What is this obsession with framerates over 30FPS?

[Luciean]

Personally, at lower than 30 fps usually, I start to find a game unplayable because of the sheer amount of stuttering that occurs. I played Tera on my friend's laptop (integrated graphics *shudder*) and had to stop because he was only getting 15 or so and 30 if he was lucky.

You can definitely see the difference if you play a game @ 30fps then play it again at 60. Some people can tolerate 30 and lower, while others find it unplayable. At a certain point, though, FPS just serves as bragging rights (unless you are playing professionally or something.) The extra frames are useful so you won't dip past 60fps but there really is no need for 400 fps in a casual game of Halo or such.

If anything, I find lag to be a bigger problem than low fps in some games. Having 100fps in WoW or Rift, etc. means nothing if you have 1000ms ping. :'(

 

[getoffmycloud]

for some games 60FPS is useful and if you get a slowdown of frames it less noticeable at higher frame rates but anything above 60 is really just technological dick waving.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

This is a pc.....boost over the pointless. lol. Its similiar to Crysis 2, i played it on 360 (which is old tech) and found the graphic great but gameplay boring. All the pc moaned at was the graphics, which they got an update to with better physics and water etc etc and yes it looked amazing. But. Its still the same boring game.

As for 30fps. I know the greater the frame rate the more smoother the game. But if you dont notice it then who cares? Yes, it would be great for every game to be 60fps. But if 30fps works well with no issues, then it doesnt matter to much.

 

[trlkly]

Because, while as low as 12 FPS is enough to create the illusion of movement, it's not enough for it not to seem like jerky movement. The 24-30FPS is a sweet spot in film, but that's because they have motion blurring, which makes up for the deficiency. But said blurring was at first prohibitively expensive (in computer resource terms) in PC gaming, and now, people have gotten used to the crispness of 60 FPS. Why go back to 30 FPS and have to add a filter, to get a blurrier (or, worse, jerkier) result?

And, yes, as games are designed to run at 60 FPS mostly (some parts of console games being an exception), the game itself often does slow down if you are below that, as it means your computer itself is slow.

 

[Squilookle]

I've never understood the obsession with it. I've been playing Driver: San Francisco quite a lot lately, and that has a solid 60fps for singleplayer, and locked 30 for multiplayer. Going from singleplayer to multiplayer, there is a noticable difference, which you notice for about... two seconds. After that you're immersed in the gameplay again and the frame rate doesn't matter.

I prefer more gameplay options if it comes down to that or doubling the frame rate.

 

[burningdragoon]

Most people will notices the difference... once their eyes/brains have gotten used to the higher frame rate.

Just like you will never have a problem with standard definition until you've watched/played on high definition for long enough.

 

[xPixelatedx]

Indeed, movies and television have a framerate of 24 FPS, and no-one seems to find any problem with them being choppy or slow.

So why so much freakout at frame-rates being capped at 30 FPS, or this obsession with getting it up to 60? if you've surpassed the point needed to create the illusion of a fluid, moving picture, do you really need to push it even father?

If it is already real, then 24fps is where you want it.

If it is unreal (a game or CGI movie) then 60fps is where you want it.

I have a 120hz TV and I can create the effect of doubling the framerate of anything I watch, so I know what movies look like at 60fps. They look like home movies, taken with a camcorder. It's really a very jarring and unpleasant effect. The reason for that is anything above 30 starts to make things look more true-to-life in motion, with 60 being the sweet spot. Obviously, this has a more dramatic and positive effect on games, which can only get better with added smoothness. That said, Avatar (a 90% CGI Movie) looks amazing with 120hz!! the reason why people usually stop at 60 is because that's the point the human eye stops registering. So once a game has reached 60, you are starting to see the game world in the same way you would see it as if it were real. Move your hand around in front of your face... yeah, you could say that's the equivalent of 60fps. So that's the answer to your question.

This also has absolutely nothing to do with people bragging about their PCs. While rare, I have played numerous console games at 60frames. There was several small points where Jumping Flash (a PS1 game) hit 60, and it also looked amazing.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well to put in the simplest terms possible, the greater the FPS the greater the illusion.

 

[NathLines]

I'm fine with 30 FPS if it's constant. If it dips below, I get naseous. Same with low FoV.

Also, when you've gone 60, you just don't want to go back if possible.

 

[Daemonate]

God, people oversimplify this to the point of nonsense....

 

[RaikuFA]

All I have to say about this is lol@graphics over gameplay and/or story.

 

[Braedan]

Why don't we just go back to 800x600 with no AA and only 64MB of total game data.

I'm obviously exaggerating, but faulting people who can afford to buy technology that is better than consoles made 5 years ago is a little strange. For some reason everyone (from my experience) who doesn't own a PC capable of gaming thinks that we spend thousands and thousands every year to make sure we get 6 more frames per second. (exaggeratioooooon)
Very few PC players that I've met bother with that crap. My computer has a motherboard from 2008, and a video card from 2010. I can max most games I find.
What I'm getting at, is that the jump from 30FPS to 60FPS is quite noticeable, so when it's cheap and easy to do it on games that aren't as much of a resource hog as Skyrim, we're going to do it. The game plays better, feels better, and is more enjoyable.

Here's a side by side (top by bottom?) comparison of 30 FPS http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html. It's very noticeable just watching, but when you have to interact with 3D objects moving at those frame rates its even more so.

Edit: and damn. I was ninja'd on the link...

 

[veloper]

Whats up lately with people trying to force their ridiculously low standards onto everyone else?

30 fps is slow and in a competitive shooter match you'd be at at a huge disadvantage, if others are playing at 60 fps and up.

 

[lukey94]

The human eye sees roughly at 24 frames per second, 30 is pretty close to this, so the movement seems only sightly more fluid at 30FPS. But 60FPS is the rough maximum for most TVs and monitors (usually in the 50-70 Hz range, but 3D at 120Hz) therefore at 60FPS you can get the most fluid movement and animation possible, if you watch The Slow-Mo Guys on Youtube, you can really see how fluid movement is at high FPS (talking thousands here) but the difference between 30 and 60 FPS is noticeable, so why wouldn't we want the best we can get?

 

[bafrali]

It runs smoother and increases the immersion. Why else?


If you are content with 30 FPS... you are probably a console player.

 

[Absolutionis]

Physicist/Biomedical Engineer here

Your eyes can see at ~24-30fps. In movies, this doesn't matter too much because any frame skips are generally ignored. For anything you have control over, the response lag between your action and the screen needs to be optimized; that's why they shoot for 30fps at least.

There's also something called "Nyquist Frequency" which essentially states that optimally, if you're displaying/detecting information, you should do so at TWICE the frequency of normal operation in order to minimize aliasing (aliasing in frequency, not the graphical aliasing you sometimes see).

In simpler terms, 30fps is fine. Anything less is noticeable by much of the population.
However, 40fps becomes odd in that the fps doesn't divide as evenly into the human 30fps detection rate.
Thus, we shoot for 60fps.
Anything higher than 60fps is a waste because it's more than double the human eye's rate.

 

[joshthor]

it really depends on the game. for instance - crysis i found to be smooth as low as 25 frames per second, but i find league of legends to seem laggy under 45.

that being said, my sweet spot is 45 fps. its hard to notice a difference after that. Skyrim i pumped up the graphics as much as possible until i had an average of about 45 fps. you will hit 60 alot, and usually drop no lower than 30.

 

[The Heik]

Yeah, some of the combos are insanely tight in that game, you'd never pull them off at 30FPS.

I call bullshit on this statement.

At 30 FPS, there is .03 seconds between each frame. At 60 FPS there are .0167 seconds between frames. That's already a pretty miniscule difference, but it's made all the more irrelevant mechanically by the fact that the world's fastest human reaction times are .100 seconds, 6 times slower than the frametime at 60 FPS. If the the difference between 30 and 60 FPS is a workable amount for you, then congratulations you're officially superhuman, but no regular member of the homo sapiens species could actually utilize such a meager amount of time with any significant measurable difference in player capability.

Which would be a valid criticism if combos were down to individual frames, which they're not.

Actually they are, as ultimately all interactions are based upon the frames (which are each continuations of the game). Can't pull off a combo if there are no frames to progress the action.

My point though is that having 60 FPS over 30FPS does not add enough additional data data for even the fastest human brains to actually use. Knowing that a hadouken fireball is coming .0167 seconds faster is not going to measurably help in combat, because it still takes your brain at least .1 seconds (though on average it's more like .2) to be able to recognize it and react to it. Ergo, a higher frame rate does not mechanically change the game after 30-40 FPS. If it does for you, then it's probably just a mental placebo, not an actual tactical advantage.

That's not how it works in terms of the whole system. A very finely tuned 60fps game has around 66ms of input latency while solid 30fps has twice that although it often goes up to over 200ms if the engine is not tuned and the hdtv is laggy or whatever.

And also in fighting games losing every other frame of animation is losing a lot of data about what is happening. Is this move x or move y, how obvious is the difference and so on. With 60fps developers can convey the same amount of visual information to the player in a shorter amount of time making action games feel a lot faster.

On your first point, you're arguing on an individual basis, which is hardly an objective point of reference. Of course a well tuned machine is going to function better than one that isn't. However, if both a 30 FPS system and a 60 FPS system are well tuned, the difference is negligible at best.

On your second point, like I mentioned before, .0167 seconds is not enough for the human brain to work with. By the time the information has been processed and reacted upon, 6 or more frames have already passed by, and that's at the very best speed humanity can offer (a trait that exists in less than .1% of the population). To say that a single frame lends so much information to a game is arguing against a fundamental physical limit of the human body. There is no one on Earth, past or present, who could properly use such a miniscule difference to any significant result.

And besides, if a game (ostensibly a form of entertainment) requires that players be the pinnacle of human mental capability to to be able to play properly, I'd chalk that up more to unfeasible game design rather than a lack of information.

So let me say again, no one needs faster than 40 frames per second for their games. 60 FPS does add to the visual smoothness, but in terms of actual actions and reaction, no one is going to be able to use what little is gained from the increase in FPS.