be in the ballpark of ~500ms. And the magnet region for “Silence,” which I’m switching to, has no quantization.

#10

Are you able to send us a copy of a project containing an event that exhibits the behavior, so that we can investigate the cause? You can upload packaged projects in the uploads tab of your profile page, provided you’ve registered a game project you’re working on with us.

#11

how do i register a game?

#12

You can register a game by going to https://www.fmod.com/profile#projects and clicking the “Register new project” button. Registering is free, but gives us a better idea of what kinds of games people are making with FMOD.

#13

ok, that’s pending approval now

#14

okay, this is uploaded to my profile now