The Great Debate. Why 60 over 30?

[Chaos Isaac]

My only real defense for 60 FPS is that, unlike movies, we react to what's happening in a game. Therefore the more we can follow the onscreen action in depth, the better. And that's what higher FPS does.

But that doesn't justify some of the vitriol about it.

 

[Zipa]

It looks and feels better its that simple.


All the stuff about it looking smoother or the human eye can't see above 30fps are just excuses to make consoles look less terrible.

That said it should be noted that 30fps for PC is terrible due to being up close to a monitor its far less of a problem for someone sat back using a TV.

 

[OneCatch]

The concept of the argument deludes me, I used to work in film, and having worked in mediums where films are shot in 23.9/25 fps upto 30 for PAL screening, i always prefered a lower frame rate, because the progression of frames feels more movie like (Not like.. sluggish 1-10fps because of lower level hardware) but I want to know what justifies the reasoning to complain if a game is 30fps, and not 60. I'm not asking for a cussing match, & i appreciate arguments on both sides, im more curious as to why.

I think that in most games lower framerates are more noticeable. Probably because filmmakers have had decades to come up with camera techniques which avoid most of the key problems - fast objects get blurred onscreen and camera movements tend to be either shakycam or steady, consistent movement, both of which reduce the obviousness of frame changes.
Games don't, by and large, do that yet. Sure, certain games experiment with motion blur, but it isn't able to completely alleviate the issue.
Perhaps a part of it is based on pure perception as well. It might be that lower framerates are more noticeable on a monitor sized screen a foot away than on a TV-sized screen a few meters away. Or perhaps it's something to do with wider Field of View in games to simulate periphiral vision. Or it might be input lag issues which aren't a concern in a film.
It might even be that one concentrates more as an active participant in a game than when watching a film (which is ultimately a passive and observational activity), which keys up one's reaction times, and thus you notice lower fps. Or perhaps that we more readily associate in-game camera movement as a facsimile of our own physical movement and more readily notice visual differences from real life, but maintain a degree of conscious separation from the disembodied and uninvolved camera which shows a film.

That's all educated guesswork, but all I can say is that it is massively noticeable to me personally. Anything below about 45-50FPS feels sluggish, and anything below 30-35 is often downright unplayable for me (on PC at least), not to mention giving me massive headaches.
I've got no problem with people who don't mind it, I don't care that the consoles might be locked to 30 (doesn't affect me), but my PC games need to play at a decent framerate for me to enjoy them properly!

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Because everyone can actually tell the difference between 30 and 60fps, cos 30 fps runs like absolute shit in comparison. 720p and 1080p however look exactly the dam same. Its like a really hard spot the difference puzzle. I haven't bothered to look at the comparison with my glasses on but that's part of the point, everyone can see the difference in frame rate no matter how shit their eyes are.

 

[themyrmidon]

Is 60 fps better than 30 fps? Duh.

However, I would rather have a solid 30 fps vs fluctuating 45-75 fps. The variance is what really messes with perception during gameplay. I say this as a PC gamer that loves to crank settings, and the more and higher the settings the greater the variation.

This is why GSync and Freesync are such a big deal. To eliminate the factor/multiple of 60 that frames are tied to greaty increases the smoothness of the image. I have yet to get a GSync monitor, but it will be my next major purchase.

Anytime people throw out framerate numbers now, which is every day, I'll just sigh and move on. Consistency matters more than the average.

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

Because everyone can actually tell the difference between 30 and 60fps, cos 30 fps runs like absolute shit in comparison. 720p and 1080p however look exactly the dam same. Its like a really hard spot the difference puzzle. I haven't bothered to look at the comparison with my glasses on but that's part of the point, everyone can see the difference in frame rate no matter how shit their eyes are.

I agree with this 100% I can notice a difference between 30 and 60fps, but above 720p I really don't give a shit. One affects how a game plays, the other how a game looks. A game that looks average and plays smooth as butter will stick in my mind and is enjoyable (Titanfall for example), a game that looks awesome but is choppy and moves like treacle will only earn my ire.

 

[QuicklyAcross]

The great nondebate you mean?
Can we just throw that notion out of the window to begin with that games should try to be movies and vice versa, because it really never works consistently no matter how hard you try to go for that "cinematic/filmic"-essence.

Games are games, theyre interactive, higher fps reduces things such as input lag and makes for a better playing experience, yknow what a game is supposed to be about, playing it, not watching it.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

Because it's not a visual thing.

While there is a definite difference between 30 and 60 fps visually, 30 is smooth enough with motion blur to not be annoying.

But the input delay skyrockets with lower FPS in games. 30+ms delay makes games feel awkward, sluggish and unresponsive, like your character is burdened or walking through water.
Anything where you control your character directly, like First/third person shooters, action RPGs, racers is almost impossible to enjoy at 30 FPS once you get used to 60.

Try one of the newer Need For Speeds that are locked at 30 FPS, then try it after unlocking FPS to 60. It controls so much better it's like a completely different game.

 

[Username Redacted]

The great nondebate you mean?

This. I also know that you can't produce a fighting game unless you can get it to run consistently at 60fps. Well you can try to do it another way but no one's going to touch your game.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

The human eye sees at about 60 FPS

What?! No, no, no, no. NO!

People need to stop saying crap like this. First it's people insisting that the human eye sees in 24 FPS since that's what movies do, then people start harping-on about 30 FPS because it's what most games run (especially on consoles), and now I'm hearing someone try to tell me that the human eye sees in 60 FPS. THE HUMAN EYE DOES NOT SEE IN FRAMES! The whole concept of "frames" is because linking a series of images (or frames) together is the only way that we know how to simulate motion on a picture. The way that the brain processes motion is completely different from that, and it isn't based on "frames" in any way shape or form.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

The great nondebate you mean?

Pretty much this. The only reason there seems to be any kind of discussion is because developers need to contrive excuses for why 30FPS has advantages over 60FPS in order to excuse the fact that the "next generation" of consoles is still struggling to meet 60FPS.

 

[Lilani]

The human eye sees at about 60 FPS

What?! No, no, no, no. NO!

People need to stop saying crap like this. First it's people insisting that the human eye sees in 24 FPS since that's what movies do, then people start harping-on about 30 FPS because it's what most games run (especially on consoles), and now I'm hearing someone try to tell me that the human eye sees in 60 FPS. THE HUMAN EYE DOES NOT SEE IN FRAMES! The whole concept of "frames" is because linking a series of images (or frames) together is the only way that we know how to simulate motion on a picture. The way that the brain processes motion is completely different from that, and it isn't based on "frames" in any way shape or form.

To quote myself later on:

I'm an animator. I know what frames are, and I know the human mind does not work in frames.

However, frames are in essence a measure of motion over time. Humans do not have an unlimited capacity for perceiving things clearly in motion--stuff can move so fast that all our mind can only interpret a blur, if it can interpret anything at all. So frames per second may not accurately reflect how the human eye and brain actually work, but it can at the very least act as a rudimentary reference for how fast the mind can process visual stimuli and at what point things begin to blur.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

The human eye sees at about 60 FPS

What?! No, no, no, no. NO!

People need to stop saying crap like this. First it's people insisting that the human eye sees in 24 FPS since that's what movies do, then people start harping-on about 30 FPS because it's what most games run (especially on consoles), and now I'm hearing someone try to tell me that the human eye sees in 60 FPS. THE HUMAN EYE DOES NOT SEE IN FRAMES! The whole concept of "frames" is because linking a series of images (or frames) together is the only way that we know how to simulate motion on a picture. The way that the brain processes motion is completely different from that, and it isn't based on "frames" in any way shape or form.

To quote myself later on:

I'm an animator. I know what frames are, and I know the human mind does not work in frames.

However, frames are in essence a measure of motion over time. Humans do not have an unlimited capacity for perceiving things clearly in motion--stuff can move so fast that all our mind can only interpret a blur, if it can interpret anything at all. So frames per second may not accurately reflect how the human eye and brain actually work, but it can at the very least act as a rudimentary reference for how fast the mind can process visual stimuli and at what point things begin to blur.

None of which addresses the fact that since the eyes don't see in a strict "frames per second" way, it's 100% misleading to make any kind of "the human eye sees in X FPS" statement. About all that can be said is that games tend to look choppy when the frames fluctuate, so it's better to have just 30 FPS than to "unlock" the frames and have them skipping around in between 30 and 60; and that games have generally been observed to look better at multiples of 30, hence why you don't see much discussion of in-betweeny numbers like 40, 45, or 50 (and most discussion about post-60 framerates tends to go with 90 and 120).

 

[Gankytim]

Look i'm about to drop a knowladge bomb.

Claiming that "the human eye can't detect over Xfps" is steaming, sloppy bullshit the human eye CAN NOT be measured in "frames per second" because the human eye is not a fucking animation. Source: look up how eyeballs work.

30 frames per second is the bare minimum to appear smooth and not choppy, but here's the thing.

With 60 FPS there's twice as much information hitting your eyes as 30, this is why console plebians claim it looks "too sped up" when really they just aren't accustomed to it, I run at 120 fps, four times as much information hits my eyes as 30 frames per second, this gives me four times the information as what's going on in the game.

There's a reason they're called enthusiast builds, because they're for gaming enthusiasts, the people who want the absoloute most out of their games and little else.

Case in point, Metal Gear Rising runs at 60 fps on console, they made a lot of clever little sacrifices to do this but that's not the point. I fucked with processing power on PC to move rising from 120fps to 30 fps and you know what?

It all fell apart, the blocking mechanic just refused to work for me, why? Because I had four times less information about the game hitting my eyes, four times less window to block.

Anybody who claims fps is just to make it look pretty or the human eye can't detect over xfps is either misinformed or we're dealing with a "Fox and the Grapes" story.