Sweeney, Andersson & Carmack discuss NVIDIA G-Sync

The Power of Display Technology: Revolutionizing Gaming Experiences

When it comes to gaming, the perception of the game itself is crucial in creating an immersive experience for players. While 100 frames per second (FPS) has long been considered the holy grail of gaming performance, recent advancements in display technology have changed the way we perceive and interact with games. In fact, many developers are now opting for a smoother, more continuous experience that pushes the boundaries of what is possible.

In an effort to achieve this smooth experience, developers are shifting away from traditional 30 or 60 FPS frame rates and instead embracing higher frame rates, often between 120-240 FPS. This new approach has several benefits, including reduced tearing and stuttering, improved motion blur, and a more seamless visual experience. When players see the game in action, they will be able to appreciate the full potential of this technology, which is sure to revolutionize the gaming industry.

One of the most significant advantages of higher frame rates is the way it affects our perception of movement and fluidity. When we watch something that is moving at a high speed, such as a sports game or an action movie, our brains are wired to expect a smooth, continuous flow of motion. However, when the display can't keep up with this demand, artifacts like tearing and stuttering become apparent, disrupting the viewing experience.

However, not all games were designed with high frame rates in mind. Many modern titles feature complex environments, dynamic weather effects, and intricate storytelling elements that require careful optimization to run smoothly at high frame rates. While some developers may struggle to balance their game's performance across multiple platforms, others are embracing this new frontier of gaming.

Fanatical about Displays: A New Era for Gaming

For those who are enthusiastic about display technology, the recent advancements in this field have been nothing short of exciting. John, a self-proclaimed "fanatical" enthusiast, was thrilled to share his thoughts on the latest developments in display technology. According to John, the ability to see artifacts like tearing and stuttering up close has made him even more sensitive to these issues.

In fact, John's experience with high frame rates has changed the way he perceives a game. Rather than simply accepting a fixed frame rate, he now expects a smooth, continuous experience that takes full advantage of the display's capabilities. This shift in perspective is reflective of the growing trend towards variable refresh rates and low persistence modes, which offer additional benefits and enhancements to the gaming experience.

A New Era for Game Development

The transition to higher frame rates has significant implications for game development. As developers seek to create more immersive experiences, they must balance performance across multiple platforms while accommodating complex graphics and physics engines. This can be a challenging task, particularly when it comes to optimizing games for a wide range of hardware configurations.

However, the benefits of higher frame rates are clear. By pushing the boundaries of what is possible, developers can unlock new levels of visual fidelity, motion blur reduction, and overall immersion. Furthermore, the ability to enable low persistence modes and variable refresh rates offers additional benefits, including reduced input lag and improved responsiveness.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Gaming

To realize the full potential of gaming, we need games that are designed from the ground up with high frame rates in mind. This means not only optimizing performance across multiple platforms but also embracing new technologies like G-Sync and low persistence modes. While it may seem daunting to ship a game at 120 FPS or above, the benefits are well worth the effort.

As John noted, having a reason to upgrade hardware will become increasingly important as games push the boundaries of what is possible. With the advent of advanced display technology, players can expect to see games that take full advantage of these capabilities, pushing the limits of human perception and immersion. The future of gaming is bright, and it's an exciting time to be a gamer.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthese are the three people we've invited to come and talk to you about g-sync now the reason why we invited these three people juby zz top and hollywood beauties is because they also happen to be some of the most important contributors to modern 3d graphics i think as soon as you realize who they are there will be no question that they have contributed more to modern computer graphics than just about anybody the mass contribution to the number of people exposing them to computer graphics if not for their work our work wouldn't have been possible if not for their work our contribution wouldn't have been possible these three game developers are true artists in every right amazing technologists and their contribution to the industry to the world is now completely unquestionable it has never been that all three of them have been in one place at the same time these three luminaries i am sure are your heroes they are surely mine and this is the first time that they have fallen in love simultaneously with a technology that they believe is as important to the future of computer graphics that they wanted to come and share the stage together and tell you guys how they feel about this revolutionary breakthrough we call g-sync ladies and gentlemen can we bring out our special guests uh what do you guys think huh talk about friends if you want to have friends these guys are really really amazing now we you know look when you get when you get uh john johan and tim on the stage can we just all agree we're not going to rehearse they're going to say whatever they're going to say okay and that's that's really great and i want them to tell you how they feel about this technology so maybe they will just do it from from this side out so so attempts to stand out here so they can all see you and you want to stand up here you know you know what it is partly they're a little awestruck by the celebrity of you guys so you know i know i know it's not i know you guys you guys don't feel like you're brad pitt but to them you are okay to us to us you are all right so stand out here out of the shadows and so so so tim uh why don't we just when we start first of all some of the challenges in computer graphics i think i think the audience would love to hear about uh your reaction to g6 when you first saw it um what do you think of the implications of g-sync um you know now that now that it's available what do you think is going to happen to the future of gaming so some of those type of questions it's really nice the really interesting thing here is it it's one of the the smoothness of graphics in games is one of those things that's not recognized in benchmarks but it's critically important to the players experience and decent gives all games an opportunity to achieve that and previously you had to work immensely hard and make a lot of sacrifices to gain content to hit a steady 60 frames a second well instead you can hit any reasonable frame rate and potentially get the same level of building into some graphics it's one of those magical moments to play a game like that and see it on screen is completely free of artifacts you know it's like using an iphone for the first time just having this very seamless experience you can't recognize instantly what's happening that makes it so nice but you can see that it has borders above the previous experience what do you think is going to happen in the game as a game developer when you have technology like this how would you think about it differently it really frees up the game developers to make much more immersive experiences without the sort of sacrifices that we'd have to make in the previous generation you know if you were aiming at a steady 60 frames a second in the last generation you would have to absolutely assure that every single frame hits that target whereas with decent you have a lot more wiggle room on each side because you have this kind of continuum of performance anywhere between 30 to 100 frames a second where the game will continue to operate smoothly and there's a little bit of experience without artifacts that's cool what do you think tell us tell us your feelings about g-sync and as you think about g-sync uh what what are the implications to the future of gaming and how would you develop games differently it's pretty awesome it's really it changes the perception quite a bit and i was really surprised by that when you actually see it in action which people here will do is that the best possible experience you've got to get before running 100 fps in the game typically without people do that that's sort of what we used to do in the best possible type of experience but with this well you don't it's completely changes the actual perception of the picture you see a continuous stream of something that you might actually interpret as a moving picture and i really really like that i was surprised by how my mind actually interpreted the information and when we tried it out and and just had more and more people in our studio just testimony everyone just came up with the same i think one thing that has not really been reflected in engaged uh a little bit of we design games for specific budgets but games nowadays are not really the games you played 15 years ago or even 10 years ago five years ago games now are these massive experiences of very different types of environments that you haven't even sometimes you have a cut scene and sometimes you have a giant star feel that you're traveling through and sometimes you have massive amounts of explosions and it's essentially impossible to design a game for a fixed frame rate today and you don't really want you have to make massive compromises in all areas even if we think our overall game runs at 60 fps we will have to run rather around 14 milliseconds budget for things that we can't really predict in our environments and with this well we don't really need to do it in the same way i'm sure you probably don't want to jump too much in frame rates but if the storytelling and the actual game experiences are adapted for it and with this technology it's actually much easier to create the games that you actually want and experiences you want and and still get a really good picture of it that's really cool fanatical about displays as john and the reason for that is because he's putting them awfully close to his eyes these days and when he saw it he wanted to come out and share share his opinion with you guys and his his first reaction to you guys john what do you think what do you think is going to happen a willful blind spot to the artifacts of tearing and jugger where we can talk and try to get people excited about these relatively subtle effects like gamma correction and you know subsurface scattering and some of these things that we can spend tons of gigaflops on and kind of point out and split say this is really important while blinding you know coloring our eyes over this huge tear line racing up and down the screen it was really fairly egregious artifact and yeah i've been a lot more sensitive about this for a long time you know we did make the the decision to make those compromises on our last title to be 60 frames per second which meant that we did have this 15-20 percent cushion that we had to leave there to make sure that we wouldn't uh exceed that if we would only very rarely uh wind up missing that which meant that for any given amount of processing power that would be targeted for maybe 20 or more in many cases a lot more was just left completely unused because we were at the maximum frame rate 60 frames per second and that was important for the smoothness that it gave us and we had to make a lot of compromises to make that happen and being able to to use all the graphics power that you got to unlock it from 60 to open up towards the higher frame rates and to be able to make it a smooth continuum there rather than dropping from 60 down to 30 in one huge lurch or suffering the stuttering or suffering the tearing it's just a better experience and almost every single game can benefit from this where being able to go over 60 frames per second winds up bringing in additional benefits and once we start crossing some of the magic numbers above like 1995 heading towards 120 and we start enabling the low persistence mode and some of these things that add additional benefits that you haven't even seen here today so i mean the g-sync technology involves not just the variable refresh but also some of the low persistence modes which will have additional benefits as games start moving towards those higher frame rates but the only way we're going to get games towards those higher frame rates is by having this smooth incremental path i mean yeah we could ship an old game remade like doom 3 bmg that could run at 120 frames per second but the only way you're going to start seeing absolute modern aaa titles is if they can creep up and have 16 and 70. then somebody's got a reason to put in some crazy dual ssli system that's going to go ahead and spend another 500 on the video cards but oh my god it runs this at 120 grits per second low persistence that's going to be awesome yeah absolutelythese are the three people we've invited to come and talk to you about g-sync now the reason why we invited these three people juby zz top and hollywood beauties is because they also happen to be some of the most important contributors to modern 3d graphics i think as soon as you realize who they are there will be no question that they have contributed more to modern computer graphics than just about anybody the mass contribution to the number of people exposing them to computer graphics if not for their work our work wouldn't have been possible if not for their work our contribution wouldn't have been possible these three game developers are true artists in every right amazing technologists and their contribution to the industry to the world is now completely unquestionable it has never been that all three of them have been in one place at the same time these three luminaries i am sure are your heroes they are surely mine and this is the first time that they have fallen in love simultaneously with a technology that they believe is as important to the future of computer graphics that they wanted to come and share the stage together and tell you guys how they feel about this revolutionary breakthrough we call g-sync ladies and gentlemen can we bring out our special guests uh what do you guys think huh talk about friends if you want to have friends these guys are really really amazing now we you know look when you get when you get uh john johan and tim on the stage can we just all agree we're not going to rehearse they're going to say whatever they're going to say okay and that's that's really great and i want them to tell you how they feel about this technology so maybe they will just do it from from this side out so so attempts to stand out here so they can all see you and you want to stand up here you know you know what it is partly they're a little awestruck by the celebrity of you guys so you know i know i know it's not i know you guys you guys don't feel like you're brad pitt but to them you are okay to us to us you are all right so stand out here out of the shadows and so so so tim uh why don't we just when we start first of all some of the challenges in computer graphics i think i think the audience would love to hear about uh your reaction to g6 when you first saw it um what do you think of the implications of g-sync um you know now that now that it's available what do you think is going to happen to the future of gaming so some of those type of questions it's really nice the really interesting thing here is it it's one of the the smoothness of graphics in games is one of those things that's not recognized in benchmarks but it's critically important to the players experience and decent gives all games an opportunity to achieve that and previously you had to work immensely hard and make a lot of sacrifices to gain content to hit a steady 60 frames a second well instead you can hit any reasonable frame rate and potentially get the same level of building into some graphics it's one of those magical moments to play a game like that and see it on screen is completely free of artifacts you know it's like using an iphone for the first time just having this very seamless experience you can't recognize instantly what's happening that makes it so nice but you can see that it has borders above the previous experience what do you think is going to happen in the game as a game developer when you have technology like this how would you think about it differently it really frees up the game developers to make much more immersive experiences without the sort of sacrifices that we'd have to make in the previous generation you know if you were aiming at a steady 60 frames a second in the last generation you would have to absolutely assure that every single frame hits that target whereas with decent you have a lot more wiggle room on each side because you have this kind of continuum of performance anywhere between 30 to 100 frames a second where the game will continue to operate smoothly and there's a little bit of experience without artifacts that's cool what do you think tell us tell us your feelings about g-sync and as you think about g-sync uh what what are the implications to the future of gaming and how would you develop games differently it's pretty awesome it's really it changes the perception quite a bit and i was really surprised by that when you actually see it in action which people here will do is that the best possible experience you've got to get before running 100 fps in the game typically without people do that that's sort of what we used to do in the best possible type of experience but with this well you don't it's completely changes the actual perception of the picture you see a continuous stream of something that you might actually interpret as a moving picture and i really really like that i was surprised by how my mind actually interpreted the information and when we tried it out and and just had more and more people in our studio just testimony everyone just came up with the same i think one thing that has not really been reflected in engaged uh a little bit of we design games for specific budgets but games nowadays are not really the games you played 15 years ago or even 10 years ago five years ago games now are these massive experiences of very different types of environments that you haven't even sometimes you have a cut scene and sometimes you have a giant star feel that you're traveling through and sometimes you have massive amounts of explosions and it's essentially impossible to design a game for a fixed frame rate today and you don't really want you have to make massive compromises in all areas even if we think our overall game runs at 60 fps we will have to run rather around 14 milliseconds budget for things that we can't really predict in our environments and with this well we don't really need to do it in the same way i'm sure you probably don't want to jump too much in frame rates but if the storytelling and the actual game experiences are adapted for it and with this technology it's actually much easier to create the games that you actually want and experiences you want and and still get a really good picture of it that's really cool fanatical about displays as john and the reason for that is because he's putting them awfully close to his eyes these days and when he saw it he wanted to come out and share share his opinion with you guys and his his first reaction to you guys john what do you think what do you think is going to happen a willful blind spot to the artifacts of tearing and jugger where we can talk and try to get people excited about these relatively subtle effects like gamma correction and you know subsurface scattering and some of these things that we can spend tons of gigaflops on and kind of point out and split say this is really important while blinding you know coloring our eyes over this huge tear line racing up and down the screen it was really fairly egregious artifact and yeah i've been a lot more sensitive about this for a long time you know we did make the the decision to make those compromises on our last title to be 60 frames per second which meant that we did have this 15-20 percent cushion that we had to leave there to make sure that we wouldn't uh exceed that if we would only very rarely uh wind up missing that which meant that for any given amount of processing power that would be targeted for maybe 20 or more in many cases a lot more was just left completely unused because we were at the maximum frame rate 60 frames per second and that was important for the smoothness that it gave us and we had to make a lot of compromises to make that happen and being able to to use all the graphics power that you got to unlock it from 60 to open up towards the higher frame rates and to be able to make it a smooth continuum there rather than dropping from 60 down to 30 in one huge lurch or suffering the stuttering or suffering the tearing it's just a better experience and almost every single game can benefit from this where being able to go over 60 frames per second winds up bringing in additional benefits and once we start crossing some of the magic numbers above like 1995 heading towards 120 and we start enabling the low persistence mode and some of these things that add additional benefits that you haven't even seen here today so i mean the g-sync technology involves not just the variable refresh but also some of the low persistence modes which will have additional benefits as games start moving towards those higher frame rates but the only way we're going to get games towards those higher frame rates is by having this smooth incremental path i mean yeah we could ship an old game remade like doom 3 bmg that could run at 120 frames per second but the only way you're going to start seeing absolute modern aaa titles is if they can creep up and have 16 and 70. then somebody's got a reason to put in some crazy dual ssli system that's going to go ahead and spend another 500 on the video cards but oh my god it runs this at 120 grits per second low persistence that's going to be awesome yeah absolutely\n"