How can I prevent "tearing" in emulation?

[justjustin]

Hey folks; just a quick question— wonderin' if you can help me out here.

Recently I've been playing a lot of games through emulation on my PC hooked up to my CRT TV. It's great being able to play those games on my TV as opposed to an old computer monitor! However, there's an issue:

The dreaded "tearing" effect. Yes, it's that dang line that slices the poor game in half ever minute or so... and not even the vsync option on the emulators can stop this menace.

Do any of you have any suggestions on how I can get rid of this annoyance? Any information or suggestions would be a great help, and greatly appreciated as well.

Thanks in advance,
Justin

[Discoalucard]

Find the option that says "VSYNC" (or vertical sync) and turn it on.

[Isao Kronos (BANNED)]

I need to get off my arse and find a way to do the opposite- play console games on my monitor.

[justjustin]

Heh heh. Disco, I already have the vsync options turned on ;D— it improves the game but tearing is still quite constant. I figure there's some discrepancy between my TV refresh rate and the video card/monitor drivers on my PC...

Thanks though, I'll keep pickin' at options.

Oh and Isao Kronos, I also tried to find a way to hook my consoles up to my computer monitor once— the only options I could find were these super-expensive VGA boxes. It's either that or a TV Tuner card, in which case the picture is grainy and blurry, with funky colors... keep lookin' though, there may be an affordable option out there somewhere.

[YourAverageJoe]

Try messing about with it, here's the obvious specs you'd need for an old-fashioned NTSC TV:

640x480
60 Hz (50 Hz if japanese NTSC)

If you're looking at PAL, use this instead:

720x576 or 702x576
50 Hz

Also look out for progressive scan, which has been a default in computer monitors for ages, but has only been around in TVs for about 3 years, as far as I know, anyway...

[Shinigami]

You can buy a monitor with component, S-video, and composite inputs. This way you can easily plug in your consoles.

[Isao Kronos (BANNED)]

I have a good LCD monitor, I don't need another monitor.

[justjustin]

Well, I tried changing the refresh rate to 60, and now everything's just jittery and tears even more. I'll keep goofin' around with settings. Thanks though.

[savagepencil]

Don't some consoles run at something weird, like 59.97 hz or something? If you can manually set it, that may be it.

Can you set up double (or triple) buffering in your PC software? It sounds like the renderer is writing to the "current" surface instead of to a back buffer and flipping during VSYNC.

[justjustin]

Ah, I'll check that out— However, now that I think about it... I've come upon an error message saying Direct Draw could not write/draw on a surface; then the program shuts down. I'm afraid something's wrong with Direct Draw. My computer's quite old (1999 Dell with Pentium III processor, 128mb ram) so I don't know if it'll be able to set double or triple buffering... I have an Nvidia TNT2 graphics card I believe— if that helps....

Thanks, everyone.

[justjustin]

Ok, here are my settings:

Display: Generic Television on NVIDIA TNT2 M64 4xAGP
Colors: High Color (16 bit)
Resolution: 640 x 480
DirectDraw 1.00
Refresh Rate: Adapter Default (my only other choice is Optimal)

These give the best results— I only notice tearing every two minutes or so. My guess is it's DirectDraw being a problem. Is there a newer version? If so how can I install it? I have no idea how this stuff works.

Thanks again,
Justin

[michiyoyoshiku]

Let me ask you is it a book fold effect?

I have the exact same problem

all I know is that it has something to do with Open GL

[justjustin]

It looks like that. The tearing line starts at the top and moves downward.

[savagepencil]

You don't have a better TV than that? Or are you using this for screencaps? I'd say that rig probably isn't doing double buffering.

[justjustin]

That's the best TV I got... just a 20 inch Sylvania CRT. and yeah, that computer's a tad old.