How to fix tearing without Vsync? Possible?

[brock2621]

Is it possible to fix tearing without enabling vsync? What causes it and why is it just now showing up and not 10 years ago? I don't know much about it and was just curious. NEwayz, thanks.

[Solarus]

The doom3 engine is capped at 60fps, so if you have a CRT monitor force refresh to 120Hz and if you should help

[DekenFrost]

i only know whats it coused by ..

you have your fps on one side and the hz of your monitor (which is basically just the fps of the monitor) on the other side right ? If these are out of sync you get page tearing .. because it happens that the next frame starts to draw on the monitor on the upper half but the last frame is still seen below it (for a very brief moment, you can´t. really see it actually) Basically the computer draws the images faster then your monitor can handle, and it compensates it in that whay that it just draws the next frame over the old one.

vsync simply doesnt allow the next frame to be send to the monitor until the current frame has .. well .. let´s say finished, thus synchronising the frames to the hz of the monitor and making it look smoother. Thats why with vsync enabled you can´t have more fps then hz.

I guess this didnt happen in earlier days because you didnt have more fps then hz anyway.

If i wrote total crap please someone correct me :P


The doom3 engine is capped at 60fps, so if you have a CRT monitor force refresh to 120Hz and if you should help
my crt only allowes up to 76 i think :P

[brock2621]

I can go to 85 hertz (which is what it's on). How can i change this to keep it from tearing? I don't use anything below 70 because i heard the 60's give you headaches (interesting, i heard that from my dad too) haha ;)

[DekenFrost]

if you don´t have any performance problems with vsync i would just say keep it on. Some people say that Vsync loweres the overall frames per second, but i have never really seen it beeing confirmed.

you could also try tripple buffering .. i will try that out in a few moments .. i can turn that on in my ATT but i havent tryed it yet on the pre demo.. i will do so now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_buffering

if i read wikipedia correct i would not need vsync when i use tripple buffering right ?

[Brian Karis]

You can try setting triple buffering in your video drivers options. I did it in the nvidia drivers->performance and quality settings->view advanced-> triple buffering. You'd probably be best creating a profile for prey.exe so you don't force triple buffering on all games. I don't know what the process is on ati because I don't have one in this machine. You then can turn on vsync in the menu and the game will not slow down.

[Solarus]

if your monitor doesnt support the 2:1 Hz:FPS ratio, then you should set your monitor to refresh at 60Hz (I know, CRT @ 60 = horrible) and turn on vsync. For once it actually performs better with vsync (Doom3 Engine FPS Cap)

[OnyxBMW]

Vsync does lower overall FPS performance, and I'll explain why and how.

With Vsync, lets say you have a mid-range card: You run the game, you average between 30 and 60+ pending whats on screen.

With vsync, it will always force it either to the monitor's refresh, or a fraction of it. So, if I can't sustain 60, it will force it to 30. If I can't do 30, though, it will force it to 20 untill it can do 30.

So, lets say 2 enemies run on screen that want me dead, a couple portals are in the background and a lot of the environment is visible. GASP! The framerait dipped below 20 for a second! Now is when every frame counts. Yet, you are now forced to 15. Can't do that? now it's 12.

That's the problem people experience with vsync. I want to enable vsync since I get tearing during the page load where tommy is warped through the portal, but outside of that I don't hit high enough FPS to warrent using it, and it in fact is detrimental to my FPS.

However, I also have no reason to bitch about crappy FPS, since I'm running the game at max everything save AA and getting a stable framerait most of the time :P

[Solarus]

Vsync does lower overall FPS performance, and I'll explain why and how.

With Vsync, lets say you have a mid-range card: You run the game, you average between 30 and 60+ pending whats on screen.

With vsync, it will always force it either to the monitor's refresh, or a fraction of it. So, if I can't sustain 60, it will force it to 30. If I can't do 30, though, it will force it to 20 untill it can do 30.

So, lets say 2 enemies run on screen that want me dead, a couple portals are in the background and a lot of the environment is visible. GASP! The framerait dipped below 20 for a second! Now is when every frame counts. Yet, you are now forced to 15. Can't do that? now it's 12.

That's the problem people experience with vsync. I want to enable vsync since I get tearing during the page load where tommy is warped through the portal, but outside of that I don't hit high enough FPS to warrent using it, and it in fact is detrimental to my FPS.

However, I also have no reason to bitch about crappy FPS, since I'm running the game at max everything save AA and getting a stable framerait most of the time :P


Me too :-)

[OnyxBMW]

Me too :-)

Doesn't the game look absolutely awesome?

[DekenFrost]

so what about tripple buffering .. does it do the same thing to your framerate or is it a completely different approach to the problem ?

i have just tryed a few settings and its really true .. with vsync on most of the time i had 60 fps but then very often 30 .. and nothing inbetween.

I didnt seem to have slowdowns with tripple buffering though.

[mysteryperfecta]

I can go to 85 hertz (which is what it's on). How can i change this to keep it from tearing? I don't use anything below 70 because i heard the 60's give you headaches (interesting, i heard that from my dad too) haha ;)

hit ctrl + alt + ~ to open up console, type seta r_displayrefresh 85, and then vid_restart. If your screen flashes after the second command, you've done it correctly.

[OnyxBMW]

how do you enable triple buffering in the game?

[DekenFrost]

you don´t you have to enable it through the driver (or in my case Ati Tray Tools)

[brock2621]

ok. Well i have everything maxed on 1024 by 768 or whatever it is with 2x AA 16 anistropic filtering and vsync on. But i can definately tell it's slower (i know you're not supposed to be able to tell past 24 blah blah but i can esp. when i'm spinning around, it's like my mouse is more responsive or something). But when i turn vsync off i can run 4x AA with everything up and it runs faster. but it tears every once in a while. It sorta looks like in the middle of the screen a line vibrates or dulplicates. I would like to be able to leave vsync off. I have ati so what do i do to turn triple buffering on?

[DekenFrost]

i know you're not supposed to be able to tell past 24 blah blah

that´s a common mistake. While it is true that the human eye normaly canßt make a differenxe between .. lets say 20 images per second or 60 this does not apply to video games. Generally the more fps the better becouse a video game does not have the motion blur like a video would have it or our eyes are used to it or whatever.

I have ati so what do i do to turn triple buffering on?
I would suggest you donwload and install Ati Tray Tools (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=733) and then you can manage a profile for each game with alot of options.

[brock2621]

ok... i had it before i upgraded to 6.5 and i just said screw it. (mistake) haha. But IS there a way to do it with the regular CC? I'm too lazy to restart my computer and run driver cleaner and install and restart again :(

[DekenFrost]

awww so i didnt need to make this neat image in paint :( ?

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/7446/att6dx.jpg

But ATT is not a driver ! it is just a tool you do not need to delete your current drivers. You don´t even have to restart ^^

i guess there is a way to do it with the regular cc but i can´t check now youse i don´t have it installed

[brock2621]

Hey i really appreciate it DekenFrost, Brian and OnyxBMW. I will try your reccomendations. If you all find a 100% fix pm me and let me know. Thanks again, and enjoy Preying ;)

[DekenFrost]

i have tried around and i am sticking to the tripple buffer at the moment. seems a good solution to me.

[Brian Karis]

Triple buffering is that 100% fix, it just takes some effort. The reason it works is it put a buffer between the screen and the back buffer. So the slow down to sync to the screen refresh time doesn't have to be with the back buffer that the game is rendering to. It does it instead to that middleman buffer. So syncing with that doesn't actually slow down anything. Is does though add another screen buffer that has to sit in video ram. usally that extra 2mb or whatever doesn't matter too much.

We would have giving an option for this in game if we could. There is no opengl access to this. I know of no way to do it in opengl other than through the driver control pannel.

It's quite ironic really. You see the bad tearing when the game is close to 60fps. So if the game is running fast, which we put a lot of work into making that happen, and combine it with the framerate lock at 60 it is very likely that it will tear bad. So for everyone complaining about tearing, it's better than it just running slow. Bad tearing is kind of a compliment to us. :D

[DekenFrost]

thanks for clearing it up for us :) I read a little bit about it on wikipedia mostly by accident, before that i never used the option, because i didnt know what it meant :doh:

and now its reeeally time to sleep for me i have been hanging around this forum all day and now its friggin 5:00 am :insomnia:

[Lynchie]

thanks for clearing it up for us :) I read a little bit about it on wikipedia mostly by accident, before that i never used the option, because i didnt know what it meant :doh:

and now its reeeally time to sleep for me i have been hanging around this forum all day and now its friggin 5:00 am :insomnia:

And you've been doing a good job answering my questions! :)