Quake3World

ok, i had this annoying problem with q3 where though i was getting well over 125fps constant (300+ in timedemo) i would still have weird visual lag, like tearing though my refresh rate and framerate were in sync, or so i thought. i tried multiple setups but the only constant was my monitor which i've come to find out isn't really outputting 120hz @ 800x600, but rather 119.2. this is just an assumption.

i enabled temporal AA in the adv. properties of my vid card (ati 9600XT) under opengl and though i have vsync off completely, it still seems to sync refresh and framerate. in fact, it limits my framerate to what the monitor is outputting. that's where i came up with the 119.2 refresh cause that's what i timedemo with temporal AA on. the kicker is that the stuttering that has plagued me literally for the last 2 years is 100% gone. when i disable temp AA, it comes back and my timedemo is 300+, like always. also, my fps are enough to maintain the same ups i get without temporal AA enabled and i can make every fps dependent jump.

anyway, it works but i'm looking for an explanation. i've searched google but all i've found is what temporal AA is supposed to simulate is true AA without a framerate hit, but no real explanation as to why it's syncing my framerate with refresh though vsync is disabled everywhere (in game and driver level). maybe someone here knows OR maybe this is a solution for other people experiencing this. i'm not sure if there is a temporal option for detonators or whatever they're called now.

What are your r_displayrefresh and com_maxfps settings in Q3?

TAA can be amazing at times. In Joint Operations running the same loop around an island, I got 2FPS less per a 5 minute loop with TAA than without.

I did disable it after a while though because Novalogic chose to not properly optimize their LOD0 models so things get ridiculous and bogged down when there are multiple models in your face at once, especially with the TAA.

I did some experimenting with the exact same thing a while back: I found that temporal anti-aliasing turns VSynch on regardless (or so it seemed; when in the ATi display driver settings I turned TAA on (and VSynch was definetly off) and I ran Quake3, my FPS were dead stuck on 60FPS, and the screen tearing which happens without TAA (or indeed VSynch, which causes the FPS readout to do the same) was non-existant), so yeah I'm not entirely sure if you can have a higher FPS being rendered for FPS dependant jumps, *and* erradicate the screen tearing you're experiencing due to the refresh rate and frame rate being out of synch, other than as suggested above r_displayrefresh is not set to that of your monitor, 120Hz.

Having both nVidia and ATi cards, for work related purposes and being an nVidia guy, I can tell you I was initially impressed with ATi's temporal AA, however the temporal threshold settings are not visible in the control panel by default. You can download radlinker to enable extra options, such as the temporal threshold. (This determines at what point your FPS is capped for TAA purposes.)