A Guide To Most Distance Mechanics
> DIGITAL INPUT SMOOTHING (DIS)
DIS probably is one of the most important things here, and is also the most complicated. It essentially functions as a sensitivity meter: more sensitivity the more the slider is to the left, less sensitivity the more the slider is to the right, but it only has an effect on specific functions when that function is tied to a button or key rather than to a control stick. The way it actually works is it determines how fast the "power", whatever that may be in the circumstance, ramps up from 0% to 100% after pressing a button.
For example, if I use a button or a key to steer, and the DIS is slid to the far right, if I start to steer, the sensitivity of the steering or steering "power" will begin to ramp up from 0% from the moment I press the steering button/key, to 100% very slowly, meaning if I hold the steering button down, I will steer very slowly. The effect is as if you were steering with a control stick, and you slowly moved the control stick from neutral to the far left/right. If the DIS is slid to the farthest left, if I start to steer, the steering "power" will ramp up from 0% to 100% immediately. The effect here is as if you were steering with a control stick, and you moved the control stick from neutral immediately to the far left/right. Depending on how far the DIS is slid to the left or right, the faster or slower this ramp up will be respectively. At the far left, it is said that there is no DIS. It should also be noted that the speed at which the power ramps down after letting go of the button is also determined by DIS in much the same way.
While I have already mentioned how DIS affects steering, it also effects a lot of other things in the same way. These things include:
- Steering.
- Thrusters (it does not effect grip though!).
- Wing steering.
- Gas*.
- Reversing.
- Camera rotation.
*It should be noted that if boost is bound to the same button as gas, boost is also affected by DIS in that, boost will only activate after the DIS power for gas reaches 100%. Otherwise though, boost is always just a toggle not affected by DIS.
If you have gas mapped to a button and you are worried about gas being affected by DIS when accelerating at the start of a map by making the acceleration slower due to not having DIS at zero, don't worry. If you hold the gas button during the countdown, the DIS for the gas will ramp up to 100% during the countdown, which means that once the countdown ends, the gas will already be at its maximum power once you start driving. Also, it should be noted that DIS functions on a global timer. What this means, is that, if you pause the game, hold the button for one of the actions above for long enough, and then unpause while still holding that button, the action will work as if it was done with no DIS, because the ramp up to 100% power already occurred while the game was paused.
Because DIS only affects those things listed above when their functions are bound to buttons, it is significantly more important for keyboard players to pay attention to DIS than controller players, since everything on a keyboard is technically a "button". For most controller players, you pretty much just always want it at zero (far left). This is because the important things (steering, thrusters, wing steering) are usually bound to a control stick for controller players anyways, meaning that gas and reverse are the only things gameplay wise which are likely to not be on a control stick, and you would benefit from having both of those activate as fast as possible. Having it set to zero also allows controller players to bind gas and boost to the same button without any drawbacks. For keyboard players though, as someone who has played this game with a keyboard for a while, I claim that, for all purposes both speed and precision for keyboard players, you want to have your DIS at this position (-2 from default):
If you have played with keyboard for a while and just used the default middle setting, it may take a while to get used to this setting, and you might want to train yourself on just doing -1 from default before moving on to using -2. While you might think having no DIS would theoretically be the best for keyboard players, since you would then always get the max power out of everything instantly, having no DIS can actually give too much power too quickly, which can actually make it so that you go slower overall as a result.
There are, however, some circumstances in which a keyboard player may benefit from changing it from this position to something else. For levels like 'Baby Time' by Pinapl, for example, having no DIS at all is beneficial in being able to turn as hard as possible as quickly as possible. In NBOT levels (no boost or thrusters), like 'Augur' by Backgrounds' or 'Grid' by Lynk, you benefit from having no DIS since tighter wing turns are just more efficient for redirecting speed with wings. In some levels, you may have to go between two very close together killgrids. In cases like this, having a high DIS helps in preventing any abrupt turns that would otherwise fling you into the killgrid. I would say knowing when its worth experimenting with DIS is one of the things keyboard players would benefit most from learning.
Lastly, the exact speed at which those functions listed above ramp up and ramp down in power based on how the DIS is set has actually been mapped out by Seekr and in this document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FuEtxHSPpP4o9r5D5eRr-AdSwvpClNpYo-0oqrqDhbg/edit#gid=0