[EG] The case for 30fps PC gaming

[NTMBK]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-the-case-for-30fps-pc-gaming

Those are some pretty useful tips- I didn't know about that NVidia control panel option, something to bear in mind if I go green with my next card. I'm one of those guys who can't stand screen tear and will V-Sync everything, so this is right up my alley. Should make the next poorly optimized console port a lot more playable.

 

[Mondozei]

I've read through his article, which I think can be best summed up as "In Defence of Ubisoft"(okay, not really, but still).

Nevertheless, the arguments put forth are all bad. If you have bad hardware, you should upgrade. Ditto if your resolution is too high for your hardware, you should upgrade(or you shouldn't have gotten a 1440p monitor in the first place).

Alien: Isolation ran amazingly well on GPU cards like R9-280, often getting quite a bit above 60 fps on very high settings at 1080p. And that game was and is very beautiful. The fact that we view that game's performance as noteworthy is in of itself noteworthy, in a bad way. It shouldn't have surprised us, because that would mean that was the norm. But it did surprise many of us and/or caused us to note it, precisely because it isn't the norm these days. And that's the real problem.


By going down that route the author puts forward, you are essentially adapting yourself to either A) your own dumb decisions of getting gimped hardware or, more commonly, B) the lazy and/or shockingly bad PC ports of some developers, instead of demanding much better ports.

Although, to be fair, in recent times it's been less of a "the console version runs well but the PC version doesn't" and more "ALL versions run terrible"/"the developers rushed this one, under pressure/due to incompetence".

Getting 60 fps at 1080p isn't hard on a PC today using a sub-200 dollar GPU like the 280. If you get that card, and a decent setup otherwise, you've done your job. The people who haven't done their job because the game is a mess are the developers, and the blame should be shifted to them, instead of telling people to get used to terrible 30 fps gaming.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I've read through his article, which I think can be best summed up as "In Defence of Ubisoft"(okay, not really, but still).

No not really, because about every single company makes 30fps now. And its because the poor excuse of hardware in the consoles cant do more. And then MS and Sony puts pressure on console game developers to make sure the PCs suffer as well. The same goes for the fake quadcore demand.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/PS4_vs._Xbox_One_Native_Resolutions_and_Framerates

MS and Sony had one single goal to reach. And they missed it badly.

 

[Silverforce11]

Basically sum up as "If your hardware can't handle it, then capping the FPS to a low 30 will provide smoother gameplay".

Not sure why they need an article for that.

 

[Qwertilot]

Also pointing out that having the option to do just that (which seems very rare at the moment) would be genuinely useful for people on lower spec machines.

They're in a non trivial majority of course, and the variable refresh stuff is also due to be a minority sport for a fair bit.

It definitely isn't defending universal frame rate caps for high spec machines

 

[Pandora's Box]

Basically sum up as "If your hardware can't handle it, then capping the FPS to a low 30 will provide smoother gameplay".

Not sure why they need an article for that.

capping at 30fps looks horrible imo. Not smooth at all. On my 3440x1440 display I will lower the graphics settings over capping the frame rate any day. 60fps or nothing. The difference between max quality settings and high or even medium in todays games is hardly noticeable. The performance difference is dramatic though.

 

[AtenRa]

Well, soon there will be monitors that will allow you to game at 40-42-51-57fps or any fps with not a single judder or tear.

I will like to see what they will say then.

 

[Qwertilot]

About the same, because people upgrade monitors even less often than graphics cards
(The article isn't addressing an 'optimal' set up.).

 

[Silverforce11]

capping at 30fps looks horrible imo. Not smooth at all. On my 3440x1440 display I will lower the graphics settings over capping the frame rate any day. 60fps or nothing. The difference between max quality settings and high or even medium in todays games is hardly noticeable. The performance difference is dramatic though.

I fully agree with you.

I've played with frame rate limiters, while the frame time is stable, 30 fps is unplayable. Its worse on PC since we sit so close to the screen, its just so obviously low frame rate, its vomit inducing.

 

[NTMBK]

capping at 30fps looks horrible imo. Not smooth at all. On my 3440x1440 display I will lower the graphics settings over capping the frame rate any day. 60fps or nothing. The difference between max quality settings and high or even medium in todays games is hardly noticeable. The performance difference is dramatic though.

Oh, it's certainly a personal preference. On something like Assassin's Creed or Shadow of Mordor I myself would choose steady 30fps with more eye candy over 60fps at lower settings. Thankfully the flexibility of the PC will (usually) let us make that choice for ourselves

 

[NTMBK]

Nevertheless, the arguments put forth are all bad. If you have bad hardware, you should upgrade. Ditto if your resolution is too high for your hardware, you should upgrade(or you shouldn't have gotten a 1440p monitor in the first place).

Not everyone has money to throw around on new hardware every time a game doesn't hit 60fps- or the desire to do so. Millions of gamers enjoy playing on consoles just fine- providing the option for a console-style locked 30fps doesn't seem like a particularly bad idea.

 

[NTMBK]

Well, soon there will be monitors that will allow you to game at 40-42-51-57fps or any fps with not a single judder or tear.

I will like to see what they will say then.

Already addressed in the article.

Looking forward, new technologies like Nvidia's G-Sync and AMD's FreeSync offer up the potential to lock frame-rates wherever you want without the visual drawbacks. This technology works by forcing the display to refresh its image when the new frame is ready to be rendered, not at a fixed 60Hz. In motion, we can confirm that a locked 40 or 45fps does indeed produce a better experience than 30fps, once judder and tearing are removed from the equation. G-Sync monitors are the only solution on the market right now and they're expensive, but Samsung FreeSync display are due in Q1 2015, so hopefully competition will drive the prices down on this essential technology sooner rather than later.

 

[bystander36]

Not everyone has money to throw around on new hardware every time a game doesn't hit 60fps- or the desire to do so. Millions of gamers enjoy playing on consoles just fine- providing the option for a console-style locked 30fps doesn't seem like a particularly bad idea.

When using a mouse to turn, 30 FPS is a horrible idea for me and many others. I don't care how consistent it is, many of us get simulator/motion sickness as a result of the latency involved with 30 FPS.

Then their is the problem with a lack of motion blur in games, which makes 30 FPS feel really choppy. Perhaps it doesn't seem to bad when you are several feet away from the TV with a console, but I'm hating it on PC gaming.

Dragon Age: Inquisition has a cutscene cap of 30 FPS. Until that was removed, the cutscenes were unbearable to watch. They felt choppy and not smooth. I'm actually a little surprised by how bad it was, because most my problems with low FPS are latency related, but I can see there is more than just latency that is bad at 30 FPS without films motion blur.

You can always turn down settings to get more FPS. Just because your hardware lacks, does not mean you have to play at 30 FPS.

 

[Black Octagon]

I disagree with this article with a burning fury

 

[Phynaz]

My favorite quote:

We've found that a Core i3 4130 CPU matched with an Nvidia GTX 750 Ti often manages to match or exceed PlayStation 4 performance

 

[AntonioHG]

When using a mouse to turn, 30 FPS is a horrible idea for me and many others. I don't care how consistent it is, many of us get simulator/motion sickness as a result of the latency involved with 30 FPS.

Then their is the problem with a lack of motion blur in games, which makes 30 FPS feel really choppy. Perhaps it doesn't seem to bad when you are several feet away from the TV with a console, but I'm hating it on PC gaming.

--snip--

You can always turn down settings to get more FPS. Just because your hardware lacks, does not mean you have to play at 30 FPS.

Sure and we, as PC gamers, have a choice to cap it at whatever FPS we want as well. Some people, like my younger brother, aren't as sensitive to the lower FPS so it's fine for them to turn the details to max and have all the eye candy with a lower FPS. Doesn't take away from your experience to have the choice built-in to the game, lol.

I do agree that motion blur does help as playing Crysis 3 capped at 30FPS feels better than Dragon Age Inquisition at 30FPS.

I'd like to have that option built in along with an FOV slider and proper key binding options, proper mouse options and subtitles (hard of hearing girlfriend) and more things that I can't think of right now.

 

[Black Octagon]

I disagree with this article with a burning fury

 

[exar333]

When using a mouse to turn, 30 FPS is a horrible idea for me and many others. I don't care how consistent it is, many of us get simulator/motion sickness as a result of the latency involved with 30 FPS.

Then their is the problem with a lack of motion blur in games, which makes 30 FPS feel really choppy. Perhaps it doesn't seem to bad when you are several feet away from the TV with a console, but I'm hating it on PC gaming.

Dragon Age: Inquisition has a cutscene cap of 30 FPS. Until that was removed, the cutscenes were unbearable to watch. They felt choppy and not smooth. I'm actually a little surprised by how bad it was, because most my problems with low FPS are latency related, but I can see there is more than just latency that is bad at 30 FPS without films motion blur.

You can always turn down settings to get more FPS. Just because your hardware lacks, does not mean you have to play at 30 FPS.

This.

All a cap does is limit those with the hardware to make it run >30fps. It also hurts those with slower hardware that may sacrifice quality for higher fps. Let the users choose what they want, don't impose limits.

I find it almost laughable that devs still do this type of behavior after all these years and the past responses of PC gamers. Do they not learn?

 

[digitaldurandal]

If companies want to include an optional cap of 30fps in their games I am fine with. In some games it might not matter too much, however once we are talking about games that are fast paced 30fps is going to affect your input perception, and in games that don't have good blur (personally hate blur) fast movement is going to be pretty bleh.

I could see why some people might want to do it so they can have more features enabled on their gtx 750 or 7770 but really this is not a thing for me and I hope the PC gaming audience is smart enough to realize this is mostly bunk.

 

[NTMBK]

The most interesting part, I thought, was this:

Pay attention to the frametime graphs in the lower right. Regular V-sync is blue, unlocked is green, locked 30 is red. Notice how both the blue and the green line have occasional jumps up to >60ms frametimes? That is due to the engine stalling on the CPU, because so much of the CPU time has been used up keeping the GPU fed, and not enough in keeping the resources streaming or the world updating. Locking it to 30fps actually improves the minimum framerate significantly!

 

[bystander36]

Sure and we, as PC gamers, have a choice to cap it at whatever FPS we want as well. Some people, like my younger brother, aren't as sensitive to the lower FPS so it's fine for them to turn the details to max and have all the eye candy with a lower FPS. Doesn't take away from your experience to have the choice built-in to the game, lol.

I do agree that motion blur does help as playing Crysis 3 capped at 30FPS feels better than Dragon Age Inquisition at 30FPS.

I'd like to have that option built in along with an FOV slider and proper key binding options, proper mouse options and subtitles (hard of hearing girlfriend) and more things that I can't think of right now.

The problem is when dev's think it is ok to place 30 FPS caps on a game and ignore those who want/need more than 60 FPS. There are a few examples of this out there, and I'm starting to see more of it.

 

[NTMBK]

The problem is when dev's think it is ok to place 30 FPS caps on a game and ignore those who want/need more than 60 FPS. There are a few examples of this out there, and I'm starting to see more of it.

Sure, taking away that choice is annoying. But that is not what that article (or this thread) is about. I quote directly from the article:

To conclude, let's be clear here - this piece isn't about giving a free pass to poorly optimised titles (though it may help to get better results from them if all other options fail) and we have serious issues with the 'cinematic' gaming argument occasionally rolled out by developer and publishers. It may make sense to run at 30fps on a fixed console platform, but the whole point of PC gaming is that the ability to define the experience rests with the player, based on how he or she wants to play, based on the kit available. The notion of placing arbitrary software limits on a platform where scalability is its key asset makes absolutely no sense to us, and it's no mistake that this argument usually rolls out in tandem with poorly performing software. Instead, think of this as an additional, occasionally invaluable addition to your PC toolbox - an option used by console developers - and often for good reason.

If you want to complain about devs putting arbitrary hard coded FPS caps, take it somewhere else- because it's off topic.

 

[UaVaj]

Basically sum up as "If your hardware can't handle it, then capping the FPS to a low 30 will provide smoother gameplay".

Not sure why they need an article for that.

because 98% of folks cannot comprehend that basic concept/flaw. the reason for demanding high fps is due to poor frame variances.

"if" the frames are "delivered evenly" (rarely ever the case). 30fps is typically acceptable (as proven by consoles) and 60fps is near fluid.

 

[tential]

Sure and we, as PC gamers, have a choice to cap it at whatever FPS we want as well. Some people, like my younger brother, aren't as sensitive to the lower FPS so it's fine for them to turn the details to max and have all the eye candy with a lower FPS. Doesn't take away from your experience to have the choice built-in to the game, lol.

I do agree that motion blur does help as playing Crysis 3 capped at 30FPS feels better than Dragon Age Inquisition at 30FPS.

I'd like to have that option built in along with an FOV slider and proper key binding options, proper mouse options and subtitles (hard of hearing girlfriend) and more things that I can't think of right now.

Subtitles for games are MANDATORY to me. I am probably a little hard of hearing at this point though.

 

[bystander36]

because 98% of folks cannot comprehend that basic concept/flaw. the reason for demanding high fps is due to poor frame variances.

"if" the frames are "delivered evenly" (rarely ever the case). 30fps is typically acceptable (as proven by consoles) and 60fps is near fluid.

While visually, that may be true, it is not true when it comes to latency, and mouse responsiveness. 30 FPS, with a mouse, is not acceptable to many if not most. With a controller, you don't have the same type of connective feel that you get with a mouse, so the latency isn't really felt. But many gamers, myself included, get simulator sickness (nausea, headaches or eye strain) if in 1st person view with a mouse and 30 FPS. Others just feel like something is sluggish and wrong. I have meet many people with the same problem, most of which didn't know that they could solve that issue with 60+ FPS, so they avoid those types of games, or are keyboard turners in games like WoW, as the keyboard is much like a joystick in that it disguises the latency.