What problem does double or triple buffering solve in modern games?

Posted by krokvskrok on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by krokvskrok
Published on 2014-08-22T11:56:51Z Indexed on 2014/08/22 16:37 UTC
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double-buffering

I want to check if my understanding of the causes for using double (or triple) buffering is correct:

A monitor with 60Hz refresh's the monitor-display 60 times per second. If the monitor refresh the monitor-display, he updates pixel for pixel and line for line. The monitor requests the color values for the pixels from the video memory.

If I run now a game, then this game is constantly manipulating this video memory.

If this game don't use a buffer strategy (double buffering etc.) then the following problem can happen:

The monitor is now refreshing his monitor-display. At this moment the monitor had refreshed the first half monitor-display already. At the same time, the game had manipulated the video memory with new data. Now the monitor accesses for the second half monitor-display this new manipulated data from the video memory. The problems can be tearing or flickering.

Is my understanding of cases of using buffer strategy correct? Are there other reasons?

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