In console games, this issue is irrelevant, as they are already fine-tuned for the console. I never see tearing in console games.

For computer games, personally, I always turn this option off. I do not really see ugly tearing that much, and I can cope with it. It doesn't really nag me that much, and to reduce your framerate to sync with your monitor makes your game lag a bit more. It's not a delightful experience with low framerate. I think the end does not justify the mean for me.

So what about you? Do you normally turn this on or off?

Quote: Original post by ionosphere
In console games, this issue is irrelevant, as they are already fine-tuned for the console. I never see tearing in console games.

For computer games, personally, I always turn this option off. I do not really see ugly tearing that much, and I can cope with it. It doesn't really nag me that much, and to reduce your framerate to sync with your monitor makes your game lag a bit more. It's not a delightful experience with low framerate. I think the end does not justify the mean for me.

So what about you? Do you normally turn this on or off?

Personally i just turn up the monitors refreshrate and leave v-sync on, most decent monitors can handle 100hz.

If it's a game where I get a good fps usually, then I'll leave it on.

If I'm getting 29fps, I don't really want vsync dropping me to 20fps to avoid tearing though, so I'd turn it off in those cases.

I don't know if increasing the refresh is going to work on most monitors. A good percentage of the monitors in the wild are LCD and those refresh rates tend to be somewhere between 60-75hz and highend 120hz.

I personally disable Vertical Sync in games that don't use triple buffering along with it. I don't like the idea of my framerate being halved if it doesn't hit some multiple of the refresh rate.

Refresh rate is an issue on CRT type monitors - "old school" type thing with a physicaly moveing electron gun drawing the screen.

Visual tearing isn't a problem on LCD monitors, it draws the entire screen at once with no moveing parts.

Quote: Original post by MSW
Refresh rate is an issue on CRT type monitors - "old school" type thing with a physicaly moveing electron gun drawing the screen.

Visual tearing isn't a problem on LCD monitors, it draws the entire screen at once with no moveing parts.

It is still an issue because of the way the image is transfered to the monitor, if vsync is off the monitor might read some parts of the image from the last frame and some parts from the new frame, thus a tear will appear. LCD monitor can refresh all pixels at once but not the memory holding the image.

Even if LCD:s didn't have tearing, they will display the stuff very choppy because of the "interference" between the LCD refresh and the game refresh.

Quote: Original post by szecs
Even if LCD:s didn't have tearing, they will display the stuff very choppy because of the "interference" between the LCD refresh and the game refresh.

But here's a question for you (you = people of Earth). How come that the films' frame rates don't cause tearing/choppiness? The 24/25/29.97 etc.

Quote: Original post by szecs
How come that the films' frame rates don't cause tearing/choppiness? The 24/25/29.97 etc.

When watching a 24hz film on a 60hz computer with v-sync, every frame will be off by half a screen-refresh (odd 8 ms too short, even 8ms too long), which apparently isn't enough to cause noticeable choppiness. Maybe some people can notice this, I don't know...

An actual film projector basically has v-sync in that it will run at exactly those speeds and only display a full frame (with a mechanical projector tearing would be pretty bad ;)).

Quote: Original post by szecs

Quote: Original post by szecs
Even if LCD:s didn't have tearing, they will display the stuff very choppy because of the "interference" between the LCD refresh and the game refresh.

But here's a question for you (you = people of Earth). How come that the films' frame rates don't cause tearing/choppiness? The 24/25/29.97 etc.

Over here in Europe we tend to use 50Hz TVs and speed up the film to 25fps so each source frame is shown for two successive refreshes (as a whole frame of an interlaced TV image is made up of two fields this works nicely and you get nice smooth playback).

Over in NTSC regions they are less lucky and show 24fps footage on 60Hz displays by showing one source frame for two refreshes and the next frame for three ("2:3 pulldown"). This uneven framerate creates an irritating motion judder effect (most noticeable in smooth pans). As LCD monitors have adopted 60Hz as a standard refresh rate and Blu-ray media stores the film at 24fps the problem has reached PAL/SECAM regions.

My solution is to use ReClock. This software can be set to automatically load with DirectShow media playback software and will adjust the sound output to correct the video framerate (it can also be used to correct the pitch shift on some sped-up recordings). It will automatically run a VBScript file when the mode changes which I use to invoke PowerStrip to set my monitor to 50Hz (PAL), 60Hz (NTSC) or 72Hz (Blu-ray). The result is silky-smooth playback whatever the source format is. [smile]