30-60 Vs 60 Vs 60+ FPS, What is the true?

bergami

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Apr 15, 2012
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My friend and I were discussing about FPS (frames per second) on games.

I told him, he wouldn't see (really) big diferences among 30-60 FPS since,

Below 30 he will start getting freezes, and really see problems while playing.

Among 30-60 FPS only professional people, audio-visual workers, can REALLY see a diference while playing.

But, I told him. For the human eye, its impossible to feel any diference while playing over 60 FPS.

That's why there is the V-Sync, to limit the game's FPS to the Hz of the monitor's resolution. Turning off V-Sync would only result a waste of processing from the VGA, and no performance difference.

Although,

He says when someone plays at 60+ FPS, his character will "run faster", jump "faster" (higher !?), shoot "faster" than anyone in the game.

He says some gamers prefer to play at 350 FPS (for example) just to be "faster" and take advantage over other who plays at 60, which I disagree.

Which of us are right, wrong? Both?

** All these examples are from playing in 1080p at 60Hz. **

Thank you !
 

bergami

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Apr 15, 2012
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Ok, I see your point, and that proves mine.

however, seeing a square jumping and spinning is really easy to detect those "freezes" on 30 FPS, and they can't be seeing at 60 FPS.

While playing, with so many things happening all the time, you almost can't sense these "freezes" among 30-60. Only if you play focused to see that or play below 30.

But the most importante thing is:

60+ FPS really, can anyone see (eye, brain, fingers) any diference?
 

KingFatty

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2010
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Also have you ever used an old-fashioned CRT (tube) monitor?

You could get eyestrain and see throbbing effect of the light when you set the refresh to 60, but it gets much smoother at 85 and typically would lessen/eliminate eyestrain. To test, you can look away from the monitor and pay attention to it out of the corner of your eye where you will be more sensitive to the strobing effect of 60 Hz, and it goes away at 85 Hz.

Same for fluorescent lights/bulbs. So I'm just saying, your physical eyes and brain are capable of perceiving FPS above 60 Hz. If you are capable of physically perceiving it, but don't notice it, maybe you just aren't paying close enough attention or otherwise haven't looked for it yet.

Like a bad pixel on your monitor. If you just don't look for it carefully, you won't 'see' it. But it's there, and your eyes are perfectly capable of perceiving it physically, so once it's pointed out to you and you learn to appreciate it, then you will always notice it.

I think that's how pro gamers are when it comes to high FPS in gaming, they know exactly what they need and so they better appreciate and push the physical limits of being able to "see" (realize) what their eye/brain systems are capable of perceiving.
 

Eureka

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
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It's definitely appreciable. If you've ever used a 120hz TV and watched one of your favorite shows, you'll notice the difference in fluidity.

The thing is, 30fps is the minimum to track fluid motion, but not the maximum your mind can handle. The mind can track high frame-rates. The question for you, as an end user, is whether or not you care to have it.

Now, I'm not so sure about playing above 60fps on a 60Hz monitor. For sure, someone who runs a 120Hz monitor should be able to react slightly better than a 60Hz user. Think of your control as drawing a curve... the more points you have, the smoother your curve will be. Having more points, or inputs, will allow you to react slightly better. But I'm not sure you can perceive that if the maximum refresh rate is at 60Hz.
 
Mar 6, 2012
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He wasn't questioning the refresh rate of the monitor, only the frames per second. A 120Hz monitor will look better to a trained eye than an equivalent 60Hz. But would 60fps be notiecable on a 120Hz compared to 120fps on the same one?
 

Red Hawk

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2011
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30 FPS is playable for me, but I can definitely feel the difference between 30fps and 60 fps, enough to make it worth upgrading for.

But no, a higher frame rate will do nothing to make your character run faster, shoot faster, jump faster, etc.
 

SlowSpyder

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
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I find 30FPS to be perfectly playable, but I should mention I almost never play first person shooters. 60FPS certainly has a smoothness to it that 30FPS does not.
 

Eureka

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
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He wasn't questioning the refresh rate of the monitor, only the frames per second. A 120Hz monitor will look better to a trained eye than an equivalent 60Hz. But would 60fps be notiecable on a 120Hz compared to 120fps on the same one?

Actually, he was. He's talking about a friend who plays at 350fps on a 60hz monitor.
 

UaVaj

Golden Member
Nov 16, 2012
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placebo effect.

if you paid extra to get more fps. it had better be better. even if it isn't. afterall, you now have less cash. you need to justify it. you will justify it.

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strictly fps. (microstutter, input lag, response time all excluded)

do keep in mind that different people do have slightly different perception. hence, for some 24fps is fluid, for most 30fps is fluid, for others 40fps is fluid, anything beyond 40fps and you are only fooling yourself.

if 60fps or 120fps make you happy and your pocket is deep enough. buy what you want. manfactuer loves u most. different folks with different strokes.
 
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Annisman*

Golden Member
Aug 20, 2010
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It's not so much that 30 or 60 fps is or isn't playable to most people, it's the flucuations up and down that your eyes mostly detect (in my experience) if a fps you are playing is at 60 or 70 fps and then drops to 30 or 40 quickly, even though 30 or 40 is 'playable' you will most definiately notice it and dislike it.
 

omeds

Senior member
Dec 14, 2011
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I notice as soon as the frame rate dips below 60 @ 60hz. 30 fps is not playable to me, but I can live with dips to 50 or so.
With vsync enabled I try to achieve a minimum of 60. Without vsync I try to achieve a solid 125 cap, because it greatly reduces tearing and feels much smoother. In older games 250 is even better. At 120hz I again try for a solid 125 or 250 cap.

Your friend is right, in some games more fps does make you move faster or jump higher, or have other benefits.

125 fps in CoD series (or on the quake engine) for example allows you to jump further/higher, and 333 makes you run silenty on certain surfaces in CoD4 iirc, and can effect fire rates and hit rego in some games.
 

KingFatty

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2010
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Sounds like that is merely exploiting a glitch though. Without such exploits/cheese, you should expect the same speed/jump height regardless of FPS.

The underlying physics is the same. You go from point A to point B in 5 seconds. Whether you show that animation (like a flip book) using 150 snapshots played at 30 per second, or 300 snapshots played at 60 per second, it will still take you 5 seconds to move between the points so your speed is the same.
 

omeds

Senior member
Dec 14, 2011
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Here's a more detailed explanation:

The Q3 software engine measures time in an integer number of milliseconds. There are a thousand milliseconds in a second. There can be no fractions in the number of frames per second that you see on your monitor; thus, the only viable number of frame rates you can have are defined by this equation:

Viable Frame rates (FPS) = int(1000 / N)

N = time in milliseconds between frames
int() = integer function

The only valid values are those which are equal to (1000/N) where N is an integer.


There were two significant bugs with id Software's Quake 3 engine.

The one that interests us here produces an unintended style of play. It is a bug that involves a numerical rounding error that occurs in the calculation of a player’s movement.

As players move from frame to frame, rounding errors add up and will in some cases allow players to jump slightly higher and farther than is normally possible. This latter technique is known as strafe jumping. In later patches to Quake 3, id Software attempted to fix the bug but this gave player movement a jerky feel to it and for this reason, strafe jumping remains in Quake 3.

Basically, your position is calculated every time a frame is rendered by Quake. So if you are using a higher framerate, your position will be calcualted more times per second. The framerate does not affect your running speed, your jumping velocity or weapons knockback. In Quake 3, the standard gravitational field strength is 800 units/second2. Also, as there is no air in Quake, there is no air resistance to affect your movement. When you press your jump button - whether you are stood still, running, whatever - you are instantly given a vertical velocity of 270 units/second upwards. This initial velocity is fixed and never changes. So, when you jump there are 2 forces involved: 1) Your 270 units/second of upwards velocity and 2) The 800 units/second2 of deceleration caused by gravity. As Quake has to calculate your position for every frame, that means that it calculates the effect that gravity is having on you every frame. However, every time it calculates your new position, direction and speed, it has to remember that the Quake world is discrete. It is all based around a very fine grid matrix where the smallest division is called a unit. Therefore, when it is calcualting players' positions and velocities etc., they cannot be half-way between one unit and another unit. They have to snap exactly to an exact position, to a particular unit. There is no in-between. As a result, Quake cannot work with fractional numbers for position values and so it must round the fractional value before rendering the new positions. This means there is a rounding error in the results of Quake's calculations and it is these rounding errors which causes the differences in movement - most noticeably when jumping. Indeed, many players say they feel like they are 'floating' when they first try one of the magic framerates that has a large effect, such as 125fps. However there is another side to the story. Just as some framerates can appear to reduce the effect of gravity, others can actually appear to increase the effect of gravity, which serves as a great disadvantage through loss of speed and height.
 

Greenlepricon

Senior member
Aug 1, 2012
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In a sense, more frames will be better, but that only gets you so far. 30fps is playable to me even though you do notice the motion blur a little more. The funny thing about people trying to test how quickly your eyes see is that they don't take a bunch of snapshots like what games generally flash at you really quickly. The only reason your character in a game should act faster is if your frames get REALLY low, or your system is having trouble processing it. Your character jumping depends on how fast your mouse/keyboard/controller sends the signal, the computer processes it, and then sends it to render on screen. if you really think a difference of 1/60 of a second is going to matter, then that's your choice. Frankly I can't see that fast, nor react to it.
 

Pia

Golden Member
Feb 28, 2008
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60+ FPS really, can anyone see (eye, brain, fingers) any diference?
Everyone can. Just focus on a window, and drag it slowly across the screen. At 60FPS, you can't keep focused on it; it gets blurred. But if you instead focus on a finger, you can move it much faster and still see the detail on it perfectly. Until the display has high enough refresh rate that the two look identical, more Hz and FPS are needed.
 

boxleitnerb

Platinum Member
Nov 1, 2011
2,601
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It's not so much the motion itself, but rather the controls where the difference is felt.

Try watching someone play a game at 30fps vs 60fps and then sit down and play yourself. There should be quite a difference in perception.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,672
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But, I told him. For the human eye, its impossible to feel any diference while playing over 60 FPS.
That's false; many games feel choppy at 60 FPS (especially older titles) and are noticeably smoother at 120 FPS on a 60 Hz LCD.

In addition to the framerate, there's also the issue of input response, which often feels tighter and more fluid at a higher framerate.

He says when someone plays at 60+ FPS, his character will "run faster", jump "faster" (higher !?), shoot "faster" than anyone in the game.
That part is false, barring engine issues (e.g. rounding). Most games run at a fixed tick so the physical game speed stays constant regardless of the framerate.
 

nextJin

Golden Member
Apr 16, 2009
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placebo effect.

if you paid extra to get more fps. it had better be better. even if it isn't. afterall, you now have less cash. you need to justify it. you will justify it.

-----

strictly fps. (microstutter, input lag, response time all excluded)

do keep in mind that different people do have slightly different perception. hence, for some 24fps is fluid, for most 30fps is fluid, for others 40fps is fluid, anything beyond 40fps and you are only fooling yourself.

if 60fps or 120fps make you happy and your pocket is deep enough. buy what you want. manfactuer loves u most. different folks with different strokes.

Bullshit, as soon as my frame rate goes below 60 with either sharp declines or overall drops to the 30s I have to stop playing and change settings.

There is also a vast difference for people switching to 120hz. If it was Placebo or there was no difference you'd know about it.

Those of us who have played competitively in the original CS can usually tell the difference. You couldn't make certain jumps without a high fps even if the monitor wouldn't display them all.

I can't play AC3 because for no other reason than piss poor coding it drops into the 40s all the time on a CFX 7970, 4.6Ghz i7 2600k, 8GB, and 256GB 830 SSD no matter what resolution or setting.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
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The issue relies either in old games that ties the engine with the FPS. Or whenever you run 30FPS average, but forget all about minimum FPS.

People using SLI and Crossfire will also need much higher framerates due to the flaws of that technology.

People talking about TV need to remember that the TV signal is still 50 or 60hz. And all you see is the same image duplicated. And when you use an LCD, its always on. So on TVs it makes even less sense. But as said, placebo...or bad quality TVs..

I got a 800hz TV for example and 60hz monitors. Zero difference.
 

bergami

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Apr 15, 2012
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I play most kind of games such as MMOs, RPGs, stratregy, FPS, Simulator, Soccer, other.

I play most of them at the higher settings as possible intending to keep my FPS always around 50-60.

While playing, I can't sense any diference between 50 or 60. If I die, I don't blame my FPS, I'd rather blame myself or my ping being higher.

I can sense easily when it is is stable at 60 and drops around 30, that is something to blame of.

I am not professinal, I don't work with games, I intend to have fun overall.

---------------------

My friend has a very limitated configuration, he can't play well most heavy games like crysis - battlefield - skyrim - chivalry.

Hes main game is Counter Strike Global Offensive, he says he can easily sense he playing better at 125 FPS than 60 FPS.

And V-Sync should not be enable at online games such this one, because they need higher FPS to be the best.

He'd rather play at low settings (But still in 1080p at 60Hz) and get higher FPS as possible. He says on hes new configuration (Which includes a 3570k, GTX 670 and 16GB Ram), he intends to play Battlefield 3 at medium settings just to get hundreds FPS and take advantage over others.
 

ICDP

Senior member
Nov 15, 2012
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The human eye can see way more than 60 FPS, though many individuals are happy with half that to convey a sense of smooth motion. Others of course think anything less than 60 is a slide show. Having said that anyone claiming they are seeing over 60 FPS on a 60Hz monitor are wrong.

A 60Hz monitor by definition can never, ever display more than 60 full frames every second because it is incapable of doing so. What happens when you turn vsync off is that your monitor ends up displaying more than one image/frame at a time. This is of course what causes screen tearing, your GPU is sending the frames as fast as it can to the monitor but the monitor cannot display them all so it displays a fraction of the 1st frame and a fraction of the next frame.

For example if you are getting 120 FPS on a 60Hz monitor each refresh cycle of your monitor will display half of one frame at the bottom and half of the other frame at the top. Your GPU is of course working at 60 FPS+ and you will feel a difference due to decreased input lag but your monitor is and always will be outputting 60 FPS.

120 FPS on a 120Hz monitor feels so much better and smoother than on a 60Hz monitor by virtue of the fact that each end every frame is being displayed in its entirety.
 
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bergami

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Apr 15, 2012
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The human eye can see way more than 60 FPS, though many individuals are fappy with half that to convey a sense of smooth motion. Others of course think anything less than 60 is a slide show. Having said that anyone claiming they are seeing over 60 FPS on a 60Hz monitor are wrong.

A 60Hz monitor by definition can never, ever display more than 60 full frames every second because it is incapable of doing so. What happens when you turn vsync off is that your monitor ends up displaying more than one image/frame at a time. This is of course what causes screen tearing, your GPU is sending the frames as fast as it can to the monitor but the monitor cannot display them all so it displays a fraction of the 1st frame and a fraction of the next frame.

For example if you are getting 120 FPS on a 60Hz monitor each refresh cycle of you monitor will display half of one frame at the bottom and half of the other frame at the top. Your GPU is of course working at 60 FPS+ and you will feel a difference due to decreased input lag but your monitor is and always will be outputting 60 FPS.

120 FPS on a 120Hz monitor feels so much better and smoother than on a 60Hz monitor by virtue of the fact that each end every frame is being displayed in its entirety.

However, can you say that, with higher FPS he can be "faster" than anyone? Like he said at the first topic. Or just his perception seems to be more "fluid" or "smoother" even if it doesn't affect directly the gameplay?