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Re: Ticks and VBL

To: REALbasic Games <realbasic-games at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: Re: Ticks and VBL
From: Nick Lockwood <nick at charcoaldesign dot co dot uk>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 22:30:06 +0100
Delivered-to: realbasic-games at lists dot realsoftware dot com
References: <BAY103-F1E223DC5C8FB1787E5853C1D40 at phx dot gbl>
Ken, you aren't by chance using a canvas for all your drawing and just using SSS for synching are you?

If so the synching won't work at all I wouldn't have thought, it only applies to the OpenGL drawing functionality.

If you are actually drawing using the SSS then that's fine, but don't worry about lack of support. As far as I can tell lack of OpenGL support on Windows is simply a myth - Every version of Windows since 95 has come with at least a basic version of OpenGL installed. Also, there are plenty of performance benefits to using OpenGL over RB's built in drawing.

Although last time I checked SSS doesn't actually support Windows yet (am I out of date on that?)

Nick

On 19 Jul 2005, at 17:45, Ken Gish wrote:

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.


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