Question about Tile Rendering

[Xmas]

Hmm, I thought if you disabled vsync you only needed a single buffer since you're just drawing/updating the image as its ready. I've even seen it hypothesized that with LCD tech and the right driving controller, only part of the image has to be redrawn (and thus the data resent) rather than following the typical scanline method of redrawing from top to bottom. (perhaps the gameboys or the nintendo ds can operate in this way?)

On an IMR you need double buffering because, during rendering, the backbuffer may contain surfaces that are not visible in the final image.

With LCD technology it is possible to use the LCD itself as the front buffer and copy the back buffer to it on demand, rather than having a fixed refresh rate.
Partial updates for 3D graphics, however, only really make sense in the context of a TBDR that uses the LCD as the single frame buffer, or a large opaque HUD.

 

[Acert93]

Personally I've always hated tearing, but I can see where disabling Vsync is an attractive option if your regularly just over 1 frame, or you have intermitent spikes.

Not a big fan of tearing myself (although I can ignore it well enough). I have not played GRAW, it seems they found a nice "compromise" for a potentially ugly situation: enable/disable based upon need. In a perfect world we would not need this, but it seems Ubi did their best to prevent tearing as much as possible. I hope other devs take note and if they have to disable Vsync they do so selectively and not universally. Of course I think the reverse will be the norm, but we can hope :/