realbasic-games
[Top] [All Lists]

Ticks and VBL

To: realbasic-games at lists dot realsoftware dot com
Subject: Ticks and VBL
From: "Ken Gish" <kwgnlw at hotmail dot com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 12:45:10 -0400
Delivered-to: realbasic-games at lists dot realsoftware dot com
In my application, I need to synchronize to the vertical blanking (VBL) signal to avoid image tearing and other artifacts caused by the lack of synchronization to the VBL.

I have a very effective solution that uses OpenGL and SuperSpriteSurface (thanks to John Balestrieri for his help configuring SSS to sync to VBL). Although effective, this solution doesn't seem optimal because I have to add on a lot of functions I will never use just to synchronize to VBL. Also, I have to worry about which version of OpenGL is installed and whether or not it will be compatible (by the way, if anyone has a handy link describing OpenGL compatibility on different Mac OSs I would appreciate knowing about it; for example, which versions of OpenGL were installed on all versions of OS X by default, if the ability to use the double-buffering is available on all versions of OpenGL, etc.). This is an even bigger issue on Windows because OpenGL is not installed by default so it has to be distributed and installed with the application.

It seems that a much more elegant solution would simply be to make the ticks function synchronized to the VBL. So, the ticks (1/60 sec, 1/72 sec) would be automatically changed depending on the graphics mode (60 Hz, 72 Hz respectively). That way, I would have the ability to synchronize anything to VBL without requiring OpenGL.

If anyone thinks it is worth pursuing with Apple, please provide me with a way to contact Apple. I hit a couple of dead ends ("you need to contact _____ instead" sorts of messages) on my own trying to contact Apple.


_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>

Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>