Tp, could you elaborate on the "game pipe" thing and where that number comes from? I've always been quite interested about what comes AFTER the keyboard, but haven't been able to find much about it.
you do something, interrupts. engine runs simulation, a number comes out, then onto drawing .
Most games will draw a variable number of frames ahead depending on different conditions important to that game.
For example, an FPS might want fewer than 3 frames , but an RTS could push a whole 1/3 or half second ahead without much issue.
I guess responsive screens are unnecessary as well then?
The "game pipe" makes more sense if you split it into loops and provide the entire loop from the users perspective:
--- the human / keyboard loop ---
1. you see something on the screen
2. you react to what you see
3. you press buttons
4. keyboard reads button presses
5. keyboard sends button presses to usb adapter
6. operating system passes the received HID inputs forward
---
--- the game loop ---
7. game reads your inputs
8. game engine steps forward
9. game engine decides what to draw next
10. display adapter draws stuff
---
(frame buffering goes here)
--- display loop ---
11. display adapter sends the picture to display
12. display refreshes screen
13. pixels change colour
---
If any part in the chain has latency to it, it will be about the same experience for the player. A screen that refreshes 5ms slower will have a relatively equal effect as to your keyboard (and mouse) being 5ms late with updates. This will vary based on the update loop periods used in the different loops, but assuming that the game engine loop is fps limited and the fps is high, these variances will be small.
About frame buffering:
1. you can limit it to two (one presented to the display, one being rendered) by forcing the options in your graphics card management software.
2. The buffered frames are game engine frames, and have nothing to do with your displays refresh rate. If your PC draws 300 frames per second, triple buffering induces a delay of just 1/300 s compared to the standard double buffering.
3. Triple buffering typically provides higher fps numbers due to the graphics adapter being able to be more efficient, so the trade-off in terms of responsiveness is not always trivial.
For online games this is more complex, as the game engine is in part running on the server.
