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by andreyv 2547 days ago
Forced composition and vsync is a mistake for gaming.

The added output latency is unacceptable, especially for first-person shooters. A little tearing is nothing compared to the vsync lag.

If Wayland wants to replace X.org, then it should support also this use case. But full composition being mandatory isn't very encouraging in regard to this.

2 comments

Untrue in my experience.

Games still can render more FPS than mandated by vsync.

I tried playing sauerbraten (with SDL2) on sway other day, it was butter smooth (no tearing) with vsync off in game, and I felt no input lag unlike when I switch vsync flag on in game which limits FPS.

It probably does triple buffering, but somehow on sway it worked better than triple buffering of intel's xorg driver back when I tried that.

VSync fundamentally introduces a frame+ of delay by design, it does not matter what your FPS is.
In wlroots, when the only thing on your screen is a fullscreen app (i.e. a game), direct scanout is used instead of composition.