Mesa 23.3 Lands Optional Support For Allowing Game Tearing On Wayland

Merged for Mesa 23.3 today is the Vulkan windowing system integration (WSI) to allow for the "PresentOptionAsyncMayTear" option that can be used to enable tearing under (X)Wayland if desiring peak performance at the cost of possible imperfect rendering.

The ten month old merge request by Xaver Hugl to support PresentOptionAsyncMayTear within Mesa's Vulkan WSI code was finally merged on Monday. From the Xorg protocol spec:

"PresentCapabilityAsyncMayTear means that the target device may be able to flip the scanout buffer mid-frame instead of waiting for a vertical blank interval. The precise latency between the flip request and the actual scanout transition is not defined by this specification, but is intended to be no more than a few scanlines."

With the 21 lines of new code and an updated XCB, it's possible to enable tearing under XWayland for games if not being concerned about rendering perfection rather than the Vulkan "mailbox" presentation box.

More details for those interested via the merge request.