What about VRR?

[QuickRat]

Hi!

As many of you are aware, not every single game on earth used the same 60Hz standard.

As a matter of fact, PAL games used 50Hz until Dreamcast arrived with its PAL60. Many handhelds use some weird refresh rates, such as GBA’s 59.7275Hz. This happened also in lots of arcade titles, such as Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, which used to run at ~59.7Hz.

Furthermore, many games suffered strange graphic flaws (namely, stutter and/or tearing) due to a desync between refresh rate and frame rate. One interesting case is Mario Kart 8, which runs at 59fps, which causes some annoying stutter during gameplay.

I know the next iteration of OSSC will include HDMI with audio. That’s good news indeed! But what about using adaptive sync technologies so as we can play those games properly? So far, DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 are the only methods available for these technologies, so I understand this needs some research and development, but this would be an enormous step IMO.

In other words, what LCDs could not offer and CRTs did was:
1) Variable resolution
2) Variable refresh rate
3) Lightguns

OSSC has already killed 1) — if it eventually includes VRR, it will also kill 2). I think it is the next step!

[paulb_nl]

Consoles and arcade games have fixed refresh rates so adaptive sync is not useable with those systems.

My Sony LCD TV and Samsung LCD monitor both from around 2008 don’t have adaptive sync but they have no issues with for example my PAL playstation running at 49.76Hz and 59.41Hz, NES/SNES at 60.08Hz and GBI ll/ull at 59.84Hz, 59.72Hz. All working with smooth scrolling and no tearing.

So you just need to find a good display that can handle odd refresh rates properly. There is no adaptive sync technology needed.

[QuickRat]

I would say it is not completely true. If you have a game that works at 59fps (such us Wii U’s Mario Kart 8) or is continously losing frames (such as Xbox 360’s Dead Rising), you will experience stutter in the former and tearing in the latter. Those problems could be solved if an adaptive sync technology were implemented.

In regards of old consoles and old arcade cabinets, this happen to be a problem too. Some shmups and fighting games have been reported as “not so satisfactory” when used on LCDs due to their condition of fixed refresh rate displays. That’s one of the reasons why people still use 240p CRTs for tournaments and showcases.

I don’t know if this is too difficult, but if it is just an fps counter and a little bit of DisplayPort/HDMI 2.1 logic, it would be a nice feature.

[paulb_nl]

In regards of old consoles and old arcade cabinets, this happen to be a problem too. Some shmups and fighting games have been reported as “not so satisfactory” when used on LCDs due to their condition of fixed refresh rate displays. That’s one of the reasons why people still use 240p CRTs for tournaments and showcases.

Well my LCD displays do not have a fixed refresh rate as I explained above. The reason why people still use CRTs for tournaments is because CRTs have no lag and no motion blur like LCDs have.

[Anonymous]

I would say it is not completely true. If you have a game that works at 59fps (such us Wii U’s Mario Kart 8) or is continously losing frames (such as Xbox 360’s Dead Rising), you will experience stutter in the former and tearing in the latter. Those problems could be solved if an adaptive sync technology were implemented.

However, it has to be implemented into the console first. Which won’t happen.
I mean… why do you think tearing/stuttering happens? It happens cause a variable refresh rate is “mapped” to a fixed refresh rate (that’s what consoles put out). The whole point of VRR is to eliminate that step.

[marqs]

It will be interesting to see if upcoming VRR HDMI displays are able to display larger range of refresh rates without stutter from non-VRR inputs. If that will be general case, then there’s no reason to consider adding VRR support in future. Also, I believe HDMI 2.1 specs and chips are available to industry insiders only for a while.

[QuickRat]

Hi marqs, sorry I didn’t see this.

So OSSC wouldn’t be able to take the console information as an input and output it along with the correct data that VRR devices use?

I mean, I don’t know how this technology works exactly, but let’s imagine I play with an arcade game that runs at 57.96fps. If I connected it to a future iteration of OSSC, I would like it to read the game runs at 57.96 and output a signal through HDMI 2.1 that tells the display to use a 57.96Hz mode.

That is not possible? Because if it is, I think it would be pretty interesting (for the future, I mean, VRR is still a young technology).

[BuckoA51]

OSSC already outputs at the same refresh as you input. However as Marqs says we can hope that VRR capable displays have more tolerance/wider range of refresh rates even when using normal non-VRR inputs.

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