Black Frame Insertion slight flicker

RetroArch General
#1

Hello guys,

I managed to enable via .cfg, the Black Frame Insertion option (it seems to be missing from gui on android), so that playing 60 fps games with the display set to 120 will be smooth and nice. And it actually works rather well, for the most part.

Virtually the only issue i have, is that in that split second when the game, for whatever reason, goes from full speed 60 fps, to a slight drop of 0.1 (unnoticeable otherwise), there a flicker happening. Is there any way to mitigate/eliminate this flicker when that tiny performance drop happends?

Also, probably a very stupid question, could there be set a White frame insertion ? Possibly on white, that flicker would be much less noticeable.

Thank you good people!

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#2

Unfortunately, any frame insertion (black, gray, white) significantly affects the image. Inserting white or gray frames washes out the colors significantly.

I believe the occasional stuttering is one of the reasons why it’s not readily accessible on Android. Unfortunately, the OS just doesn’t make for good sync/latency.

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#3

Oh i understand.

That sounds right regarding the colours. Yeah, indeed it’s not 100% constant, though it does work surprisingly well, and less demanding games seem to be smooth all the way, no flicker :blush:

Thanks for your fast answer!

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#5

Hey, a quick question hunter:

Am i crazy or does the motion interpolation (vulkan) shader add at least one frame of input lag?

I swear the game is a little bit less responsive with it active :thinking:

Thanks!!

#6

Sort of, I think. It takes a previous frame and compares it against the current frame to calculate motion vectors, then it uses those vectors to decide which color to make a given pixel for an intermediate frame. So, I think it basically adds a half-frame, which is fine on 30 FPS content, since that half frame is already there.

Because RetroArch’s shader system runs on core frames rather than actual monitor frames (i.e., ~60 Hz vs 120/144/whatever), there’s no benefit to running it on high-refresh monitors, and you’ll just get the added half-frame(?) of latency. It’s pretty much only usable for bringing sub-60 motion up to faux 60.

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#7

Thank you so much for your detailed answer hunterk!

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#8

For the record, a good test case for the motion interpolation shader is the scroll test on the 240p test suite (the one that looks like Green Hill Zone). The background scrolls at 30 FPS while the foreground scrolls at 60 FPS. With the shader, they should both move smoothly(ish).

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