VSync isn't a magical "no tearing" mode. If the console isn't even able to get to 30fps, your next stop to keep everything in sync is 15 (Maybe 20? I'm honestly not sure how sub-30fps vsync would work) - that isn't acceptable.

For PS3 and 360 players this is something completely out of our control. The Playstation 3 has the option to have V-sync in the game (Fallout 3 on PS3 never screen teared), while the 360 lacks this hardware option. Basically, a v-synced game with no screen tearing means that the framerate is never going to be as good as it could (well, this really comes down to the developers, this only just limits it). For a game with no v-sync whatsoever, in return for experiencing the screen tearing the framerate is going to at it's most probable best.

However, games like BioShock 1/2 had a "toggle framerate" option where one of the options let you had a completely v-synced experience with the obvious drawback of a lower framerate, atleast this was the case on the PS3 version, I'm not too sure about the 360...

And with PC, well, you can basically edit how the game runs and with the dev controls could initiate v-sync, with the drops in framerate in accordance to your PC specifications.

So unless Obsidian do manage to include an option like this, you may have to just to deal with it....

Thanks for the Post. They could add that V-Sync Option to the Xbox 360 Version.

Just for clarity's-sake:

Screen-tearing/ Vertical Sync is a measure used by game software (and various other programs) to keep the framerate at a constant level. (If you've turned your head too fast in a game, or whatever, and you notice the top portion of the screen "tears" from the bottom of the screen as it catches up, you've noticed v-sync.) Many PC games feature this as a toggle-able option - it's usually a trade-off between whether or not you'd rather have a low framerate (ie, "choppy") or screen tearing.

If you notice either, it's a sign that your computer (or console) can't quite keep up with what's going on in the game. It's not about whether or not the devs would be able to completely remove screen tearing, it's that they're making a design choice to sacrifice that for the sake of a constant framerate. (ie, if they put this as an option in New Vegas, and you set it to "off," then all those points where you would have noticed screen tearing originally, you would now start seeing your framerate slow down instead.)

As far as I remember, there have been console titles that featured this as an option in their display settings, but it is rare.

Whether or not you'd prefer one or the other is, of course, up to personal opinion.

Ok, each frame that's rendered is drawn into the frame-buffer (the memory in the video hardware that stores the data that represents the frame that's currently being displayed) line by line from the top down, replacing the previous frame as it goes. When the display wants to display the next frame, it reads what's in the frame buffer and displays it. When the display and the frame buffer are out of sync you'll sometimes see the display reading the frame from the buffer while the video hardware isn't quite finished writing the frame. So, you'll see part of the previous frame and part of the next frame at the same time, and they might not line up correctly. That's tearing.

Displays have a refresh rate typically measured in Hertz (Hz). This tells you how often the display wants to read a frame from the frame buffer. Most LCDs have a refresh rate of 60Hz, which means they refresh 60 times per second. If your video hardware is producing 110 frames per second there's a good chance that, at some point, the display is going to read from the frame buffer at a time when there are partial frames being displayed.

Vertical sync causes the software to wait to start writing the next frame to the frame buffer until the display is finished displaying the previous frame. In the example above this won't work. We can't synchronize something refreshing 110 times per second with something refreshing 60 times per second. Now, we could sync a video source refreshing 120 times per second with a display refreshing 60 times per second, but it would be kinda pointless because you'd only actually see half of the frames being rendered. It makes more sense to limit the video source to 60 frames per second so we render exactly the number of frames we're going to see.

Now, the 360 is locked at 30 frames per second, so a 60Hz display is going to display each rendered frame for exactly two refresh cycles. Since these can sync up (1 frame per two refresh cycles divides up nice and neat) we shouldn't see any tearing. If for some reason the 360 can't maintain the 30 frames per second it has to limit its rendering speed all the way down to 20 or 15 frames per second in order to stay synchronized with the display (because these numbers divide evenly into 60). 20 or 15 frames per second is not fun in a video game, so it's probably designed to stop trying to vertical sync rather than slow the framerate to a crawl. What we're probably seeing is the 360 occasionally dropping below 30 fps. If the 360's framerate can't be comfortably limited to something that divides evenly into the display's refresh rate (and it can't if the rendering framerate drops below 30 frames per second) you're going to see tearing.

Clear as mud?

TLDR
Long story short, this might not be something that can be turned on and off. If the 360 isn't maintaining 30fps the only option to avoid tearing is to drop it down to slide-show city. That's something that you don't want (15-20 fps is slooooow), so it's probably designed to go ahead and show you the tearing rather try to sync below 30fps.


On the PC you can force v-sync to be on in the video driver, so you can turn it on even if the game doesn't have an option for it.