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Frames per second - what is smooth?

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See, I've noticed that too, not sure what it is. I've read many medical documents related to gaming and movies etc, and they all say 72 is the magic number.
 
anything over 30 is fine for me. i can hardly tell if its at 20, but anything less that 20 and i cant play.
 
From testing this with Fraps, I've found that I'm physically unable to see any difference from ~40 fps upwards. Lower than that, and it wouldn't seem smooth anymore. 40 fps and several hundred fps basically look the same to me, but I have a feeling that my tolerance is a bit higher than most people. I've seen people claim that even 70 fps is too low.
 
Anyone wh has been on this forum (especially the video forum) long enough will tell you this crops up every couple of months. here are a couple of points

1 the human eye has a limit in excess of 200 fps

2 tv's use interlacing to double frame rate

3 Tv programs use motion blur to trick the eye into see more frame than their really is

4 producers try not to use panning shots with fast action as these look really bad

5 LCD's dont show up frame rate problems as much as CRT's due to the backlight being on continuous

6 LCD's tend to blur pat their response time - some people dont notice this blurring ala motion blur

7 in a slow RPG game 25fps is acceptable in a fast game it isnt 50-60 is better but remember you will have dips in rate

8 the eye is more sensitive to changes in frame rate than continuous

Their is a little program called frame rate compare ( search google for fpscmp02.zip as original site is down) which allows you to run 2 moving blocks side by side. Running a crt and disabling vsync (having fraps in background to make sure its disabled) allows you to change each one independantly. I guarantee you will notice the difference between 30 and 60 and 75% of people will see the difference between 60 and 120


Edit found it 30 vs 60
When using make sure vsync is off if you want to see above 60hz / fps having fraps in the corner will confirm. Look for the differences around the edges as it moves down and track it with yoour eyes.
 
Originally posted by: SonicIce
Originally posted by: GamerExpress
Originally posted by: CraigRT
Originally posted by: BFG10K
I like a minimum of 60 FPS though the more the better.
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I agree... playing at 30 FPS is noticeably bad IMO.
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The latest studies have shown that the human eye can perceive up to 60 FPS, the thoughts behind the max being only 30 are not true.

The same study has also shown that women see 30% more colors then men do on average.
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i would like to know how the fvck they determine that
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Perceptual discrimination via psychophysics. I dont know that 1/3 of women are tetrachromatic, i seem to remember numbers closer to single digits, but its still true (i can give refs for papers if youre interested). This is where i could launch into a dicussion of the genetics of cone expression in men v. women (women XX, men XY), but would likely bore most here so i wont.

[edit] the comment about 60 fps is blatenly false though. Perception occurs in the brain, not the eye, and i have seen cells in V1 that can fire up to 500Hz. Of course the average is dependent on what the stimuli is. Im a visual neuroscientist and i would say a safe lower limit should be 60 fps (for smooth motion, NOT flicker free viewing), but there will be moments of action and fast hand movement where you WILL see frames being dropped. This is fact [/edit]
 
The average person can see at about 18fps, but few ppl can see above 24fps. So if you aim for an average frame rate of around 50fps-60fps, then it should keep the minimum above 24. If i have a frame rate of 100fps, i just turn up the eye candy and resolution.

RoD
 
Its funny how folks manage to mistake maximum noticable framerate for the minimum framerate needed to fool you into thinking you are seeing motion rather than a series of still frames.

The maximum discernable framerate has never been established. What is considered "smooth" is variable with what you are watching and who is watching it, It can even change for the same user.

You can be perfectly happy playing at lower framerates and even consider them "smooth" until you experence higher framerates. Within short order, the faster framerates become your new standard of "smooth" and going back to your previous "standard" appears irritatingly "sluggish".

Believe me, if you can notice tearing gaming at 60Hz, you can likely notice subtle differences at least to 60fps, its just common sense.
 
For me, in FPS, I can take 30 minimum but if its 30 average, i'll go crazy, For rpgs, rts, and MMORPGs, 24 frames is perfectly fine for me. IMO, games that test reaction more need more fps, while games that don't don't need that much fps.
 
Minimum fps is usually what I give the most weight to in determining performance. While most people (or at least in the past) didn't care for HardOCP card reviews, I liked them because they showed not only the minimum fps, but how often the cards performance spiked on the low side. Coming from years of Atari and Intellivision, I'm pretty tolerant of low fps. Ideally, I'll set maximum AA-AF combinations, using 25-30 minimum, for short and not too frequent spikes, as the bar.
 
Judging from what everyone here has written it seems like the required frames per second depends on both the person (what they are used to and their eyesight) and the speed of the action sequences.



Just ran that compare program - 25-30 is tad choppy for me and 60 is verygood.
 
i believe this to be a personal comfort area. i am pretty sensitive to flickering light of any kind and in my house we only have 2 light sources that don't have a shade/diffuser on them. for me a unshaded incandescent light is incredibly irritating. in clubs (any type - dance, topless 😀) i will close my eyes when strobes get turned on as i get really dizzy, although i don't have convulsions.

as far as gaming is concerned, anything less than 30 is bad, 60+ is comfortable. my monitor is set to 75Hz, the highest it will go @ 1280x1024.
 
What I find more comfortable in games is a fairly constant framerate which does not constantly go up and down. I dislike it when games developers have moments in games where even a powerful system struggles to even render at 15fps let alone 60 but during normal gameplay it will buzz along at anything upto 100fps. In my view this is worse than having to play the whole game at 30fps.
 
Film and video look smooth because each frame captures 1/24 or 1/30 of a second of motion, 3D games showing 24 or 30 static images per second will not look smooth. 60 or even 50 fps is fine, but the question is whether the game can maintain that speed or is it just the average. 80fps average can be choppy if it drops to 20 in a hectic scene and stays above 100 normally.
 
Dunno why you guys need so many FPS but on a Mac even 20 FPS looks extremely good and totally playable. Might be due to the fact that it has superior graphics capabilities than PCs. Quake 3 gets over 50 FPS on my friend's G5 but I know it's an older game and the G5 would be overkill.
 
Originally posted by: deathkoba
Dunno why you guys need so many FPS but on a Mac even 20 FPS looks extremely good and totally playable. Might be due to the fact that it has superior graphics capabilities than PCs. Quake 3 gets over 50 FPS on my friend's G5 but I know it's an older game and the G5 would be overkill.
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20 FPS is 20 FPS be it displayed on a PC or a Mac, its simply the amount of frames displayed in a given period of time.

Macs don't have superior graphics when compared to a PC, they may however have superior user experience in certain applications. iMovie is an example off the top of my head.
 
There's too many factors and variables to consider to really give a definitive "smooth" FPS even by genre. One example not mentioned yet is some game's physics are tied into the fps: of course 76 or 125fps feels better than 60 in Quake 3 - it is better. It's better than 85fps. You can even jump much further. (I'm replying to the OP rather than the sillyness about "your eyes fps").

Personally, I find fine , horrible , great minimum FPS:
C&C Generals - 30 , <30 , 30
San Andreas - 30 , <30 , >30
Quake 3 engine games - 60+ , <45 , 76 or 125
Most other first person shooters - >50 , <40 , >60
 
Originally posted by: Davegod
There's too many factors and variables to consider to really give a definitive "smooth" FPS even by genre. One example not mentioned yet is some game's physics are tied into the fps: of course 76 or 125fps feels better than 60 in Quake 3 - it is better. It's better than 85fps. You can even jump much further. (I'm replying to the OP rather than the sillyness about "your eyes fps").

Personally, I find fine , horrible , great minimum FPS:
C&C Generals - 30 , <30 , 30
San Andreas - 30 , <30 , >30
Quake 3 engine games - 60+ , <45 , 76 or 125
Most other first person shooters - >50 , <40 , >60
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what do you mean by "your eyes fps"? everybody will be different and your rules here are for your taste and physical make up ie your sensitivity to light and flickering.
 
Originally posted by: bob4432
what do you mean by "your eyes fps"? everybody will be different and your rules here are for your taste and physical make up ie your sensitivity to light and flickering.
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We're in agreement there 🙂 Some other comments seem to imply a belief that the eye (visual system, whatever) works at some rate of FPS, or that there's some low physical limit on FPS that anybody's eye can detect in any situation.
 
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