Capcom Explains Why 30 FPS Isn't That Bad

[Coreless]

I like how almost everything they said is either subjective, or an outright lie. There are people who can't play 30fps games. Like, they find them unplayable. This isn't because they're whining, its just the way their brains and eyes work. In the same way, people get headaches from first-person shooters which have a low FOV. And developers who try to justify their low FOV from a technical standpoint are as wrong for standing by it to those people as Capcom and Ninja Theory are to those who find 30fps impossible to play at. If your engine can't do it, that was something you should have caught the inception of the project, and its on your shoulders. Don't try to justify now, you assholes.

Absolutely, 30 fps is a joke when you have been playing 60, even 90+ FPS on games for years. I have been playing on PC for well over a decade and playing the same games on consoles is like night and day, the frame rate alone is like watching a slow motion movie. This guy is so full of s**t and he knows it, what he said about 30 FPS hurting your eyes compared to 60 is pure console player pandering.

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

You know Capcom, FPS is the LAST thing I'm worrying about.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

I like how almost everything they said is either subjective, or an outright lie. There are people who can't play 30fps games. Like, they find them unplayable. This isn't because they're whining, its just the way their brains and eyes work. In the same way, people get headaches from first-person shooters which have a low FOV. And developers who try to justify their low FOV from a technical standpoint are as wrong for standing by it to those people as Capcom and Ninja Theory are to those who find 30fps impossible to play at. If your engine can't do it, that was something you should have caught the inception of the project, and its on your shoulders. Don't try to justify now, you assholes.

Absolutely, 30 fps is a joke when you have been playing 60, even 90+ FPS on games for years. I have been playing on PC for well over a decade and playing the same games on consoles is like night and day, the frame rate alone is like watching a slow motion movie. This guy is so full of s**t and he knows it, what he said about 30 FPS hurting your eyes compared to 60 is pure console player pandering.

It really does go a long way to ensure the comfort of the play experience. Something I'd hope developers put a lot of work into. If you want me to enjoy your game, yeah, make the content fun for sure, but make sure I'm not hurting my eyes in the process, will you?

And, as others have pointed out: the previous Devil May Cry games all ran at 60fps on console as a rule of thumb. So its not even console pandering. Its just outright bullshitting.

 

[SpAc3man]

30 FPS is normally considered the minimum for a playable experience. This guy is talking out of his ass. Capcom just cant get it to run a a consistent 60 FPS so they limit it to 30 FPS to eliminate any tearing which could look like absolute crap on a TV.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I never noticed frame rate issues when I played exclusively on consoles, and aren't most console games locked at 30?

30 is fine for this kind of game anyway. The only games it really benefits to have 60 fps are first person shooters.

I doubt most console players would care if they didn't know anyway, do we need to start getting fps counters in the corner of the screen? No.

 

[ZephrC]

Funny thing, your eyes don't really have a framerate at all. They're made up of different kinds of light receptors that work at different speeds, and it's physically impossible to hold your eyes perfectly still anyway, so you brain is just used to interpreting slight amounts of jumpiness as smooth motion. It really only takes a framerate in the teens to get this to work for most people, and it works for everyone in the low twenties.

However, as I said, not all the receptors in your eye work the same way, and the type that's most prevalent in your peripheral vision is much faster than the more detail oriented types in the center of your retina. This means that your peripheral vision is much, much better at noticing motion or flashing lights. That's why while it's true that movie theaters only change the frame 24 times per second, they actually have to flash each frame three times for a total of 72 flashes per second so you don't notice the flickering lights.

Actually, if you're having problems with a game making you a bit queasy or just seeming a bit off at 30 FPS and you're playing with the lights off the problem is most likely that the light from your monitor is flashing slowly enough that your peripheral vision can see the room being lit up and going dark really fast, and if you turn on the lights to give the corner of your eye a more consistent light level you might just find your problems go away.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Meh, 30 FPS isn't a deal breaker, but it's obvious this comes from the limitations of consoles. Better they add more features and content than solely try and up the FPS. That's the mistake RAGE made, and that game looks terrible on 360. Textures load only as they enter your FOV, and unload when they exit your FOV, and they aren't even good textures, not to mention the miniscule draw distance.

Didn't id software fix that shit? Or was that only fixed on the PC version?

 

[sethisjimmy]

Meh, 30 FPS isn't a deal breaker, but it's obvious this comes from the limitations of consoles. Better they add more features and content than solely try and up the FPS. That's the mistake RAGE made, and that game looks terrible on 360. Textures load only as they enter your FOV, and unload when they exit your FOV, and they aren't even good textures, not to mention the miniscule draw distance.

Didn't id software fix that shit? Or was that only fixed on the PC version?

Ah jeez I just realized that I wasn't connected to the internet when I played it, so there probably was a patch I just haven't downloaded it yet.

I kinda feel stupid for berating it now.

 

[StriderShinryu]

As others have said, when you're talking a fast paced execution dependent action game, FPS count is about much much more than purely the visual smoothness. The quotes in the OP basically tell me that Capcom/Ninja Theory has basically designed DMC to be less technical than the previous games in the series.. which isn't surprising in the least considering the games Ninja Theory has made in the past. Visually snazzy titles with little going on under the hood.

 

[th155]

What Itsuno doesn't get, or doesn't want to admit is that FPS isn't only for the eye. A game on 30 fps has literally less responsive controls compared to the same game on 60 fps.
Also, I have to pay 60$ and then to use my imagination to fill the blanks that the developer couldn't? What a pathetic excuse.

Visually, there's nothing different between 30, 40, and 60. As someone has previously stated, the human visual system can process 10 to 12 separate images per second. When buddy says that "You'll have to use your imagination to fill in the gaps" he talking about what you already do sub-consciously.

No. This is wrong. There has never been any actual evidence to back this up. The reason why 24FPS is fine on movies is not because of some BS like the human eye can only take in that many images, or that it "draws you in" to the movie more (really? How does that argument mean anything? It's something my subconscious does automatically, it's not going to effect my enjoyment of the movie at all)

It is because of motion blur. You know how if you take a picture of a fast moving object, like a car on a highway, it isn't defined at all and just looks like a blurry mess? That happens on a smaller scale to everything. This blur serves to "soften" the chunkiness of the 24FPS to something that is natural for the eye to see. And the slower moving objects that are not blurred do not move fast enough for the eye to notice the low framerate (in fact, due to the exposure times, it has to be this way)

So it's fine for movies. How does that explain why 30FPS is not acceptable for games? Well, there is no motion blur in video games. Video games are rendered in 3D instead of real time, for obvious reasons. The rendering software, due to needing to output in real time, doesn't take motion into account, as adding the blur would increase the time it takes to render each frame, so you go from 30FPS to 10. Not a good tradeoff. So you don't get the motion blur, which means that it doesn't account for the low FPS and you get choppy movement.

Note: all of this is to do with cameras and screens. I do not mean to imply that the eye, or the world for that matter, has a framrate. The eye works in a way that makes that word meaningless.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Meh, 30 FPS isn't a deal breaker, but it's obvious this comes from the limitations of consoles. Better they add more features and content than solely try and up the FPS. That's the mistake RAGE made, and that game looks terrible on 360. Textures load only as they enter your FOV, and unload when they exit your FOV, and they aren't even good textures, not to mention the miniscule draw distance.

Didn't id software fix that shit? Or was that only fixed on the PC version?

Ah jeez I just realized that I wasn't connected to the internet when I played it, so there probably was a patch I just haven't downloaded it yet.

I kinda feel stupid for berating it now.

Well I don't actually know if there was a patch for it, but I think there was.

I'd like to get the game (now it's cheap) and try it for myself, but I won't if the textures won't friggin' work properly.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Meanwhile Nvidia and Amd set out to kill these guys, because no one has a reason to buy their top end GPUs anymore.

 

[Trishbot]

It depends on the game.

Shadow of the Colossus had an atrocious framerate on PS2... didn't stop it from being one of my favorite games ever made.

Likewise, I've played games with silky-smooth 60 fps that I hated.

 

[piclemaniscool]

While playing a game at 60 fps looks absolutely amazing, I've never seen the difference until I see both versions. I never complained about Skyrim on my 360. It was beautiful looking around with much smoother FPS, but if someone set up a TV, not telling me which framerate the game was, I wouldn't pay attention. I would be playing Skyrim.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

As someone who's played Borderlands 2 at 30, 60 and 120 fps, you can very clearly tell the difference between all three.

 

[NightHawk21]

Oh capcom, first you were trying to sell people DLC they already bought, and now you're trying to sell them an idea and let their imagination do the work. I love you guys, stay classy.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

30 FPS honestly isn't that bad, yes 60 FPS is pretty much optimal but every game is far from unplayable on 30 FPS. 30 FPS is necessary, 60 FPS is a luxury. Not being able to play a game at 60 FPS should NOT be a deal breaker for anyone who is being reasonable.

30 isn't bad, it's just that some ALL PC gamers get a kneejerk reaction to not being able to play games in 60. It's some sort of elitism factor here.

My personal thoughts? It's elitism as usual and the FPS on my TV won't appear to make a difference but my computer monitor will. I don't care a single bit as long as the game is fun.

Agree with this, I notice a lot of people seem to care more about being able to say "zomg my uberbeastmode computer can run x at 60FPS" than they actually care about the noticeable difference between 30 and 60 FPS. People care more about achieving the number so they can brag about it than what the number actually does.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

yes, let's pretend that 30 FPS isn't all that bad for a DMC. They're really trying anything to sell this game because there is ZERO hype for it.

 

[Yopaz]

Personally I don't think this is that bad. Yes, it would be better if it runs at 60, but in order to manage that they would have to cut corners. Another thing is that a game set to run on high fps on a console sometimes got the problem of drops in fps. Some of us find the difference between 30 and 60 to be subtle, but I think we all agree that a sudden drop from 60 to 40 in the middle of an intense fast paced section is quite jarring.

I'd rather have a stable low fps than a bouncy one.

 

[Artemicion]

Capcom is silly, and 60FPS is beyond better than 30. There's no discussion here, and any intellectually honest person knows it.