Celestia Forums

Hi there,

We just got a new Mac Pro (Leopard, 2 2.8 ghz quad cores, 6 gb of memory, hd2600 video card) and the drivers are all updated.

In Celestia I keep seeing what seems to be "tearing" when, for example, I zoom in on the Moon. It's fast and it doesn't seem to linger, but it's definitely there.

I wanted to find out if anyone else has seen this issue before calling it a bug and posting it on the tracker.

Thanks,

Mark

Mark,

A video problem called "tearing" is caused when on-screen image updates are not synchronized to the screen refresh rate. e.g. when an image changes when the video retrace is halfway down the screen. The upper portion of the screen shows part of the older (smaller when zooming) image
while the lower portion of the screen shows part of the newer (larger when zooming) image.

Is this the kind of thing you're seeing?

The fix for this is usually a "vertical sync" setting in the computer's video graphics driver. On my Windows system with an Nvidia graphics card, it's an option in Nvidia's 3D Graphics Global Settings menu. I don't know where it'd be under MacOS.

selden,

The effect is as if someone were to take a single vertex or small group of vertices from a sphere and just pull them out. I get what looks like a long narrow spike.

Occasionally it looks as if a background star is being pulled.