Mesa 23.3 Lands Optional Support For Allowing Game Tearing On Wayland

[geearf]

That really depends on a use-case. If you watch video, edit your spreadsheets or scroll through web pages you probably don't want to see any tearing and it's reasonable to drop frames that didn't make it for the vblank cycle. With games it's a little different, because waiting for vblank introduces latency. Not every gamer is e-sport player and in fact most of the time people keep vsync enabled to match with the refresh rate, but it's about the choice. If your hardware cannot push 60fps and you're on 60Hz screen, the choice is between tearing and stutter. It's perfectly fine unless you, as user, can decide for one option or another on compositor level. Forcing something that's effectively a global v-sync wasn't ever a good idea for that particular use, but it's great for most things.

The problem with looking at it like that is that "better quality" is subjective. To one person it means perfect frames and to another person it's faster frames. While most people will want perfect frames that look nice, faster frames can be good for things like testing, benchmarking, competitive gaming, and lower input latency.

Tearing and unplayable also depends on your hardware and in-game settings. If you're able to get greater than 60 FPS, you can turn off vsync and enable tearing to get lower input latency. If you're unable to get a steady 60 FPS, like it dips down to 45-50 in that one part of the level but the rest of the time it's normally fine, sometimes you don't want to be hit with 33ms of lag when sub-60 v sync occurs, because that is noticeable, turning on tearing is an alternative to latency/FPS jumping between 33ms/30FPS and 16ms/60FPS.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the explanation!

Some people want low reaction times you know, because we aren't all grannies playing turn-based games.

That comment was really not needed...

[kurkosdr]

Microsoft did the same with their new (well, by now not very new) DX12 presentation model. Always perfect frames. Then game devs made them realize what a dumb mistake that was and introduced a tearing mode later on. The way it works now on Windows is that the application cannot override user preference. If the user wants every frame to be synced, they force it in the driver control panel. The game is unable to tear. If the user wants to game to control whether or not it tears, they set the option to "application preference." It's not rocket science.

Not all gamers, just the people who want to get every last FPS out of their GPUs. Some of us prefer to dial down the graphics settings a bit than have unsightly half-frames overlayed on top of other frames (which takes away all the prettiness of the graphics). Maybe if you play competitively you need vsync off, and only if you have a low-spec system, which is a rare case.

And the concept of turning off vsync itself is becoming obsolete due to the prevalence of variable-refresh rate. Of course X apps don't do VRR, so they might need still need to disable vsync.

[kurkosdr]

The one promise of Wayland to never show imperfect frames... broken.

I expected this moronic comment, I wasn't disappoint. Yes, despite the fact the article makes sure to clarify it's an optional mode for apps running on XWayland.

There is a difference between disabling VSync on purpose to get extra FPS in some games and not having consistent VSync support (which was highly embarrassing for Desktop Linux, considering even Windows 95 had it).

[Weasel]

What makes no tearing a dumb mistake? Isn't better quality a good thing? Or does it potentially make a game unplayable when it could be playable with tearing?

Massively increases input lag. Some people want low reaction times you know, because we aren't all grannies playing turn-based games.

[Weasel]

The one promise of Wayland to never show imperfect frames... broken.

They could have focused their efforts into making triple buffering work really well, as well as dynamic refresh such as freesync.

But no, they instead settle for the usual mediocrity.

Triple buffering? That massively increases input lag.

God damn console peasants.

[Errinwright]

The one promise of Wayland to never show imperfect frames... broken.

They could have focused their efforts into making triple buffering work really well, as well as dynamic refresh such as freesync.

But no, they instead settle for the usual mediocrity.

This is an asinine take on the concept of tearing in gaming. Furthermore, feature addition does not dictate your personalized use-case.

[NEOalquimista]

There's a noticeable delay when playing CS:GO on Wayland, which does not happen on Xorg. It used to be much worse, but has improved over time. This change should now put an end to the problem and make Wayland great for competitive gaming.

[shmerl]

But this is not that.... this is allowing for someone else (the game developers) to break my frames on my computer. It would be a different thing, if there were a user switch to allow/disallow it. But as it is now, this extension allows a thirdparty to break my frames.

You are wrong. It allows frames to break when you enable such setting on the compositor side. If it's disabled, it won't break. So it only gives more control to the user which is a good thing.

[skeevy420]

What makes no tearing a dumb mistake? Isn't better quality a good thing? Or does it potentially make a game unplayable when it could be playable with tearing?

The problem with looking at it like that is that "better quality" is subjective. To one person it means perfect frames and to another person it's faster frames. While most people will want perfect frames that look nice, faster frames can be good for things like testing, benchmarking, competitive gaming, and lower input latency.

Tearing and unplayable also depends on your hardware and in-game settings. If you're able to get greater than 60 FPS, you can turn off vsync and enable tearing to get lower input latency. If you're unable to get a steady 60 FPS, like it dips down to 45-50 in that one part of the level but the rest of the time it's normally fine, sometimes you don't want to be hit with 33ms of lag when sub-60 v sync occurs, because that is noticeable, turning on tearing is an alternative to latency/FPS jumping between 33ms/30FPS and 16ms/60FPS.

[schmidtbag]

The one promise of Wayland to never show imperfect frames... broken.

They could have focused their efforts into making triple buffering work really well, as well as dynamic refresh such as freesync.

But no, they instead settle for the usual mediocrity.

The things Wayland haters will say amuses me. This is a small adjustment for those willing to deal with tearing for the sake of improved display latency. It was practically a freebie. Wow! How mediocre! What next, you're going to complain about S3 graphics getting proper Wayland support?
Also... variable refresh rate for Wayland already works. Perhaps not every DE has it, but some do. And, GNOME 44 is supposed to support triple-buffering with Wayland.