How can I handle rendering on multiple monitors with differing refresh rates?

Question

What's the best way to deal with a situation that may arise, where a user has two or more monitors with different resolutions and vertical sync intervals?

This would apply when a game has a fixed timestep, and is running in windowed mode: if one monitor has a frame rate of 60.056, and the other has a frame rate of 59.94, vertical sync will ultimately fail to do its job, if the game window is moved from the primary screen to another.

Temporal aliasing will also occur, as the timestep is not properly attuned to the other sync rate. How do games typically deal with this issue, if at all?

@PandaPajama I'm trying to allow the player to move the game window between screens smoothly so that A) no tearing occurs at any point and B) no frames are repeated at any point. I guess logic is independent from that, so I'll reduce the scope of my question to just rendering. — NmdMystery
– NmdMystery, Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 2:10
You will only get repeated frames if your game logic runs slower than your rendering code. At 60 logic fps, on 60.056 graphics fps, in average you will get one repeated frame every 18 seconds. This takes 0.017 seconds, and will most likely be unnoticeable. If you DEFINITELY MUST have no repeated frames, you can have your game logic at a much faster framerate. Say 200fps. You will waste a lot of processing and get lots of dropped frames, but you won't get repeated frames, which seems to be your purpose. — Panda Pajama
– Panda Pajama, Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 2:35
This is of course valid for a world with discrete time steps, which encompasses the vast majority of game code. If you can consistently calculate the state of your game world for an arbitrary time n in less than O(n) complexity (optimally O(1)), then none of what I said applies. Interactive simulations don't tend to work like that though. — Panda Pajama
– Panda Pajama, Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 2:39

Panda Pajama · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-18 07:14:24Z

5

Game logic steps do not have to be synchronized with display logic, even if you're using a fixed timestep.

Consider a gameloop like:

var time_per_step = 1 / 60 -- for 60 -logic- steps per second
var prev_time = get_time() -- in seconds

while true do
    var curr_time = get_time()
    while prev_time < curr_time do
        do_step()
        prev_time = prev_time + time_per_step
        // optional: curr_time = get_time()
    end
    draw()
end

It doesn't really matter how long your draw() calls take. As long as your do_step() takes less than time_per_step, your game logic won't fall behind.

edited Nov 18, 2013 at 7:14

answered Nov 18, 2013 at 7:06

Panda Pajama

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\$\begingroup\$ How about tearing? Is the solution to differing refresh rates up to the vendor, or is there an efficient way to render at the correct time on both screens without experiencing temporal aliasing on one of them? \$\endgroup\$

NmdMystery
– NmdMystery

2013-11-18 17:56:20 +00:00
Commented Nov 18, 2013 at 17:56
\$\begingroup\$ This solution is compatible with vSync. I used 60 logical frame steps per second, but you can pump that up or down as much as you want. \$\endgroup\$

Panda Pajama
– Panda Pajama

2013-11-19 00:08:08 +00:00
Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 0:08
\$\begingroup\$ My point is that with this gameloop, your game logic will always be up to date with the real time clock. As such, if your drawing logic is not exactly in sync with the game logic, this algorithm will repeat or drop frames as needed in order to keep up with the real time clock. Whether this is acceptable or not is up to you to decide \$\endgroup\$

Panda Pajama
– Panda Pajama

2013-11-19 00:59:53 +00:00
Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 0:59
\$\begingroup\$ So I have to choose between repeated frames and tearing, essentially? No other alternatives? \$\endgroup\$

NmdMystery
– NmdMystery

2013-11-19 01:05:54 +00:00
Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 1:05
\$\begingroup\$ Well, but that's by definition. If you want X logic frames per second on Y graphic frames per second, for X != Y, you're either going to have to make logic keep to graphics (repeated and dropped frames) or graphics keep to logic (tearing). The other alternative is force logic to run at graphics speed, which will lead to temporal aliasing. No rocket science here. \$\endgroup\$

Panda Pajama
– Panda Pajama

2013-11-19 01:32:36 +00:00
Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 1:32

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