Why Hardware Smoothing Ruins Your osu! Performance

Hardware smoothing on graphic tablets is often marketed as a feature that improves stability and makes pen input look clean. While this is useful in digital art, it turns into a serious drawback in rhythm games like osu!, where timing, precision, and muscle memory are everything. For osu! players, hardware smoothing simply gets in the way, creating input lag, reducing control, and preventing true 1:1 tracking between hand and screen.

Understanding Hardware Smoothing

Most modern tablets include some form of hardware smoothing (also called "line stabilization" or "wobble correction"). At its core, smoothing works by averaging or predicting the position of your pen before it sends your movements to the computer. The goal is to mask shaky hand movements and produce straight, stable lines for artists.

In drawing software, this helps make handwriting legible and art look cleaner, but the process is inherently artificial. Instead of reproducing exactly what your hand does, the tablet "guesses" and modifies the movement. For a rhythm game like osu!—where precision down to milliseconds is essential—this modification disrupts the direct connection between the player and their cursor.

Why Hardware Smoothing Hurts osu! Players

⚡ Input Delay (Input Lag)

Every bit of processing adds time. When your tablet smooths movements, it takes additional milliseconds to average points and decide what your stroke should look like. Those milliseconds turn into input lag … and in osu!, timing is everything. At high BPM or low approach rates, even a 5–10 ms delay can make fast jumps or streams feel inconsistent.

🎯 Loss of Raw Precision

Osu! relies on fast, micro-level adjustments. When you practice, your brain and hand build muscle memory assuming raw, unfiltered input. With smoothing on, these micro-adjustments can be flattened or ignored, making your pen feel "sluggish." Your movement no longer maps naturally to the cursor, which hurts accuracy and weakens your ability to build consistent aim.

🔄 Distorted Cursor Paths

In competitive osu!, movements are rarely smooth circles or tidy lines. Instead, top players constantly make sharp zigzags, wide-angle flicks, and lightning-fast taps. Smoothing algorithms dislike these inputs and try to "correct" them, rounding sharp edges or stabilizing intentional shakes. This discrepancy makes your cursor behave differently from how your hand moves, leading to mistrust in your hit accuracy.

Why osu! Thrives on Raw Input

Raw input means the cursor moves exactly as your pen does, without filters. This is what competitive osu! was built on, and why the competitive community universally prefers it:

• It ensures consistent responsiveness regardless of map speed or style.
• It allows players to train muscle memory correctly, with no artificial interference.
• It feels more natural, which boosts confidence and enables faster improvement.
• Faster flicks, quick aim corrections, and stream reading become possible without the system fighting back.

In other words, osu! is not about pretty lines—it's about speed and accuracy. Hardware smoothing strips both away.

How to Disable or Avoid Hardware Smoothing

Not every tablet is osu!-friendly right out of the box. Some manufacturers design their products with artists in mind by default and push heavy smoothing in the drivers. The good news is that the osu! community has found ways around this:

• Switch to OpenTabletDriver (OTD): This open-source driver often provides a more direct connection to your tablet, bypassing smoothing and reducing lag.
• Tweak driver settings: Some proprietary drivers let you adjust or disable smoothing. Always dig into advanced settings if possible.
• Set up the right area size: Smaller active areas can reduce unnecessary hand movement while maximizing control, letting raw input shine even more.

Smoothed vs Raw Input in osu!

The Competitive Edge

The reason is simple: smoothing introduces variables that make your cursor less predictable and harder to control when milliseconds count. Top players need absolute precision and consistency to achieve those incredible scores you see on leaderboards.

If your goal is to improve at osu!, to set new personal best scores, or simply to play more comfortably, hardware smoothing is not your friend. It may polish curves for art, but in osu!, it only sabotages your accuracy and speed. The most efficient path forward is to strip away anything artificial—choose a good tablet, disable smoothing, and rely only on your hand and your reflexes.