What is this obsession with framerates over 30FPS?

[chadachada123]

My current PC runs Minecraft at between 10 and 20 FPS, and I've been pretty good with that for, well, years, so anytime people complain about a 'mere' 30 FPS, I usually facepalm. First-world problems.

As long as it's over 30fps, it's perfectly acceptable, in my eyes. When I get my new laptop next week, with an awesome graphics card and plenty of memory, then I'll come back and say whether or not 30fps vs 60fps is objectively a big deal, or only an issue for videophiles that are just obsessing over getting things to look 1% better.

So to sum up, from my personal experience so far:

Going from sub-20fps to 24fps: pretty big difference.
Going from 24fps to 30fps: a big difference.
Going from 30fps to 40fps: not a big difference.
Going from 40fps to 60fps: barely noticeable difference, and nothing to ***** about.

You are completely wrong. Completely.
Most Pro FPS players wouldn't even consider looking at a screen not out putting at least 60 fps.
Any shooter under 30 is basically unplayable.
going form 40 to 60 makes a huge difference in most games, and given you dont even have a real PC capable of giving you 60 fps your little table is based of magic and fairy tails.

Because we're all l33t MLG pros, right?

We don't need souped-up Formula One cars to have fun racing, to use an analogy. Unless you're a whiny Formula One elitist. Then you might claim that anything lower than 700 horsepower is 'untouchable,' to use your own words.

The difference between 30 and 60 is not nearly as huge as the difference between 20 and 30. Sub-24 is unplayable, but 30fps is perfectly player for casual and hardcore gamers alike. I realized that I do actually play 30fps and 60fps games and have a baseline for comparison. Battlefield when it isn't sub-30 is just as playable as the 60fps Caww of Dooty.

I stand by my statement that you seem elitist as hell in your post.

But hey, we'll see once I get my gaming laptop if the difference for the average game is as big as you say. As far as I'm concerned, 15fps is still playable for the majority of games, and anything above 30fps is just buffer room for lag.

 

[Starik20X6]

My understanding is that the human eye runs at around 72fps, so anything higher than that is a bit of a waste. 24fps is most likely just a holdover from the days of analog film, with 24fps being enough to create fluid movement without the cost of more film becoming overwhelming. Now we've gone almost all digital, we could conceivably upgrade everything to a faster frame-rate, I suppose it just takes more processing power. So yeah, theoretically the faster the better, but after about 72 there's not much point because you physically can't see faster than that.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

For me, certain games just need to be 60 FPS to feel precise.


In something like Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, every frame counts. Devil May Cry is another one, so it seems strange that a game series so obsessed with fluent and over the top combat would drop its FPS in the newest title.

I believe in SF4 there are some moves that you have to hit a button each frame so without the 60 fps you couldn't pull of those moves.

Now I know only the hardcore of the hardcore will ever use them but the fact remains.

1 frame links are indeed brutal. They are actually pretty necessary for SSF4: AE as well. You really can't compete without them depending on character.
If you have shoddy FPS and then play online with latency. You will never land a 1 frame link ever. I know when I play online and I get frame chugs because of the other person sometime, below 60 FPS, its infuriating.

OT: The difference is huge. I think it is much more noticeable on a computer monitor right in front of you, than a big TV halfway across the room also. So again, probably why console gamers don't notice this as much as PC gamers do.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

My current PC runs Minecraft at between 10 and 20 FPS, and I've been pretty good with that for, well, years, so anytime people complain about a 'mere' 30 FPS, I usually facepalm. First-world problems.

As long as it's over 30fps, it's perfectly acceptable, in my eyes. When I get my new laptop next week, with an awesome graphics card and plenty of memory, then I'll come back and say whether or not 30fps vs 60fps is objectively a big deal, or only an issue for videophiles that are just obsessing over getting things to look 1% better.

So to sum up, from my personal experience so far:

Going from sub-20fps to 24fps: pretty big difference.
Going from 24fps to 30fps: a big difference.
Going from 30fps to 40fps: not a big difference.
Going from 40fps to 60fps: barely noticeable difference, and nothing to ***** about.

You are completely wrong. Completely.
Most Pro FPS players wouldn't even consider looking at a screen not out putting at least 60 fps.
Any shooter under 30 is basically unplayable.
going form 40 to 60 makes a huge difference in most games, and given you dont even have a real PC capable of giving you 60 fps your little table is based of magic and fairy tails.

Because we're all l33t MLG pros, right?

We don't need souped-up Formula One cars to have fun racing, to use an analogy. Unless you're a whiny Formula One elitist. Then you might claim that anything lower than 700 horsepower is 'untouchable,' to use your own words.

The difference between 30 and 60 is not nearly as huge as the difference between 20 and 30. Sub-24 is unplayable, but 30fps is perfectly player for casual and hardcore gamers alike. I realized that I do actually play 30fps and 60fps games and have a baseline for comparison. Battlefield when it isn't sub-30 is just as playable as the 60fps Caww of Dooty.

I stand by my statement that you seem elitist as hell in your post.

But hey, we'll see once I get my gaming laptop if the difference for the average game is as big as you say. As far as I'm concerned, 15fps is still playable for the majority of games, and anything above 30fps is just buffer room for lag.

There is a difference between something being playable and something being enjoyable though. I can't stand playing anything that chugs below 50-60 FPS. I keep my system always up to date because of it and I will lower settings to achieve that. I don't think it makes me elitist. I just flat out do not enjoy the choppiness and ragged animation that comes with a lower framerate.
An occasional stutter isn't such a big deal, but to be locked at a constant lower rate would drive me insane.

 

[Saulkar]

So why so much freakout at frame-rates being capped at 30 FPS, or this obsession with getting it up to 60?

Because it can allow for more calculated iterations between actions, physics, collisions, timing, and general gameplay mechanics. Additionally for people like me who can tell the difference between 30-60-120-240 frames per second it can have a significant impact on our performance in twitch based games.

P.S. I have two monitors. One 120HZ and the other 60HZ and I can see a significant difference in how games play. One thing I will mention is that some/many (not sure) games have their animations locked at 30-60 frames per seconds. What this means is that even when your card is refreshing the image more than a hundred times a second it may not affect how the game looks or plays.

 

[chadachada123]

When I get my new laptop next week, with an awesome graphics card and plenty of memory, then I'll come back and say whether or not 30fps vs 60fps is objectively a big deal, or only an issue for videophiles that are just obsessing over getting things to look 1% better.

Holy Run On Sentence Batman! May I ask what laptop you're getting?

I'll post the link, but I'll be looking into adding some extra memory. Compared to this POS, it's leagues above. From what I looked into, it's pretty much the best I can get for under a grand for a laptop.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215410

The Geforce 650M in particular, I heard, is pretty much the best graphics card that a sub-1000-dollar laptop can get. Please, correct me if I'm wrong, because I know it's not the greatest card ever but every PC gamer I've talked to in person is pretty impressed with it for the price.

There is a difference between something being playable and something being enjoyable though. I can't stand playing anything that chugs below 50-60 FPS. I keep my system always up to date because of it and I will lower settings to achieve that. I don't think it makes me elitist. I just flat out do not enjoy the choppiness and ragged animation that comes with a lower framerate.
An occasional stutter isn't such a big deal, but to be locked at a constant lower rate would drive me insane.

I truly mean no offense, but since I've become accustomed to playing at low frame rates and with low graphics, it's hard to not see your reply as not a 'first world problem'-type reply. Maybe I truly am just accustomed to poor quality, in the way that an immigrant from a third-world country would complain about elitism from average middle-class Americans.

I'll try to be more understanding, it's just literally hard for me to comprehend your position since I'm so used to shitty gaming conditions.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Watch a Blue Ray some time. If you're used to DVDs, the difference is insane, to the point where it feels like you're not even watching the same thing anymore. It looks almost TOO fluid. The action seems to happen significantly FASTER somehow, even though it's the same animation happening at the same pace. It's hard to even describe, but I've been watching at the usual DVD framerate for so long that the additional FPS that Blue Rays play at is just surreal. (the HD is nice, too, but I'm pretty sure that's not a big factor here)

Interesting, but not accurate. I'm not sure why you're perceiving BluRay to be smoother than DVD, but they both run at the same frame rate -- 30 FPS for video transfers[footnote]at least in NTSC territory -- PAL territory at least used to be 25, I'm not sure what the standard is for European HD[/footnote], and 24 FPS for progressive scan film transfers. Now a lot of HDTVs have processing modes that will artificially increase the frame rate by generating intermediary frames between the existing ones, but that's dependent on the TV, not the media player hooked up to it.

 

[Vegosiux]

Snip

May I suggest getting a desktop?

I think he knows why he's getting a laptop. I suspect it's a mobility related issue. To some people (myself included) mobility is by circumstance a much more important quality than raw power output. So yeah, unless you volunteer to lug people's desktop hardware around every time they have to go somewhere for a few days, such suggestions come across as rather condescending...

Anything below 30fps is absolutely unplayable.

I've managed to play games running at 12. A drag, and not something I'd like to do again, but I managed to play games running at 12.

 

[Vegosiux]

You can technically play at 1 fps, at 12fps you might as well not play.

I think I'll be the one deciding what I might or might not do. And everyone else for themselves, too. If that's how you see it yourself, that's fine, just don't go telling people that's how they should see it too.

 

[Thomas Hardy]

You guys are forgetting the small picture for the large picture.

Who cares how many frames per second we see OR need for the illusion of motion? In a game, all our decisions are based on the last frames we see before we make a decision. Each frame is a discreet image. The faster the screen refreshes, the more up-to-date the information ON the screen is, and the more accurate our decisions can be. 30 FPS translates to an additional "lag" of 0.03 seconds(30 ms)between frames as opposed to 70 FPS refreshing every ~0.014 seconds(14 milseconds). In that difference lies one additional frame someone with 70 FPS would see that someone operating at 30 FPS would not(like an ambush just around a corner).

Compared to ordinary network lag its pretty meaningless. A Canadian player with 100 ping on a server in California is making decisions based on information that is 100ms(0.1 seconds) old as compared to a player playing IN Californa whose ping is less than half that already. But if you're close to the server or shelling out for expensive internet, Frame rate can be a make-or-break difference in a highly competitive setting and DOES significantly impact playability where fast reflexes are important(i.e. Fighting Games, FPSes, RTSes, MOBAs, etc.).

 

[Vegosiux]

Compared to ordinary network lag its pretty meaningless. A Canadian player with 100 ping on a server in California is making decisions based on information that is 100ms(0.1 seconds) old as compared to a player playing IN Californa whose ping is less than half that already. But if you're close to the server or shelling out for expensive internet, Frame rate can be a make-or-break difference in a highly competitive setting and DOES significantly impact playability where fast reflexes are important(i.e. Fighting Games, FPSes, RTSes, MOBAs, etc.).

With the speed of human reflexes and nerve impulses, a difference between 30FPS (0.0333r seconds) and 60FPS (0.01666r seconds) is well within the margin of error.

Also, since when have "twitch games" been a good thing? 0.o

 

[Thomas Hardy]

Here is also a neat video with Carmack explaining why Virtual Reality displays never really worked... At around 6 minutes in he's literally saying "If it's 20ms from the time something physically moves in the real world to the time updated photons come off the screen and hit your eye your brain buys that if you are looking into a stable world, that's essentially impossible with a 60Hz display because it takes 16 of those 20ms just to scan the whole display out..." and then he goes on and on explaining

Ah Carmack. The Original "graphics whore". If only he had paid as much attention to the SCRIPT of Quake 4 as he did the Character models...

 

[INF1NIT3 D00M]

It just looks a whole lot smoother. People can deny it all they want but the leap from 30FPS to 60 FPS makes a massive difference. I usually find myself playing better the higher the FPS, and do most people I would assume. Just ask some of the professional FPS players, those guys could easily run every game on max graphics with smooth framerate, but lots of them will turn the graphics down to get the FPS even higher.

This. Having a huge, hulking rig is all good fun when you're playing Battlefield 3 on max settings. It's even better when you go back and play something from '04-09 and realize you're playing with a framerate of about 60 while EVERYTHING hits the fan, and upwards of 120 frames when things are casual.
Games like Dawn of War or Company of Heroes, or Team Fortress 2, these were things that would strain my old computer. Having a faster, newer computer, it's almost a completely different game going back and maxing the settings and just watching things move. Swarms of Orks charging into machine gun fire, Artillery and tanks barraging a few squads of infantry in CoH, or just watching a scout beat a heavy to death all looks so much better when there are more frames per second than our puny human eyes can even process.

 

[Thomas Hardy]

With the speed of human reflexes and nerve impulses, a difference between 30FPS (0.0333r seconds) and 60FPS (0.01666r seconds) is well within the margin of error.

Also, since when have "twitch games" been a good thing? 0.o

*embarassed sigh* ...I play League of Legends on a seven year-old machine. I'm not saying all twitch games are good, just that people play them. Especially with people like John Carmack in the world. (I think the posted interview is on page 3... He calls 16 miliseconds of response time a problem)

Also, you're neglecting the point that I'm talking about the MOST RECENT information you've seen, not your reflexes or your connection speed. You will still be working from an older photograph than at least some of the other players. Its a miniscule difference but in no way does anything other than a faster frame rate reduce that miniscule increase in time. Talk "margin of error" all you want, its still there. I agree its a miniscule amount of time and not worth worrying about unless you're a professional-level player, but its still there.