The USCF prefers digital clocks with time delay or add back (Bronstein) settings. There are a number of pages in the USCF rules explaining this. Not all directors will do things the same way. What they do should be announced in advance. A typical practice is to announce an event to be played at Game 60 minutes with a preferred setting of 55 minutes + 5 second delay. Another example is to have two time controls with the second being sudden death. For example, 40 moves in two hours and the rest of the game in 1 hour. The first may become 115 minutes with the time delay used during the whole game. Practices vary, so reading the USCF rules and knowing the director's rules are necessary.
I think this has been good for directors. It reduces the need for them to rule on faulty clock and insufficient winning chance claims. This can also benefit players. However, the concept of time not being linear disturbs me. Another problem is that there are different digital clocks with different methods of setting and different information on display. Not only is each company's clock different from others, but each company changes its clock when it produces a new model. This makes for confused players and directors when clocks are set and watched, especially when there are multiple time controls in a game.
I have seen many changes in tournament chess since I started playing in 1973. One of the changes I have seen growing more popular here in Europe is using increments in otb classic games. A very popular FIDE time control here seems to be G/90 but with a 30 sec increment from move 1. Are increments popular in the uscf events now too? What about other countries? If you are an otb player , what do you think of them? Are you for or against their use?