Page Tear, V-Sync and Other XBox 360 Terms

Good news for gamers: You can now stop blaming your displays for cutting your graphics in half while right in the middle of playing your favorite XBox 360 title. You now have backward compatibility to blame. Before proceeding to the rest of the article, let us start by defining terminologies:

Page Tearing:

Technically:
A phenomenon in computer and video games where a previously rendered frame overlaps a newly rendered frame, creating a torn look as two parts of an object because of the lack of synchronization.

Really:
It is when you’re looking around horizontally in Perfect Dark Zero and you notice an object in the game not lining up.

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Good news for gamers: You can now stop blaming your displays for cutting your graphics in half while right in the middle of playing your favorite XBox 360 title. You now have backward compatibility to blame. Before proceeding to the rest of the article, let us start by defining terminologies:

Page Tearing:

Technically:
A phenomenon in computer and video games where a previously rendered frame overlaps a newly rendered frame, creating a torn look as two parts of an object because of the lack of synchronization.

Really:
It is when you’re looking around horizontally in Perfect Dark Zero and you notice an object in the game not lining up.

Vertical Synchronization Pulse:

Technically:
It indicates when to start a new frame of data. Vertical rates are usually in the 60-85 Hz range, but can go much higher.

Really:
A short delay required between updating the lowest horizontal line of the display and returning to refresh the highest. With VSYNC enabled, you will in theory never exceed 85fps. So the refresh rate creates an artificial barrier that limits frame rate.

Now that we have defined some terms, you’re probably asking why it happens and what can be done about it.

Why:

Game developers usually make use of the vertical blank interval (VBI) to increase the framerate by disabling V-Sync. But even if progressive signals (as well as modern displays) donÂ’t require the V-Sync pulse, it still needs to work as if the V-Sync pulse is there. (At this point you can shout profanities at backwards compatibility.)

Solution:

Chris Satchell, GM of the Game Developer Group at Microsoft, assured gamers that their teams are constantly looking for ways to get the right balance between content, smooth gameplay and visual stability. But keep in mind that some games choose to cut the timing extremely tight to get more into each game frame and if for any reason a frame is not ready for the v-sync they change the frame anyway and will inevitably result to a visual tear. To this Satchell says:

“There isnÂ’t anything I would recommend for consumers that can help alleviate the problem. I think when gamers get their hands on this years 2nd generation Xbox 260 titles they will be blown away with the visual excellence. So my only advice would be; make sure you have an Xbox 360 this holiday.”

Via teamxbox