Pen lag/deadzone on Surface pro 2017 in Zbrush

Anonymous
2018-05-29T22:59:20+00:00

I bought the Surface Pro 2017 i7 8GB model a couple of days ago primarily for Zbrush (3D sculpting software) with the use of the surface Pen. 

Everything seems to work other that this problem: When i place the pen tip on the screen there seems to be a small zone of about 3mm around the tip where nothing gets registered. When i go out of this zone the stroke gets registered and everything seems fine and is responsive. This happens with every new stroke.

The issue is only with the pen, the trackpad works fine. I did not encounter this issue in other software than Zbrush so far; Photoshop is fine. 

I downloaded the Wintab drivers, turned off 'flicks' and 'press and hold'. Windows is updated (Windows 10, version 1803)

I really hope somebody can help me since I use Zbrush professionally and I bought the Surface Pro just for this software.

Other than this I really love the device and I would hate to return it just for this small software issue.

Kind Regards, Robin

Surface | Surface Pro | Display and screen

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-09-28T11:11:18+00:00

    So does this actually completely solve the problem, or just reduce the deadzone a bit?

    I'm currently using my Cintiq 24HD and there are zero problems with the pen in ZBrush. :/

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  2. Barb Bowman 80,815 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-09-28T10:55:21+00:00

    Can you please use the Feedback Hub app to file a complete problem report on

    this (you can copy and paste from your great work around). Perhaps even suggest

    a setting be enabled to turn on/off.

    >I'm really hoping that the October update will fix all of this, but I have not wanted to join the insider program to try it out.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-09-27T23:06:16+00:00

    HA! it let me post! 

    OK, so here is what I found.

    I was getting similar result with the reg edit that I posted form the windows ink guy on reddit. This was great except that a new issue occurred where Zbrush was not registering fast strokes and long strokes. The culprit of that issue was indeed FLICKS. The bad news there is that there is no way to turn them off in the GUI with the current build of windows. So I've been digging around and I've found a way to turn them off in the registry.

    Also, I know some of you said that the reg trick disabled your pressure sensitivity. This happened to me the second time I ran the operation after I installed photoshop and saw how broken it is without the reg edit on...it's bad. I was worried that I would need to do a clean install of windows to get it back but before I did I tried a repair install of the wintab drivers and that worked!

    So here is my procedure.

    1 - Install the wintab drivers

    2 - Run the reg edit command to enable legacy Ink mode (reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pen /v LegacyPenInteractionModel /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f) and restart your surface.

    3 - If this disables your pressure sensitivity run a repair install of the wintab driver. (this restored it for me)

    4 - To disable FLICKS open regedit and go to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Wisp\Pen\SysEventParameters\FlickMode] Change it's value from 1 to 0 then restart your surface again.

    That should do it. you should have the same performance as build 1511 but with the current build. The other bonus is that Photoshop will work great as well, no more page scrolling bug/feature anymore.

    I'm really hoping that the October update will fix all of this, but I have not wanted to join the insider program to try it out.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-09-27T22:34:48+00:00

    For some reason I've not been able to post here. Keeps saying "oops something went wrong, try again"

    Thanks for the video! It looks like you are getting about the same result with build 1511 as I was with using the legacy registry mode.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-09-24T17:49:18+00:00

    It did not completly solved the problem. But the pen performs on the 1511 version much better than on the actual 1803. The deadzone is about 1-2mm on the 1511, were its on the 1803 about 3- 4mm. I try to stay with 1511 until we get a fix. I used in both versions the wintab drivers.

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