Vsync with triple buffering question

[PrincessFrosty]

I mostly agree with everything written, but I will say that a lot of people have a hard time noticing tearing at FPS below their refresh rate. I'm guessing it is related to how much the tear line moves from top to bottom at a more random rate has something to do with it. I can see there is tearing myself, but it is not the same as when it is close to your refresh rate or higher.

That said, I'd prefer v-sync, but I get sick from poor latency. Having a 120hz monitor helps a lot.

The number of tear lines per refresh goes up linearly with the frame rate.

 

[toyota]

I typically see way more tearing in games with lower framerate. and I am sure someone will argue but tearing varies widely from game to game even at the exact same framerate.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I typically see way more tearing in games with lower framerate. and I am sure someone will argue but tearing varies widely from game to game even at the exact same framerate.

I do as well. I cannot explain it but if I can get 80+ fps average and never below 60 I typically don't notice tearing. When I'm seeing fps numbers near or below 60 I can notice some. Typically I run no vsync because I find input lag, where my mouse doesn't keep up with my movement to be more distracting.

 

[bystander36]

The number of tear lines per refresh goes up linearly with the frame rate.

Yah. If your FPS are below your refresh rate, not every refresh will have tears. When the FPS are higher, it tears every frame.

Anyways, the tearing seems to be less obvious when you have low FPS for a lot of people, assuming it's not at FPS close to your refresh rate. If it's close to your refresh rate, faster or slower, the line moves slower up and down the screen, so you see it more pronounced.

It also depends on how much the screen changes. If they are small changes from frame to frame, it is less noticeable.

 

[3DVagabond]

That's your opinion. I have been playing and winning and enjoying that game for years with Vsync on. The lag to me is a non issue to the point of being negligible.

Mate, while we are all entitled to our opinions arguing subjective topics for 10's of posts is just beyond a joke.

You like vsync. I like vsync. You can't stand screen tearing. I can't stand screen tearing. I too can't understand how people can be so sensitive to MS, input lag, etc... but screen tearing doesn't bother them and is just perfectly fine. Point is, no matter how much I reiterate my position and how ridiculous I think theirs is, it doesn't matter. It's a matter of opinion. You can't have right or wrong.

 

[Genome852]

I do as well. I cannot explain it but if I can get 80+ fps average and never below 60 I typically don't notice tearing. When I'm seeing fps numbers near or below 60 I can notice some. Typically I run no vsync because I find input lag, where my mouse doesn't keep up with my movement to be more distracting.

I find tearing less noticeable at higher framerates as well. The frame above the tear line and below it are offset less at higher framerates. Running old games at 300+ fps, tearing is much harder to see than if I cap it at 30 or 60 fps.

Also, I notice that when my FPS is low I often get tears that just hang out in the center of the screen and don't go anywhere. That is really distracting. (For example, if I cap Skyrim to 60 with vsync off and scroll around the world map, there's always a huge tear right in the center).

p.s. does anyone know why the "59 fps" cap works? If you enable vsync, but then use an external frame rate limiting program to cap fps at <your refresh rate - 1>, it greatly reduces the input lag.

 

[Mr Expert]

Mate, while we are all entitled to our opinions arguing subjective topics for 10's of posts is just beyond a joke.

You like vsync. I like vsync. You can't stand screen tearing. I can't stand screen tearing. I too can't understand how people can be so sensitive to MS, input lag, etc... but screen tearing doesn't bother them and is just perfectly fine. Point is, no matter how much I reiterate my position and how ridiculous I think theirs is, it doesn't matter. It's a matter of opinion. You can't have right or wrong.

I already posted the same thing to another member. I don't care i like Vsync and many others do as well. I like quality some people don't care ... That's thier problem you know not mine.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I already posted the same thing to another member. I don't care i like Vsync and many others do as well. I like quality some people don't care ... That's thier problem you know not mine.

lol so anyone not using vsync is using low quality? How about maybe they want their input to be translated quickly and more accurately? Couldn't be that...it's a "problem" cause you do things one way.

 

[bystander36]

I find tearing less noticeable at higher framerates as well. The frame above the tear line and below it are offset less at higher framerates. Running old games at 300+ fps, tearing is much harder to see than if I cap it at 30 or 60 fps.

Also, I notice that when my FPS is low I often get tears that just hang out in the center of the screen and don't go anywhere. That is really distracting. (For example, if I cap Skyrim to 60 with vsync off and scroll around the world map, there's always a huge tear right in the center).

p.s. does anyone know why the "59 fps" cap works? If you enable vsync, but then use an external frame rate limiting program to cap fps at <your refresh rate - 1>, it greatly reduces the input lag.

When talking about higher than your refresh vs. lower, I was thinking in terms of 80 vs 40 FPS. At 300 FPS, you'll have 5-6 tears all the time, causing each tear to be slightly offset from the previous. That said, I personally see it, but I see a lot of people, even professional reviews that act as if there is no visible tearing below 60 FPS, but I think they are not talking about 200+ FPS, and more like 60-100 FPS.

Example:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/16/nvidia_adaptive_vsync_technology_review/#.Ugmw5m2JuCU

VSync turned off sounds like a good thing, because your framerate is able to go as high as physically possible from your video card. However, there is a major drawback to allowing framerate to exceed the refresh rate of your display. The consequence is called "tearing," and it is a very real visual anomaly that you will notice more as you play your games as the framerate exceeds the refresh rate. Tearing is described as a frame literally breaking in half, or sometimes even in three parts, and part of the frame lagging behind the other part of the same frame. The result is a visually distorted image that can bother gamers. Note that tearing can technically occur if the framerate doesn't exceed the refresh rate, but it is much less likely to be noticed.

I do agree that tearing always happens, but I run into a lot of people that seem to think they aren't getting tearing when their FPS are lower than their refresh rate.

I had an discussion about this with Ubercake on Toms. He had tons of links of even professional sites talking as if tearing only happens at high FPS, and he personally couldn't see it when it was below his refresh rate. I could not find one source but the above that even mentioned tearing at FPS below your refresh rate, and it lead with "technically". That said, there is no way you can have 45 FPS without tearing or uneven frame times, ultimately leaving him rethinking his stance.

 

[beginner99]

You like vsync. I like vsync. You can't stand screen tearing. I can't stand screen tearing. I too can't understand how people can be so sensitive to MS, input lag, etc... but screen tearing doesn't bother them and is just perfectly fine. Point is, no matter how much I reiterate my position and how ridiculous I think theirs is, it doesn't matter. It's a matter of opinion. You can't have right or wrong.

I don't notice tearing when running and jumping around and trying to kill 5 enemies. I guess it greatly depends on how intense the game is and if input lag matters, which it does a lot in an FPS especially when turning. It might also be annoying in an RTS like SC2.

 

[Black Octagon]

I nearly never notice screen tearing. I game at about 75-118fps on a 120hz screen. Very very sensitive to stutter but not to tearing. Go figure.

No prizes for guessing that I prefer to play with vsync off (though I do use a frame limiter in certain games, e.g., Skyrim)

 

[Lonbjerg]

I already posted the same thing to another member. I don't care i like Vsync and many others do as well. I like quality some people don't care ... That's thier problem you know not mine.

Why should I use VSYNC?
It for people with bad eyes using LCD's, because they don't care about image quality and sacrifies color depth over from factor.

Input lag no thanks...tearing no thanks....LCD's no thanks.

You show me a LCD's with BETTER image quality than my CRT's...I dare you ^^

 

[3DVagabond]

I don't notice tearing when running and jumping around and trying to kill 5 enemies. I guess it greatly depends on how intense the game is and if input lag matters, which it does a lot in an FPS especially when turning. It might also be annoying in an RTS like SC2.

That's fine. I'm not debating which is worse for you. I accept your priorities are your own. I'm just trying to stop the relentless reiteration of the same position by two or three members. I'm interested in this thread, but I'd like to not have to read multiple posts by the same people saying the same things over and over. &#9996;.&#661;&#664;&#8255;&#664;&#660;.&#9996;

 

[Lonbjerg]

That's fine. I'm not debating which is worse for you. I accept your priorities are your own. I'm just trying to stop the relentless reiteration of the same position by two or three members. I'm interested in this thread, but I'd like to not have to read multiple posts by the same people saying the same things over and over. &#9996;.&#661;&#664;&#8255;&#664;&#660;.&#9996;

You are talking about yourself and whom? ^^

He clearly isn't speaking to you here. Stop it, NOW.
-- stahlhart

 

[3DVagabond]

You are talking about yourself and whom? ^^

You know what? If you are looking for a confrontation you need to go out somewhere and be rude to someone in person. Doing it on the internet doesn't prove anything.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Mate, while we are all entitled to our opinions arguing subjective topics for 10's of posts is just beyond a joke.

You like vsync. I like vsync. You can't stand screen tearing. I can't stand screen tearing. I too can't understand how people can be so sensitive to MS, input lag, etc... but screen tearing doesn't bother them and is just perfectly fine. Point is, no matter how much I reiterate my position and how ridiculous I think theirs is, it doesn't matter. It's a matter of opinion. You can't have right or wrong.

True, but also it's not JUST a matter of opinion, it's also a matter of what your brain physically responds to.

Some people physically respond to certain stimuli differently, I'm particularly sensitive to latency, even the tiny amount caused by vsync is extremely jarring and off putting, also tearing doesn't bother me in fact I prefer tearing because it helps convey more information to me than when its turned off (motion of fast objects through tear lines can be inferred where it might not otherwise with vysnc on)

So while it is down to opinion, you also have to acknowledge that it's not just some people having the same experience and a different opinion, we all actually experience the games slightly differently, and that is what largely effects peoples opinion.

It's not just a simple case of some people being misinformed or not understanding the trade off correctly, if you experienced the game like I did, or I experienced it like you did, then our opinions would probably be flipped.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

When talking about higher than your refresh vs. lower, I was thinking in terms of 80 vs 40 FPS. At 300 FPS, you'll have 5-6 tears all the time, causing each tear to be slightly offset from the previous. That said, I personally see it, but I see a lot of people, even professional reviews that act as if there is no visible tearing below 60 FPS, but I think they are not talking about 200+ FPS, and more like 60-100 FPS.

Example:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/16/nvidia_adaptive_vsync_technology_review/#.Ugmw5m2JuCU


I do agree that tearing always happens, but I run into a lot of people that seem to think they aren't getting tearing when their FPS are lower than their refresh rate.

I had an discussion about this with Ubercake on Toms. He had tons of links of even professional sites talking as if tearing only happens at high FPS, and he personally couldn't see it when it was below his refresh rate. I could not find one source but the above that even mentioned tearing at FPS below your refresh rate, and it lead with "technically". That said, there is no way you can have 45 FPS without tearing or uneven frame times, ultimately leaving him rethinking his stance.

Tearing happens at all frame rates, this is just a FACT.

For a CRT you can actually calculate the likely average tear lines you'll see, the screen spends approx 95% of the time scanning and 5% of the time moving the electron gun back to the top of the screen, but for easy maths lets say that 100% of the time is spent refreshing, it just makes the concept of tear-scaling easier to grasp.

If you have a frame rate of 60fps and a refresh of 60hz, but it's not in perfect sync (vsync off) then the border between frames will always be somewhere inside your current refresh, so basically at 60fps@60hz you get 1 tear line per refresh or 60 tears per second.

If you have a frame rate higher than your refresh rate, say 120fps@60hz then you've got 120/60=2 frames for every refresh, which means you're likely to see 2 tear lines per refresh.

If you have a frame rate lower than your refresh rate say 30fps@60 then you've got 30/60=0.5 tears per refresh. What does this mean, well you don't have half a tear per frame you have 1 full tear per 2 frames.

Expressed in it's basic form, the number of tears per second you can expect to see is the frame rate you're running at divided by your refresh rate, frame rate is the numerator which means as it goes up the tearing goes up, refresh rate is the denominator which means as the refresh rate goes up the tearing (per refresh) goes down.

Now I said this is effectively for CRTs because they have a known scan time of about 95% of the total refresh period, however I'm not sure how fast LCDs are...do they take most of the refresh period to scan down the pixels, or is that time much smaller? I'm not actually sure it's hard to find numbers on and may differ from model to model.

The smaller that refresh window is the less impact tearing has, if you're at 60hz for example that's 16.6ms per refresh, but it could be that it only takes the LCD 8ms to scan from top to bottom in which case you'd expect on average to see about half the tearing compared to CRT.

But no matter what that window is (because it's constant) it still means that tearing scales linearly with frame rate, the higher the frame rate the more frequently you tear.

 

[Black Octagon]

^bystander36 said "I do agree that tearing always happens" followed by "but I run into a lot of people that seem to think they aren't getting tearing when their FPS are lower than their refresh rate"

...so I'm not sure what your above post adds to what has already been said. Yes, tearing 'always happens' but isn't it more interesting/relevant to ask at what point tearing becomes noticeable/problematic? As I've already stated, my eyes do not seem to notice the vast majority of tearing, unless it's a really drastic case like the examples on YouTube. Others are more sensitive to is. So pointing out that it 'always happens' is perfectly fine but doesn't help us much with respect to inter-individual differences.

In any case, the phenomenon of screen tearing is only 1 minor question of the OP (an afterthought, in fact) and has been addressed more than enough IMHO

 

[cmdrdredd]

I nearly never notice screen tearing. I game at about 75-118fps on a 120hz screen. Very very sensitive to stutter but not to tearing. Go figure.

No prizes for guessing that I prefer to play with vsync off (though I do use a frame limiter in certain games, e.g., Skyrim)

Skyrim freaks out when the fps goes too high anyway.

 

[Black Octagon]

^Yes, that's the main reason why I use a limiter. But it's the exception to the rule

 

[BrightCandle]

There are three different cases where tears show up but for different reasons:
1) The fps is very close to that of the monitor or a harmonic of it (60 fps, 120 fps, 30fps to a less extent) and that means that the tear line appears in roughly the same place frame to frame. Because its largely static or slowly moving up or down the screen it is much easier to see as it persists over great periods of time and is visible for longer in the same spot. We seem tuned to spot these types of tears.

2) The frame rate is lower and the frames represent bigger jumps in time such that there is a much more noticeable jump between the 2 frames and its on the screen for longer.

3) The higher than screen refresh fps where there are multiple tears on a screen giving you more than 1 opportunity on a screen to see it. If running around say 100 fps on a 60 hz screen you would get 66% more tear lines to spot and hence the game will appear to tear more often.

That actually covers all the possibilities, but I think we spot the tears for different reasons as different rates of fps.

I am largely disappointed that the industry hasn't tried to solve this, scanlines simply aren't necessary anymore. Its a kick back to CRTs that makes them compatible but also hurts modern day image quality and latency in a big way. I would like a standard that goes up to about 240hz, supports 4k and can accept frames as and when they become available but peaking at some amount. It would solve most of these problems.

 

[Black Octagon]

^Thanks. So when people talk about enabling VSync to remove tear type 3 in your list, doesn't that INCREASE the likelihood of seeing tear type 1 in the list?!

 

[Deders]

You don't get any tears with Vsync enabled, and having Triple buffering smooths out the framerates so it doesn't lock at anything except the refresh rate of your monitor.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Triple buffering is supposed to help a wee bit with mouse lag as well.

 

[Black Octagon]

You don't get any tears with Vsync enabled, and having Triple buffering smooths out the framerates so it doesn't lock at anything except the refresh rate of your monitor.

That assumes that your in-game framerate is PERFECTLY matched with your monitor's refresh rate though, right? I.e., enabling Vsync on a 60Hz monitor means that there are 'zero' tears when you have a perfect 60fps...but the reality is that the framerate is not a perfect 60fps unless your rig is powerful enough to guarantee 60fps as the absolute minimum rate in all possible scenarios. Thus in reality, the framerate will sometimes be lower, and when it is, say, in the range of 55-59fps, you get the first type of tearing listed in BrightCandle's post.