6 ms·

Out of curiosity, how many of them run at 120 FPS? (honest question - I've never looked into it myself)

by MR4D 2y ago

forgotpwd16 2y ago
This is the first time I see FPS mentioned for a text editor. Is this something that matters or just an pointless metric utilized as selling point?
- SomeRndName11 2y ago
  Well it may have effect on ergonomics. Some people claim they cannot use 60Hz monitor after trying 144hz.
  - NekkoDroid 2y ago
    Well, that is usually refering to some form of "simulated fluid motion", not new characters appearing and disappearing. The only case where that kinda fluid motion would matter is when you have text scrolling by at semi-fast speeds.
    - ffsm8 2y ago
      I count myself among the people that would consider >60hz necessary. For me, it's animations, especially if I'm dragging a window or just the mouse. On 60hz it's nauseating if I'm paying too much attention to the window I'm moving. It's goes completely away around 90-100 Hz (at least for me)
      - LoganDark 2y ago
        I've had the privilege of using a merely 90Hz display and the difference is still incredible. It gives me input feedback much faster so my brain does not have to do as much buffering/prediction, everything feels a lot more direct. One would think a measly 5 milliseconds wouldn't amount to much, but for input feedback it absolutely does. I do not suffer from nausea or motion sickness of any kind arising from computers or visuals in general, but I can still easily tell the difference between a 60Hz and 90Hz display. A few months ago I had the privilege of checking out the 120Hz displays on the new MacBooks and they're amazing.
      - NekkoDroid 2y ago
        I'd still say that draggin a window would count as a "simulated fluid motion". Maybe not something you'd immediatly think of, but its still trying to convey the sense of motion. Just text appearing and dissappearing isn't something I personally could categorize ass the same type of animation. And I also count myself as someone who considers 120 at least necessary (on the primary monitor)
- freqmod 2y ago
  Fps in itself is not important, but it is a substitute for input latency, and if your keystrokes start lagging it feels sluggish. At least historically electron based editors (like atom) has been feeling significantly more sluggish than sublime text or vim with a decent terminal emulator.
  - forgotpwd16 2y ago
    For terminal emulators comparisons at least the metrics used are latency and throughput. Now those plus times to do operations (load file, search & replace, etc) wouldn't surprise me to be the comparison metrics for text editors. FPS though feels weird.
- sunshowers 2y ago
  As far as I can tell, graphics pipelines often use frame buffering. The quicker the next frame can be drawn, the faster it feels.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    GUI apps like text editors don’t redraw frames every update cycle.
adastra22 2y ago
The question doesn’t make sense. They don’t rerender the buffer every frame. I assume zed isn’t doing that either as it would be horribly inefficient. I presume what is meant is that it can handle a redraw fast enough to be in the next frame. In which case the answer is: all of them. Drawing text is not the bottleneck for a GUI program, unless you have a god awful browser stack as your rendering engine.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  > I assume zed isn’t doing that either as it would be horribly inefficient. What are you supposed to do instead? Zed uses the GPU. It's not making calls to retained-mode widgets to individually reposition them, nor is it blitting into a buffer using the CPU. It's using the GPU which eats pixels for breakfast. You've been able to rerender the entire screen each frame for over a decade - just look at Windows 7 Aero, which ran on the laptops of 2009 for the exact same reason: it used the GPU!
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    Rerendering each frame is wasteful because it keeps hardware from reaching deeper power-saving states. This includes the CPU, GPU and even the display, due to technologies such as FreeSync. On modern hardware, even removing the blinking cursor has been found to save quite a bit of power, by eliminating needless screen redraws.
    - justinclift 2y ago
      > ... even removing the blinking cursor has been found to save quite a bit of power, by eliminating needless screen redraws. Hadn't heard of that before, but it makes sense now you mention it. :)
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      Zed only rerenders the window each time it changes (and also for about a second since the last interaction for reasons[0]) but every time it rerenders the window it does rerender the entire window and not just the area that changed. That's what I thought GGP was calling horribly inefficient. [0]: https://zed.dev/blog/120fps https://zed.dev/blog/120fps
jethro_tell 2y ago
Honest question. What could you possibly do with a text editor at 120 fps that you can't do at 15 or 30? I can't think or type that fast and I can't read scroll back that fast either so I can't wrap my head around needing something like that.
- ajross 2y ago
  > Honest question. What could you possibly do with a text editor at 120 fps that you can't do at 15 or 30? More-honest-than-it-should-be answer: sell a product to Apple-ecosystem developers trying desperately to find something to justify the $3k they want to spend on a new MBP. (Typing this very comment in emacs running out of the Linux VM on a mid-range chromebook attached to a 30 Hz 4k television, btw. Come at me, as it were.)
  - jethro_tell 2y ago
    Heh, rocking a self built tmux/vim setup her myself, but even still I don't think I'm so cynical to think the only reason is for the marketing speak. I assume they have a reason, I just can't guess whatnot is.
    - ajross 2y ago
      I'm... absolutely that cynical. 120 Hz displays and the horsepower to drive them are the golden boutique speaker wire of the Gen Z tech set.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        Oh come on. Fancy wires do nothing. 120Hz makes motion much smoother. It also reduces latency. Those make a big difference in many video games, or even just moving my mouse around and having it not skip two inches at a time. Your cynicism over 120Hz should match your cynicism over 4k.
        jethro_tell 2y ago
whazor 2y ago
Chrome supports 120Hz+ https://www.testufo.com/browser.html https://www.testufo.com/browser.html It also seems like you can configure VSCode to go faster: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52230196/vs-code-is-visibly-not-running-over-60fps-on-144hz-monitor https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52230196/vs-code-is-visi... But honestly, 'responsiveness' should come from not blocking the main/UI threads, and rendering in the right order of importance.

Out of curiosity, how many of them run at 120 FPS? (honest question - I've never looked into it myself)

by MR4D 2y ago

Out of curiosity, how many of them run at 120 FPS? (honest question - I've never looked into it myself)

This is the first time I see FPS mentioned for a text editor. Is this something that matters or just an pointless metric utilized as selling point?

SomeRndName11 2y ago
Well it may have effect on ergonomics. Some people claim they cannot use 60Hz monitor after trying 144hz.
- NekkoDroid 2y ago
  Well, that is usually refering to some form of "simulated fluid motion", not new characters appearing and disappearing. The only case where that kinda fluid motion would matter is when you have text scrolling by at semi-fast speeds.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    I count myself among the people that would consider >60hz necessary. For me, it's animations, especially if I'm dragging a window or just the mouse. On 60hz it's nauseating if I'm paying too much attention to the window I'm moving. It's goes completely away around 90-100 Hz (at least for me)
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      I've had the privilege of using a merely 90Hz display and the difference is still incredible. It gives me input feedback much faster so my brain does not have to do as much buffering/prediction, everything feels a lot more direct. One would think a measly 5 milliseconds wouldn't amount to much, but for input feedback it absolutely does. I do not suffer from nausea or motion sickness of any kind arising from computers or visuals in general, but I can still easily tell the difference between a 60Hz and 90Hz display. A few months ago I had the privilege of checking out the 120Hz displays on the new MacBooks and they're amazing.
    - NekkoDroid 2y ago
      I'd still say that draggin a window would count as a "simulated fluid motion". Maybe not something you'd immediatly think of, but its still trying to convey the sense of motion. Just text appearing and dissappearing isn't something I personally could categorize ass the same type of animation. And I also count myself as someone who considers 120 at least necessary (on the primary monitor)
freqmod 2y ago
Fps in itself is not important, but it is a substitute for input latency, and if your keystrokes start lagging it feels sluggish. At least historically electron based editors (like atom) has been feeling significantly more sluggish than sublime text or vim with a decent terminal emulator.
- forgotpwd16 2y ago
  For terminal emulators comparisons at least the metrics used are latency and throughput. Now those plus times to do operations (load file, search & replace, etc) wouldn't surprise me to be the comparison metrics for text editors. FPS though feels weird.
sunshowers 2y ago
As far as I can tell, graphics pipelines often use frame buffering. The quicker the next frame can be drawn, the faster it feels.
- adastra22 2y ago
  GUI apps like text editors don’t redraw frames every update cycle.

adastra22 2y ago

The question doesn’t make sense. They don’t rerender the buffer every frame. I assume zed isn’t doing that either as it would be horribly inefficient. I presume what is meant is that it can handle a redraw fast enough to be in the next frame. In which case the answer is: all of them. Drawing text is not the bottleneck for a GUI program, unless you have a god awful browser stack as your rendering engine.

LoganDark 2y ago
> I assume zed isn’t doing that either as it would be horribly inefficient. What are you supposed to do instead? Zed uses the GPU. It's not making calls to retained-mode widgets to individually reposition them, nor is it blitting into a buffer using the CPU. It's using the GPU which eats pixels for breakfast. You've been able to rerender the entire screen each frame for over a decade - just look at Windows 7 Aero, which ran on the laptops of 2009 for the exact same reason: it used the GPU!
- zozbot234 2y ago
  Rerendering each frame is wasteful because it keeps hardware from reaching deeper power-saving states. This includes the CPU, GPU and even the display, due to technologies such as FreeSync. On modern hardware, even removing the blinking cursor has been found to save quite a bit of power, by eliminating needless screen redraws.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    > ... even removing the blinking cursor has been found to save quite a bit of power, by eliminating needless screen redraws. Hadn't heard of that before, but it makes sense now you mention it. :)
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    Zed only rerenders the window each time it changes (and also for about a second since the last interaction for reasons[0]) but every time it rerenders the window it does rerender the entire window and not just the area that changed. That's what I thought GGP was calling horribly inefficient. [0]: https://zed.dev/blog/120fps https://zed.dev/blog/120fps

jethro_tell 2y ago

Honest question. What could you possibly do with a text editor at 120 fps that you can't do at 15 or 30? I can't think or type that fast and I can't read scroll back that fast either so I can't wrap my head around needing something like that.

ajross 2y ago
> Honest question. What could you possibly do with a text editor at 120 fps that you can't do at 15 or 30? More-honest-than-it-should-be answer: sell a product to Apple-ecosystem developers trying desperately to find something to justify the $3k they want to spend on a new MBP. (Typing this very comment in emacs running out of the Linux VM on a mid-range chromebook attached to a 30 Hz 4k television, btw. Come at me, as it were.)
- jethro_tell 2y ago
  Heh, rocking a self built tmux/vim setup her myself, but even still I don't think I'm so cynical to think the only reason is for the marketing speak. I assume they have a reason, I just can't guess whatnot is.
  - ajross 2y ago
    I'm... absolutely that cynical. 120 Hz displays and the horsepower to drive them are the golden boutique speaker wire of the Gen Z tech set.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      Oh come on. Fancy wires do nothing. 120Hz makes motion much smoother. It also reduces latency. Those make a big difference in many video games, or even just moving my mouse around and having it not skip two inches at a time. Your cynicism over 120Hz should match your cynicism over 4k.
      - jethro_tell 2y ago

whazor 2y ago

Chrome supports 120Hz+ https://www.testufo.com/browser.html https://www.testufo.com/browser.html It also seems like you can configure VSCode to go faster: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52230196/vs-code-is-visibly-not-running-over-60fps-on-144hz-monitor https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52230196/vs-code-is-visi... But honestly, 'responsiveness' should come from not blocking the main/UI threads, and rendering in the right order of importance.