I'm guessing this actually potentially tears on all cards but you don't notice due to the sheer speed on some systems.p
Yeah, if you mean that some cards/CPUs? are able to blit the backbuffer onto Windows whilst the scanline is still off-screen, and others are too slow, thus resulting in a visible scanline tear, you are correct. However, other complications are the fact that some cards' drivers simply can't return decent info to allow a VSync in the first place. I'm just trying to find out how wide spread the problem is.Also what's best?
a) Some cards being 100% fine and others having a fixed tear
or
b) using flip 0 so all cards have random tearing.
Question: Does random tearing look "better" than a tear in a fixed place i.e. because is less persistent and annoying? If so I might have to ditch the Vsync code and just do with flip 0 in windowed mode, lame hey... Also the same applies to full-screen as some people are getting tearing even with Flip -1! So maybe I should just make things flip 0 all across the board (like OEJs last demo) so that everyone gets a consistently bad display instead of some elite few having a perfect display and others having a dire one.
I really need some kind of large survey about "normal people's" PCs so that I can decide on the solution that benefits the most by working out the ratio of elite versus bad. I could then possibly start with Flip 0, and have an option called "VSync" which switches on the advanced stuff and will either make it better or worse on some systems. I just know that most casual users won't check this ... What does everyone else think?