Texture tearing

loltim

loltim

loltim

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I'm guessing you guys with top end graphics cards aren't using vsync as that'd cap the FPS to 60?

I just bought a Iiyama 2207 and cod2 is unplayable without vysnc, but I might aswell put my 2900XT back in if i'm capped to 60FPS? (have a GTX285).

Do the top end LCD's suffer from less tearing? Are TN panels worse for tearing?
 
It's more down to the way the card draws the frame, rather than the screen. I think even the expensive screens suffer from it. My old CRT used to get it aswell. Not much you can do really. You'd still be better off with the 285, if your card was only drawing 60fps ish, and it slips to say 59, it would have to briefly cap itself to the next whole fraction of 60, so 30fps. Random jumps in framerate suck.
 
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Yeah TB works well in some cases but can often make inputs feel quite slow.

In competitive games, you just have to put up with tearing though, especially if you have a refresh of 60hz.
 
TB works but it's still glitchy. For example if you stand next to a white wall and move side to side, the whole screen flickers :\
 
What are my options?

Get a monitor with a higher refresh rate? Most monitors these days have the same TN panel I have anyway, i'm confused as to why I cannot game without vsync:(

I've got an RMA number for the Iiyama as this was the last day I could return it if I wasn't happy (7 day distance selling act). Do I just keep it? Do I replace it with a Samsung? What screens are you guys using with no issues gaming without vsync?
 
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Enable vsync and enjoy it! With vsync you get 1 frame of latency so at 60Hz it's ~16ms.

Serious gamers learn to "ignore" the tearing with vsync off because all they care about is their reaction time and the almost instant "feel" of the game as well as some games are generally regarded as being "best" at 100fps or 100fps or whatever. If you are one of those serious gamers you'll have to train your mind to "ignore" the tearing. Gaming at the top isn't really about the visuals or reaction times anyway, it's a state of mind, but of course that 16ms delay will lower your skill peak unless you compensate for it.

Back in the days when I was a serious gamer, I wrote my own vsync program in linux and it effectively produced 0ms visual latency with the added benefit of the "tearing" being in the same place right at the top of the screen but that's a bit extreme and I doubt anyone would go to such trouble anymore.

Eventually I came to understand that a player who has intentions of reaching the top must do so by becoming used to whatever settings (obviously as optimal as possible but it's not critical to have everything optimal) and reaching the point where almost everything in the game is auto pilot without having to think/care about what settings are in use. Like I said above it's a state of mind more than anything else.
 
Tim said:
What are my options?

Get a monitor with a higher refresh rate? Most monitors these days have the same TN panel I have anyway, i'm confused as to why I cannot game without vsync:(

I've got an RMA number for the Iiyama as this was the last day I could return it if I wasn't happy (7 day distance selling act). Do I just keep it? Do I replace it with a Samsung? What screens are you guys using with no issues gaming without vsync?
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The only way to get the best of both worlds (not incurr the lag of v-sync) is to wait for true 120hz LCD monitors to be released. i don't know why tearing occurs, but i do know that the higher your frame rate and refresh, the less it is noticable. As all LCD's currently work at 60hz, it's really quite bad, but once 120hz ones turn up it will be significantly improved, probably enough for you to no longer care about it.

aside from this there is no way round it really :/
 
neologan said:
The only way to get the best of both worlds (not incurr the lag of v-sync) is to wait for true 120hz LCD monitors to be released. i don't know why tearing occurs, but i do know that the higher your frame rate and refresh, the less it is noticable. As all LCD's currently work at 60hz, it's really quite bad, but once 120hz ones turn up it will be significantly improved, probably enough for you to no longer care about it.

aside from this there is no way round it really :/
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Without vsync even with 120 Hz TFT monitors the tearing problem will still exist. There are CRT monitors capable of 200 Hz so it's not difficult to find out and I know from past research the tearing still occurs even at 200 Hz.

The problem is that without vsync the graphics card instructs the monitor to update it's display regardless of how much of the previous update has been displayed. For example say the monitor has displayed half of the previous frame and is then told to start displaying the next frame, on completion the screen will contain the top half of the previous frame and the bottom half of the current frame and the tear will be in the middle of the screen.

The only solution at the time for CRTs was to sample input and render the frame in the time it takes the monitor to do it's vertical retrace or as fast as is possible and hope it does it fast enough where the tearing is invisible or visible but as close as possible to the top of the screen. When I did it I was playing a game that had been out for about a long time so it was possible to mostly sample input and render the frame in less than 1 millisecond thanks to the speed of the hardware available at that time.

It's very unlikely anyone is working on a tearing solution especially because there will always be the problem of how long it takes a game to sample input and render the current frame. Games use more and more power so there is little chance of getting the frametime down to less than 1ms like I did unless of course you are playing a 5 or 10 year old game. So for modern/current games it's pretty much never going to happen so vsync has to be the solution.

Which brings us to the perfect solution from a programmers and serious gamers perspective for todays games and that would be to create a game with vsync in mind. The visuals would be locked at 60 Hz (because mainstream TFTs do 60 Hz) while internally running the mechanics of the game at 1000 Hz (1ms) but game developers are unlikely to even contemplate such a thing although I guess I should never say never so you never know. Of course for it to work consistently, the game would be designed in such a way that they can almost guarentee (meaning 99% of the time) the current frame will take no longer than ~16ms to render.

John Carmack was on the right track when he attempted to lock his newer games at 60 Hz to cure the old Q3 sampling problems but he was more about making the physics etc consistent instead of providing an optimal solution for serious gamers. I wouldn't imagine he cares about the benefits of sampling the game mechanics at 1000 Hz but again you never know. :)
 
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention a crucial ingredient in the game design. It has to play fast and many serious gamers will know that makes sense because the opposite is a slow game that "feels" like you are playing under water.

It should be as fast as the serious gamers want it to be and of course with 1000 Hz game mechanics the gamers will have optimal accuracy. It's likely a game designed in this way would be the most exciting intense game ever made regardless that the rendering is limited to 60 Hz and the gamer has vsync enabled. :)
 
nice info :)

should have added that along with the 120hz panel, you would need the same or higher frame rate to go with it. It will help a lot if a game that suffered with bad tearing at 60hz could be run on a 120hz TFT with a constant 120fps, but as you correctly point out, new games won't really allow this until the hardware catches up, hence why you might still have to wait a year or so to reap the benefits.
 
RMA'd the Iiyama and went for the Samsung 2343BW for 1080p etc.. Tearing is the same, possibly slightly better..

I guess it's just simply the fast game types that suffer. You need more than 60FPS in FPS type games.. hmmm, i'd be tempted to go back to my old CRT if I didn't care about my eyes!! :(
 
there is a new Samsung 22" that's 120hz, and so far people are saying its WAY better for gaming than any other TFT. As of yet they aren't selling it on it's own though, but this is the sort of TFT you'd probably get on well with - 120hz ones.

if i didn't explain proprly already, what i'm saying is that a 120hz screen offers 120 fps, which is why it'll be so much better (if your gpu can keep up!)
 
Interesting!

I'm just a bit miffed why no-one else who plays CoD2 with me gets tearing, all on various types of LCD with no vysnc.

Shame that 120hz Samsung doesn't look as good as my 2343BW but it's definitely a step in the right direction.
 
Well one thing to keep in mind is, your eyes get "used" to things. If you sit and stare at a 120hz crt all day, then change to a 60hz screen your eyes would have become accustomed to 120hz. You should notice over time of only using a 60hz panel that you'll become more accustomed to it, you'll slowly adapt to it and find it much better.

As with most things you get used to them, i've been using lcd's for ages, but the first time I got one I dumped one of my crt's(a 23" behemoth) and kept my illyama 120hz 1600x1200 screen. The big issue I had is because I was looking over at my crt for watching film while playing games, I wasn't really adjusting to 60hz lcd's and I found my eyes started to find both screens horrible. AS while i was used to the llyama, all the time I spent on the lcd made me not used to either anymore. The crt flicker/eye strain hurt and the 60hz lcd strained my eyes in games.

When I finally got a 2nd lcd and ditched the crt, slowly I got more used to lcd's without ever using crt's anymore. Such is life, you can adapt to most things as long as you generally stay using the same thing.


its also worth bearing in mind that if you get a high quality panel with a high quality vga input(lots of cheaper screens use very cheap vga connector and conversion chips so vga looks crap, while a super high quality shielded vga cable and good screen for it can look as good as DVI), as VGA you can often on many screens run at 75hz. Only dvi is limited to 60hz in general. But often you get so much interference and so often crappy quality vga inputs, that the picture looks horrible compared to dvi. I just wish someone was out there making fantastic thick ultra shielded cables and were testing which screens had equal quality vga to dvi. Ok, its still not 120hz, but its a pretty big improvement.
 
Nah I can't handle the tearing, I've tried, with both an Iiyama and a Samsung 60hz TN panel.

What 120hz monitors are out there? I think this is my only option.
 
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a samsung and eventually a viewsonic for now, the sammy is available, but afaik really only in the states and is only available bundled with the extra $200 worth of nvidia 3d goggles so you can't really get it cheap, unless you want the goggles aswell which will limit you to 60hz when using them.

Supposedly an extra few months before they are due here, and I'm sceptical at best about how good they will be.
 
I'll admit to being a nerd but i'm not playing my PC with goggles on.

hmm, dunno whether to send the Samsung back and go back to a CRT until 120hz LCD's are more common.
 
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