I'm not even fully convinced that training mode was originally setup for proper spacing either. At least not on the background, and that what you saw in SF4 was just a "tradition" instead.
No, the over the top "the end is near" view you have is outlandish. These issues are minor and fixable. Dimps is present Street Fighter. And back in my day, you got 8 characters, a VS mode (with no stage selection), and fucking loved it.
The console ports of the Capcom fighters had stage select after SSF2T. So at least by '95.
So am I better off just using my brooks adapter? USF4 has input lag with ps3 driver (4 frames IIRC?) which I honestly didn't find that noticable, is SF5 worse than that?
I don't know how good the Brooks adapter is, but supposedly (I don't believe it) the Cronus has 0 input lag, so it looks like I'll have to be playing with two of those on the PS4 version for the short term. Also,
4 frames is ridiculously noticeable when doing any combo that requires a link. It's so easy to spot that it allows you to recognize TVs and monitors that are bad for fighting games, since your average "big" TV has 40 - 100ms of input lag. 4 frames is 66ms.