5 ms·

It used to be the norm in game development to sync with the refresh rate of the CRT.

CamperBob2 7y ago
But at least you had a frame buffer to handle those few cases in any given game where you weren't quite fast enough, or where the OS goes out to lunch briefly. Talisman was a pretty goofy idea in retrospect (and seemed goofy to me at the time as well.) Completely non-scalable. It was an exercise in optimizing things that were already fast, which is the last thing you want to do in game development where you're going to be judged on your slowest frames.
deathanatos 7y ago
Is it not still the norm? (Though, with an LCD screen of course, not with a CRT.) Many of my games include some form of vsync option, I think. (E.g., Factorio calls it "Wait for VSync", 7 Days to Die "VSync", Zandronum (a modern Doom port) "Vertical Sync"). My understanding was that it was a trade-off between smooth graphics at the display's framerate, or a faster framerate with potential tearing (on-screen artifact). With it off, you'll "see" something as soon as the currently rendering frame renders a pixel containing whatever is relevant. But with Vsync on, you'd need to wait until the next frame renders (and for it to hit a relevant pixel), introducing a slight delay, and tearing when the new frame overwrites the old frame at the point where the display is currently "drawing"/displaying. (Though it does seem like it is defaulted to "off". It's my understanding the pro gamers like the lower latency over the visual artifacting.)
- aidenn0 7y ago
  This is not the norm; wait for vsync means the frame will be displayed during the vblank; if it takes you 6 frames to draw, then you have a frozen image for 6 frames. GP was talking about rendering each frame in lockstep with the vertical refresh; there is no option to wait, you will instead get a partially drawn frame (TFA mentions the runway disappearing in flightsims; that's a common artifact because much of the geometric complexity was on the ground, so when you are landing, the complexity would spike, the engine would lag behind and some things just wouldn't get drawn in time).

But at least you had a frame buffer to handle those few cases in any given game where you weren't quite fast enough, or where the OS goes out to lunch briefly. Talisman was a pretty goofy idea in retrospect (and seemed goofy to me at the time as well.) Completely non-scalable. It was an exercise in optimizing things that were already fast, which is the last thing you want to do in game development where you're going to be judged on your slowest frames.

deathanatos 7y ago

Is it not still the norm? (Though, with an LCD screen of course, not with a CRT.) Many of my games include some form of vsync option, I think. (E.g., Factorio calls it "Wait for VSync", 7 Days to Die "VSync", Zandronum (a modern Doom port) "Vertical Sync"). My understanding was that it was a trade-off between smooth graphics at the display's framerate, or a faster framerate with potential tearing (on-screen artifact). With it off, you'll "see" something as soon as the currently rendering frame renders a pixel containing whatever is relevant. But with Vsync on, you'd need to wait until the next frame renders (and for it to hit a relevant pixel), introducing a slight delay, and tearing when the new frame overwrites the old frame at the point where the display is currently "drawing"/displaying. (Though it does seem like it is defaulted to "off". It's my understanding the pro gamers like the lower latency over the visual artifacting.)

aidenn0 7y ago
This is not the norm; wait for vsync means the frame will be displayed during the vblank; if it takes you 6 frames to draw, then you have a frozen image for 6 frames. GP was talking about rendering each frame in lockstep with the vertical refresh; there is no option to wait, you will instead get a partially drawn frame (TFA mentions the runway disappearing in flightsims; that's a common artifact because much of the geometric complexity was on the ground, so when you are landing, the complexity would spike, the engine would lag behind and some things just wouldn't get drawn in time).