[1.0.2.8] Display flicker with GSYNC

[Barleyman]

In short, if Gsync both windowed and Full-screen is enabled, LG OLED CX flickers horribly. Checking the VRR stat view shows that the framerate is flickering between 40-120fps, which the OLED doesn't like much, and this is just with a far view of the galaxy with nothing going on. I would say the game is completely unplayable like that, unless you like migraine and/or nausea. Setting Gsync to "full screen only" does make the flicker go away but you then lose sync with video players and better behaved games running in a window and/or windowed full-screen, not ideal.

The cake.. or rather the full-screen is a lie. DW2 can't change video mode at all, or the refresh rate for that matter. Bazillion resolutions are listed in the settings but you just get a window over desktop with or without a window bar depending if you've got "full screen" enabled picking something not native. So it's not possible to force the game to run @ 60Hz which might help (or not).

I've detailed the problem here with youtube video and everything:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/ ... 4700446205

The video with cows and flickering:
https://youtu.be/aokziiqx0Is

Here's photo of the stat window, the game thinks it's running @ 60FPS which may or may not be a hint. VRR status window tells a different story

Display stats

DWstats.jpg (443.71 KiB) Viewed 574 times

[Barleyman]

Huh, I realized there's a "monitor technology" per-game Nvidia setting that lets you disable GSYNC just for DW2 while leaving the setting to "full screen and windowed" globally.

That's a much better workaround although you're still stuck with 120Hz and 4k unless you change desktop resolution.. Hello stutters and/or tearing my old friends.. I guess I'll try disabling the fixed timestep and adaptive half refresh sync, maybe that'll work ..

[brucethemoose]

...

The issue isn't just the low framerate (which many adaptive sync monitors can handle) but the very spikey frametimes:





A jump from a slow frame to a fast frame like that ^ is precisely what makes adaptive sync monitors flicker, and what causes that "strobing" in desktop mode. And for reference, I'm testing an old galaxy on a 2060/4900HS at 1440p.

For DW2, I would recommend "Fast Sync" on Nvidia cards and "Enhanced Sync" on AMD cards, as the small latency hit isn't really a big deal. In fact, buffering frames like that probably makes the game much smoother.

[Barleyman]

The issue isn't just the low framerate (which many adaptive sync monitors can handle) but the very spikey frametimes:

A jump from a slow frame to a fast frame like that ^ is precisely what makes adaptive sync monitors flicker, and what causes that "strobing" in desktop mode. And for reference, I'm testing an old galaxy on a 2060/4900HS at 1440p.

For DW2, I would recommend "Fast Sync" on Nvidia cards and "Enhanced Sync" on AMD cards, as the small latency hit isn't really a big deal. In fact, buffering frames like that probably makes the game much smoother.

Yes, I pointed out the framerate jumping between 40 and 120Hz, even with the game paused. Along with the inability of changing resolutions, it seems the low level graphics engine just isn't very good.

Fast sync is low latency, but it introduces stutter as the frame update is asynchronous so you can get same frame displayed once or several times depending on exact timing. Obviously that's not much of a problem with a largely static strategy game like DW2 but for a FPS or video it's not ideal.

Adaptive sync at half framerate (60fps for 120Hz display) works okay as long as the framerate can keep up with 60fps most of the time. If it drops below there's tearing but no stutter.

I have to wonder if all this would go away if you could actually switch in-game resolution to 60Hz.