It's about time more developers did this ( Tripple Buffering )

Neil79

Neil79

Neil79

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For some of us , Vsync+tripple buffering in game graphic options (D3D) is a god send :D:D , thus it can be done more developers should do it!

Tripple buffer in standard display driver options are opengl only btw :)
 
Memphis said:
You're gonna have to explain why it's important :).
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awww do i have to :(

Triple buffer is used to obtain the most smooth performance without interrupt in the flow of video data.
Yes, it takes a little more resources, but it worths the price, expecially on medium-high cards.
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A video buffer consists of a memory allocation for the information that is drawn to the screen. The first buffer is what is actually drawn to the screen, a second and third buffer are used to create a workspace to draw to that doesn't require synchronization to the vertical retrace of the monitor.

Tripple buffering allows the advantages of a double buffer, where the program has a buffer to draw on that is not dependent on the retrace, but adds the additional advantage of being able to draw to the third buffer while the second buffer is waiting to flip to the front of the screen.
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- vsync off, some tearing on your monitor that can be mostly fixed by increasing the refresh rate of your monitor (barely noticable on 85hz), and almost no delay.
- vsync is on and double buffering is used, the engine won't compute frames at max rate (you can easilly lose 10-30fps, although it depends how fast frames are computed in the first place), and you get a little more delay than with vsync off (not much).
- vsync on, and triple buffering is used, you get the most framerate out of the engine (capped by the refresh rate of your monitor), but you can get some delays.
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Stereoscopic drivers user something called VSYNC. VSYNC synchronizes your videocard with the monitor's refresh rate (the number of times a new frame is displayed on the screen).

VSYNC is normally used to prevent visual tearing when your monitor can't keep up with the videocard, but for stereoscopic purposes, it gets your screen to display alternating frames with perfect timing.

The problem with VSYNC is that if your videocard can't keep up, the game's framerate drops, and you get chunky game play.

Triple Buffering adds an extra buffer - breathing room - for your videocard to catch up.
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MUCH MORE INFO

Have you ever being in a situation where you enable v-sync to get rid of annoying image tearing, but only found out it killed your frame rate? We know v-sync caps your maximum frame rate at your screen refresh rate, which is 60 time per second for common LCD monitors. Actually playing games at 60 fps is not bad and it should provide a smooth gaming experience. However, you sometimes find the frame rate strangely capped at 30fps as soon as it drops below 60fps. At this point you probably start screaming "OMG! tearing sucks, and v-sync sucks no less!!!". It's not v-syncs fault all alone, usually it's the combination of the images being rendered using double buffering with v-sync enabled. So you asked why is double buffering evil? Basically there are two buffers in the graphics hardware, the image you seeing on the monitor is in the front buffer and the next rendered frame is in the back buffer. Since we have v-sync enabled, before the graphics hardware can swap the front and the back buffer, it needs to wait for the next vertical blank period (happens every 1/60th seconds on monitors with refresh rate 60Hz) to maintain synchronization with the monitor's refresh rate. This works fine when the graphics card can render frames faster than 60fps. If all of this makes sense to you, perhaps you can imagine what happens when the graphics card is unable to bump 60 frames per second. When that happens, the graphics card is unable to make the buffer swap because the next frame is not ready in the back buffer and it'll have to wait for the next vertical blank period to make the swap. The end result is that instead of swapping buffers 60 times per second, it's only swapping the buffer 30 times a second, and that's the reason why frame rate is capped at 30fps.

This is where triple buffering comes into play. With triple buffering enabled, now we have 3 buffers and the graphics hardware can start rendering into the 3rd buffer without having to wait for the front buffer gets swapped out. Let's just say it helps maintaining frame rate when v-sync is enabled. Both ATi and nVidia provide an option to enable triple buffering in their drivers. Unfortunately it's only half right, the triple buffering option in their drivers only have effect in OpenGL games. Considering the numbers of OpenGL games is largely inferior to D3D games, it's even less than half right.
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:D:D
 
blix said:
I just turn v-sync off. All it does is give me mouse lag.
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Some games have terrible tearing , not all but some... it would be nice to give us the option of it if we want to. I've been playing with left 4 dead and the above options with increased mouse sensitivity and its perfect no mouse lag at all.
 
Triple buffering is horrible I don't see how it's a godsend, you just get mouse lag. I almost always disable vysnc.
 
dbmzk1 said:
Triple buffering is horrible I don't see how it's a godsend, you just get mouse lag. I almost always disable vysnc.
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Don't have any problems with mouse lag , played 5hrs of left 4 dead and came second place each time ( not bragging just stating a point ) :)
 
At the end of the day its a toss up between the posibiloty of mouse lag and massive tearing on my TFT screen....

Id take tripple buffering and the posibility of lag any day!
 
Skeeter said:
At the end of the day its a toss up between the posibiloty of mouse lag and massive tearing on my TFT screen....

Id take tripple buffering and the posibility of lag any day!
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Tbh, people can just try it and then decide - not trying it because it 'might' cause mouse lag is a bit silly really.
 
I generally get mouse lag with Vsync and triple buffering.

To get rid of the majority of tearing and get a little less mouse lag I've altered the "Flip Queue Size" in ATI Tray Tool.

I read something about it whilst trying to get rid of the mouse lag in Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 without Vsync on gives me random speed up but no mouse lag
Fallout 3 with Vsync on gives me bad mouse lag
Fallout 3 with a Vsync off and the Flip queue size set to 2 gives me a very small amount of mouse lag and no screen tearing.
 
Vsync tends to kill my performance. Never notice screen tear unless i really really focus on it and look for it.
 
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