Why Don't Devs All Enable Vsync?

Zoglog

Zoglog

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Anyone else getting tearing in certain games like Ghost recon and especially in saints row? It seems some devs dont have vsync enabled.
 
[quote name='Zoglog']Anyone else getting tearing in certain games like Ghost recon and especially in saints row? It seems some devs dont have vsync enabled.[/quote]

Sometimes it's a performance issue. Some games have trouble with maintaining a suitable consistent frame rate with V-Sync on. I'm not sure if that was the reason in those games, but it might be what's going on.
 
the tearing seems to happen less on CRTs than flat panels. Weird, but at AVSforums everyone thinks it's because of Vsync which would make sense. But yeah, oh well.
 
[quote name='shipwreck']Sometimes it's a performance issue. Some games have trouble with maintaining a suitable consistent frame rate with V-Sync on. I'm not sure if that was the reason in those games, but it might be what's going on.[/QUOTE]

Truth. This is exactly why Saints Row didn't turn it on. They wanted 60 FPS consistently and the only way they could do it is with V-Sync off, or so the dev's say.
 
Yes, VSync keeps to factors of the panel's native refresh rate, so like 12/15/20/30/60 fps. This means that often the outputted fps could be less than what is possible with the console hardware, just to accomodate the screen refresh speed, so to provide better performance/smoother gameplay, they disable vsync to prevent these unneeded fps drops. I feel it's a decent tradeoff, but perhaps they should have just provided the option to go either way.
 
The lack of V-sync in Metal Arms and Simpsons: Hit and Run on the XBox killed those games for me. Especially Metal Arms- there was so much image tearing so often that it gave me headaches. I wish developers would at least give you the option to turn it on if you wanted (noting a potential frame rate penalty) like in most PC games.
 
Here's info posted in the Saints Row Forums under the Official Q&A:

http://developer.saintsrow.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2368

Numerous Questions Regarding V-Sync:
V-Scourge: SR does not use v-sync, either in the demo or the full game. During development we analyzed the issue and concluded the potential framerate hit with v-sync was too severe for our particular title.

To explain the pros/cons a bit more... If v-sync is enabled, the framerate of any game is limited to certain values. It must be an integer that divides evenly into the output device's refresh rate.

In most cases, the TV/monitor in question is running at 60Hz. That means the game's framerate is limited to 60, 30, 20, 15, 12, 10 (and so on) frames-per-second.

So if the game would normally be running at 29 FPS, turning v-sync on would force it down to 20 FPS, almost a 30% hit. Likewise, if the game is running at 35 or 40 FPS (or anything below 60.0), it would be forced down to 30 FPS with v-sync enabled.

We felt this was too big of a price to pay for our particular game, and some screen shearing/tearing in rare situations was a worthwhile trade-off.

We have contacted a few players that have reported more common screen tearing than we observed in the demo, mainly to get more information about their hardware configuration. While it's most likely beyond the control of the game software, if we find any configuration changes that help, we'll certainly share the tips with everyone.

Regardless, any tearing should be improved across the board for everyone in the full game, due to the overall framerate optimizations that were made after the demo build.
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[quote name='Zoglog']Anyone else getting tearing in certain games like Ghost recon and especially in saints row? It seems some devs dont have vsync enabled.[/QUOTE]

Disabling vsync results in major gains in framerate and smoothness in games (both on the PC and on consoles). Therefore, it is likely the dev had to choose between enabling vsync and having crap framerate, or disabling vsync and having a good framerate. Most would pick tearing over choppiness.

I wish the devs disabled vsync on 360's Quake 4, for example. That game has such a sluggish framerate yet the lack of tearing indicates they left vsync enabled - big mistake.
 
Yeah. I was talking to a guy who is a tester for THQ and he was joking that they hoped no one would notice.

But the game is fine...the weird pop-in/out is kind of wonky sometimes, but it's not enough to hurt my enjoyment of the game.
 
[quote name='epobirs']They might be Mormons. Vsync is avoided by devout Mormons like caffeine.[/QUOTE]

I expected you to chime in on this topic. However, that was not the type of response I had anticipated. Way to keep us guessing, epobirs...if that is your REAL name!
 
[quote name='KaneRobot']Yeah. I was talking to a guy who is a tester for THQ and he was joking that they hoped no one would notice.

But the game is fine...the weird pop-in/out is kind of wonky sometimes, but it's not enough to hurt my enjoyment of the game.[/QUOTE]

Yea... I loved the game, but it had a shit ton of glitches / bugs in it.
 
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