Summary

We have really covered a lot in this chapter. Now, you know more about how computer monitors work than you probably ever wanted. In this chapter, we dived into the nitty gritty details of framebuffers and how pixels are colored on screen. We saw that having a frame rate that was out-of-sync with the monitor can cause tearing. We also looked at how double buffering and using VSync can fix this problem. Unfortunately, we also saw that VSync can cause problems of its own. We also looked at triple buffering and saw the pros and cons there. In the end, there is no perfect answer. There will always be some trade-off. You must either accept tearing or the possibility of a drastic drop in frame rate due to VSync.

Finally, we finished this chapter by looking at how our frame rate affects the rest of our gameplay code. Specifically, we looked at physics and animation, and learned that we must use time-based physics and animation for a more consistent look and feel in our game.

In the next chapter...