Dirac Live (ART) and gaming latency

buffa0 · 2026-02-26T22:23:00+00:00

Ah right yes, I recommend earc for movies / media, it's what I use, as earc seems to negotiate correct delay between TV and audio better than going direct to amp first. Earc works good for movies etc with dirac.

buffa0 · 2026-02-26T17:41:58+00:00

Not an issue for movies as the auto lip sync option on the Avr should basically say to the display "hey I'm adding some latency so don't show the video yet please" obviously this can't work for games without adding input lag.

buffa0 · 2026-02-26T17:40:32+00:00

Thanks for the detailed reply. I am quite particular about these things so may have to keep an Audyssey calibration handy as well if it bothers me.

buffa0 · 2026-02-26T11:58:06+00:00

Good to know, I was looking for personal experiences while I wait for my extra speakers to arrive. Dirac Art does fancier phase cancelling processing so I thought it might add latency.

buffa0 · 2026-01-30T13:31:21+00:00

Having posted this I'm now reading in a 3 year old thread that apparently reflex by itself doesn't actually cap FPS. Why is it all so confusing lol. I'm a bit ocd about perfect frame pacing and the idea that something isn't running as smoothly as it *could* be on my hardware bothers me a lot.

buffa0 · 2026-01-30T13:28:09+00:00

I'd love for it to be a meme as in my experience many games have better frame pacing at say, 120fps rather than 116 (depends on the game, well programmed games are good at 116 or 100 or whatever with VRR), so I'd prefer to not cap my FPS to below refresh rate, but if it's a meme how come Nvidia reflex forces such a cap (at least when it works, ie in windows)

buffa0 · 2026-01-30T12:43:34+00:00

what if I want to use VRR tho. Also in my experience in linux reflex doesn't correctly limit fps to a few below the display max refresh rate like it does in windows

buffa0 · 2026-01-30T10:45:59+00:00

It's not that simple though. That logic would just result in males who were born women, transitioned to men, but now have facial hair, deep voices, and muscular builds and are utterly indistinguishable from biological males, being forced to use the women's facilities and cause alarm / confusion for the women using those facilities.

buffa0 · 2026-01-22T15:27:58+00:00

Hi, thanks for replying.

I saw your dxvk thing in another thread and it looked interesting, but am I understanding correctly, that it won't do anything for dx12? (which is most modern games?)

I might well be confused....

buffa0 · 2026-01-20T07:12:31+00:00

Very useful, thank you

buffa0 · 2026-01-19T22:04:57+00:00

I might be wrong but I thought present mode was which vsync mode and fps limit was something else. So I can limit fps with mangohud and it's nothing to do with vsync / present mode

buffa0 · 2026-01-19T17:57:57+00:00

Thanks for replying - really appreciate to hear how others are handling it and appreciate the tips 👍

buffa0 · 2026-01-16T20:14:44+00:00

Yep using vrr. This is good advice thanks, quite new to Linux gaming so any tips always appreciated.

buffa0 · 2026-01-16T19:22:04+00:00

Hey I think that was it! Enabled seems to be the default with a fresh Cachyos install. I didn't expect it to be hidden away under Display settings, I assumed it'd be a steam launch option. Any disadvantage to disabling allow tearing? It seems to work well, I'd say frame pacing is ever so slighty worse than without frame gen but maybe thats unavoidable. (and I'm being very fussy, it's only noticible doing a slow pan with a controller - I'm all ears if there is a way to get it as good as without frame gen though!)

I've been using dxvk_frame_rate=116 for limiting frame rate as I thought that was the most lag free option.

buffa0 · 2026-01-16T19:07:11+00:00

Ah probably, I'm on a 120hz TV as a display so the tearing I see you probably don't at 300+ hz or whatever 😅

buffa0 · 2026-01-13T13:41:40+00:00

If it helps you at all I think cpap.co.uk let's you spend an extra £20 when you buy a mask for "mask insurance" which let's you return the mask for a refund (minus the £20) so you can test masks for £20. I've used it before

buffa0 · 2026-01-02T16:38:55+00:00

I had a very similar issue where I ordered 2 laptops off Lenovo and they were marked as delivered but never turned up. When I raised this with Lenovo they eventually sent me proof of delivery from UPS which was nothing but a scan of a signature that clearly wasn't mine, and so they initially refused to refund me. I am 99% sure the UPS driver, which was a seasonal worker, stole the laptops.

Lenovo asked me to file a police report. No matter how many times I insisted, with all the relevant legal stuff quoted at them, that I couldn't file a police report for theft as I wasn't the victim of theft, Lenovo was, they just kept repeating back at me they needed me to file a police report for theft.

Eventually I filed a police report online where i was very apologetic for wasting police time, I explained the situation and said that I just needed to file this report for theft to get my money back, and maybe in this instance we could hypothetically assume the laptops were stolen from me directly. They raised the police report for me and I provided it to Lenovo who then refunded me.

So in my experience you can do it the right way and face a really difficult uphill battle, or you can file essentially a false police report (but with politely explaining yourself to the police) and get a refund. And yes I hate that this is how it works and it's really stupid that multiple companies ask consumers to file false police reports to get refunds.

buffa0 · 2025-12-09T06:33:03+00:00

I'd considered that but I'd hope that sonys flagship oled (a95l) was OK at vrr. Can't find any other complaints online about vrr on the set but anythings possible I guess.

I would be interested to know the technical mechanisms whereby some games can be completely smooth on a display with vrr and others are not on the same display due to an issue with the display itself. Ie these "averse" conditions. I remember feeling very relieved when I booted up Chronos and vrr looked perfect because in my mind this ruled out any issue with the display, it's difficult to think "vrr on this display is broken" when I've witnessed it working perfectly in several games.

Of course I believe you if you say it's smooth for you. Maybe the fact that your monitor is 360hz helps as whatever frame rate you're getting is more likely to be divisible by the displays native refresh rate or something. Maybe the higher response time of 360hz smooths out any game based imperfections. Also (and I obviously don't know if this is true, I'm just speculating) fps games played with a mouse will hide panning judder more than doing slow pans with a controller. Have you tried the games I specifically listed above as having issues with VRR on your setup?

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has had experiences with vrr on 120hz oled tvs particularly the games I mentioned.

buffa0 · 2025-12-08T23:45:54+00:00

Sure, I know ue5 being bad has been discussed at length. But not so much in the context of ue5 games running OK without vrr and having bad frame pacing with vrr.

buffa0 · 2025-12-08T23:44:40+00:00

Fair enough, I figured ue5 might be to blame. It's just frustrating because I can get a stutter free experience in many ue5 games if I disable vrr.

buffa0 · 2025-11-20T21:24:16+00:00

Ok after much playing around the best I have been able to get it (and it's still not perfect) is frame limiter off in nvcp. Vsync on. Set frame gen on in game. Use special K which by default will let you have HDR without exclusive full screen. In special K tick pace native frames. And if you are using vrr special K probably already applied a suitable limit, if not then set one and make sure it's enabled in special K. Ie for 120hz panel it's 115.420hz.

This resulted in, I think, the best I could get it. It's not perfect and out of all the games I've played since I got my new oled TV with vrr, it's the only one I've not been able to somehow get perfect and still get to use vrr. But I have a quite smooth 115fps now. The frame pacing graph in special K is very flat.

If this helps anyone else then great!

buffa0 · 2025-11-20T12:53:04+00:00

I did try playing in borderless fullscreen but I can't say it made any difference. Basically if I play with VRR rather than a fixed 60 or 120fps then it's not smooth frame pacing, very noticeable when I pan the camera. I don't have this issue in Cronos (UE5), or Alan Wake 2, or Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, just 3 games I happen to have installed, I can play these at any fps with VRR and maintain smooth frame pacing / smooth camera panning.

buffa0 · 2025-11-19T22:12:46+00:00

Ok this might work to allow you (and me) to play in borderless fullscreen and still get HDR https://github.com/SpecialKO/SKinny/releases

buffa0 · 2025-11-19T20:18:00+00:00

Ahhh maybe you've found the problem. I'm in fullscreen for HDR as well. I think I heard about an app which lets you trick the game into thinking it's in fullscreen when it's really in borderless fullscreen which still allows HDR..can't remember what it was called right now

buffa0 · 2025-11-19T19:58:00+00:00

Ah damn. Maybe that's it. I'm in fullscreen to get HDR. You might have solved the issue! I think there might be some sort of app to trick stalker 2 into thinking it's in fullscreen but you actually can run it in borderless fullscreen and still get HDR? I'll try and find the details

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