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Porsche Monty

Why do I get tearing...

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...in vanilla-oriented source ports such as Chocolate Doom when I disable vsync? I mean, a hypothetical refresh rate equal or higher than 35hz should make it impossible for tearing to occur, granted they're indeed outputting at 35fps, which's vanilla Doom's maximum frame rate. I've gone as far as 120hz and I still get tearing.

It'd seem to me that this is a case of uncapped framerate altered to look like 35fps, but what do I know?

Any hints?

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Try a multiple of 35, like 70 Hz (the only practical one in most cases), on a CRT or a TFT that can actually output 70 Hz without any intermediate processing that should eliminate visible tearing.

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Maes said:

Try a multiple of 35, like 70 Hz (the only practical one in most cases), on a CRT or a TFT that can actually output 70 Hz without any intermediate processing that should eliminate visible tearing.


Happens with any refresh rate (yes 69.8, 70.0, 70.2, etc, they all show tearing). All you get with multiples is stutter-free movement.

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What kind of monitor are you using? Also, since you disabled VSync, drawing is no longer tied to the screen's actual refresh, so you get to see partially drawn frames. In extreme cases you might even see two halves or two percentages of entirely different scenes (e.g. by spinning around very quickly or accessing/closing the menus very quickly).

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Even if the numbers are coincidental, there's no guarantee that the screen isn't updating in the middle of a pass. Only VSYNC does that.

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Why do I get tearing when I turn vsync off?

BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT VSYNC IS FOR

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Not everything that doesn't do vsync under similar scenarios actually shows tearing here, so I thought there could be other forces involved, but I guess with vsync off it's just hit and miss.

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Vsync is what stops tearing. The frames are no longer synchronized to the monitors refresh rate without it, so sometimes you get multiple frames in different parts of the display, which is what we refer to as tearing.

I wish I could find a way to get vsync working on dosbox, for some reason even if I enable it in the .conf or try and force it with the nvidia control panel it doesn't work. Hm.

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Mike.Reiner said:I wish I could find a way to get vsync working on dosbox, for some reason even if I enable it in the .conf or try and force it with the nvidia control panel it doesn't work. Hm. [/B]


Works for me, at least on WinXP with ForceWare 94.24, all I have to do is set the output to "ddraw" and make sure vsync is set to either "Application-controlled" or "On" Don't expect framerate to be as smooth as in real Dos, though.

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Porsche Monty said:

Works for me, at least on WinXP with ForceWare 94.24, all I have to do is set the output to "ddraw" and make sure vsync is set to either "Application-controlled" or "On" Don't expect framerate to be as smooth as in real Dos, though.


I just managed to get vsync working by changing output= to opengl.

Framerates seem fine, I've never had any problems attaining the full 35 FPS in doom through dosbox with my machine.

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What I do is press and hold down any of the turning keys for like 10 secs. If I get any stuttering at 70hz with vsync on, something's not right. DosBox can definitely handle much higher framerates on this machine, I've seen it in action with other games, but the stuttering will still be there, killing the smoothness of the movement every x seconds, and I'm having exactly the same problem with Eternity in -directx mode.

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I remember my old Athlon 64 3200+ couldn't play dosbox without the occasional stutter, but even my old 4200+ X2 plays it fine.

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