Uncharted 4 May Not Run at 60 FPS Because "It's Really F---ing Hard"

[omega 616]

Really, really don't give a fuck.

Make it look like late ps3 games for all I care. 30 fps at 720 and I'm happy.

Why I love being a primary console gamer, I'm not all nit picky and anal about shit I personally don't notice.

I've played maybe half of the last of us remastered and only due to this article know it runs at 60 fps and a higher res! I had no idea.

So, pc gamers, you can have your ultra glossy games, I'll have simplicity.

Ehhh, come now. It's nothing short of impossible to play a smooth 60fps game for awhile and not notice the difference when you get back on a 30fps game. Very jarring. Even my dog notices the difference and leaves the room in disgust.

And there's nothing anal about expecting decent performance from a console. We're about 10 years past the time when 30 fps games with respectable graphics were available on consoles. It;s all the more disappointing because we're going to be stuck in the same position for 5 more years.

Yup, well I can't tell the difference.... I'd call every game under the sun 30 fps and swear to god it was true.

The only time I can see 30 fps is when you watch a film and it sweeps across landscape,with maybe people walking and it's looks jumpy, other than that? Never ever.

 

[deathmothon]

Contrary to the outcry from the masses, I'm actually enjoying AC:Unity and find the low FPS to be only a mild annoyance at times. I'd like it higher, but not at the expense of taking anything out.

 

[coolbond]

Really, really don't give a fuck.

Make it look like late ps3 games for all I care. 30 fps at 720 and I'm happy.

Why I love being a primary console gamer, I'm not all nit picky and anal about shit I personally don't notice.

I've played maybe half of the last of us remastered and only due to this article know it runs at 60 fps and a higher res! I had no idea.

So, pc gamers, you can have your ultra glossy games, I'll have simplicity.

Ehhh, come now. It's nothing short of impossible to play a smooth 60fps game for awhile and not notice the difference when you get back on a 30fps game. Very jarring. Even my dog notices the difference and leaves the room in disgust.

And there's nothing anal about expecting decent performance from a console. We're about 10 years past the time when 30 fps games with respectable graphics were available on consoles. It;s all the more disappointing because we're going to be stuck in the same position for 5 more years.

Yup, well I can't tell the difference.... I'd call every game under the sun 30 fps and swear to god it was true.

The only time I can see 30 fps is when you watch a film and it sweeps across landscape,with maybe people walking and it's looks jumpy, other than that? Never ever.

it seems that devs cant grasp the fact that graphics arent everything what counts is asthetics and not fidelity.
nintendo has low fidelity but fuck me if they dont have asthetics out of the wazzoo and as a result they have a 60fps 1080p and all other dont
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oK8UTRgvJU a lesson on asthetics vs fidelity

 

[Lightknight]

So basically this generation's push for ultra plush graphics and physics is at the cost of resolution.

Damn, we're so very close to having both.

 

[CaitSeith]

...developers will finally figure out how to reliably hit the 1080p/60 FPS benchmark PC gamers have been enjoying for years now.

Maybe they could stop trying for photorealism on cut-rate hardware and concentrate more on art style, playability and enjoyment?

...nah. You can't put those in a glossy magazine ad or full-size screenshot, after all.

The funny thing is that stylized graphics most of time have an easier time to achieve the 1080p/60 FPS benchmark than photorealistic graphics.

 

[LazyAza]

When you're a long time PC gamer you eventually realize how much better 60 fps is than 30 and while I can tolerate 30 it's definitely way inferior. Personally I don't care about graphics to the point of wanting to sacrifice frame rate for it. Games are simply more fun at 60. I'd much rather see ND drop the visuals a bit to maintain that instead. If I want amazing graphics and 60fps that's what my PC is for.

 

[Snotnarok]

I think that they should scale back the resolution then, it's a shooter and platformer and 60 frames is important in both those situations. Or- give the option, high graphics or smooth gameplay! Final Fantasy 14 apparently did it and that's what devs should be doing if they can't get it going at the full framerate at 1080.

I'm not trying to rail on devs here, I get it, it's hard but the smooth gameplay is what has attracted a lot of people to games in the first place and on top of that now it's important because it just makes playing games easier. When the PS2 was new I was awestruck at Kinetica and other early games on the PS2 as they were running really fast, looked nice but were also doing 60fps. When my PC was having trouble running Titanfall I scaled back the res to 720 because bloody 60fps is just far more important to me in most games. Wish consoles adopted that sort of option but they just refuse to, hell most games cut out remapping your controller. Compare Timesplitters controls to ...any shooter today.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Shows once again that 8th gen consoles lag behind PC's.

 

[rgrekejin]

As a card-carrying member of the PC master race, I have an unseemly admission to make:

I can't tell the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps.

People swear up and down to me that there is one. Sure, fine, maybe there is. Maybe my eyesight is insufficient to detect it (and for all I know that could be true - my eyesight is crap). But, even when viewing side-by-side comparisons, I'm hardpressed to correctly guess which side is 30 and which is 60 - and oftentimes the one I think looks "better" is actually the one with the inferior rate. Sure, it might be a sample size issue. For example, it's well-known that in a blind taste tests, people prefer things which taste sweeter to things that don't when given a small sample, even if they'd prefer a less sweet version if they had to eat/drink the thing for an entire meal. But the fact remains - I've never finished a game, sat back, and thought to myself "Wow, that was a great game, but you know what would have made it even better? If the fps was a little higher."

So how about this: Why don't we get developers to try and make their games the best they can when it comes to deep mechanics, interesting and unique worlds, fantastic and emotional stories, complex characters, and games stuffed with rich (but meaningful) content. Once we get that, THEN we can worry about graphics and framerates.

Because that's what Nintendo has been doing for years, and no one ever seems to buy their stuff.

Seriously, though maybe it's like the taste test example I talked about before - people buy the game based on a short demo or a few videos, usually. That's not enough time to develop an appreciation for either a good story or deep, interesting mechanics, so those things don't factor much into the decision. But what they CAN see in those short demos is graphics. And sales numbers seem to bear this out - eye candy outsells less-pretty games with more robust mechanics most of the time. So we get more and more eye candy, because it's what sells.

Maybe it's just because I'm a lifelong console gamer and couldn't play with a mouse and keyboard if my life depended on it, but I really could care less.

I'm not trying to pick on you in particular, but I've seen a bunch of comments like this on this thread, and I have to wonder how this is still a thing people think.

PSA everyone - You can use controllers with PCs. You don't even have to do any wonky tech stuff to get them to work. Xbox 360 wired controllers plug right in and just work. Wireless ones work if you buy a receiver. Logitech sells dedicated PC controllers. PS3/4 controllers do require a little tinkering to get to work, but you should be able to figure out how by doing a google search and watching a youtube video. It's not even remotely hard. Almost all big-name PC games have native controller support.

 

[ddrkreature]

What I find fun about this is the fact that Naughty Dog is a Sony exclusive company and have been since PS1 and they are saying they can't hit that 60FPS goal. I'm willing to believe that the consoles were designed to improve the graphics but no one seemed to take into account the higher resolution and framerate demand. But even with the hardware in the PS4 and Xbox One, you CANNOT build a PC for $400 that can match the performance of an 8th gen console. That is what drives me nuts about the PC argument. yes, they can hit 60FPS easier. Yes the graphics look better on max settings. But there is no way those machines are able to do that on something that costs less than $700. For what they cost, the graphics are fine...just as long as the performance isn't hit too badly. Heck, Destiny looked great. Same with Shadow Fall (unfortunately, both games were more focused on looks than the game itself, it seemed)

If Naughty Dog can make the game run smooth and look like TLOU Remastered or even a touch above, I'd be very happy.

 

[rgrekejin]

Not all of us are equal biologically, as unfortunate as that may be

I can believe you, that you might have relatively poor eyesight. Though FPS is also felt when you have control ?

I dont know, the difference between 24, 30, 60, 75 and 90 are CLEAR AS DAY to me.

Same with 720p, 900p and 1080p.

One of the reasons I had problems with TLOU on the PS3 was its terrible frame rate and low resolution. It was awful

Yeah, a friend and I actually ran some blinded experiments with resolution and fps.

We could tell the difference between 720p and 1080p fairly reliably (we didn't test 900p), but neither of us were able to pick out which screens were 30 fps and which were 60 fps in a side-by-side comparisons of unlabeled videos at a rate that was significantly better than random chance. Admittedly, we were watching gameplay videos, not actually playing the games ourselves, so that may have had an impact. That said though, when I'm playing with Fraps open the framerate has to drop into the 20s to get me to notice it and think "that's a bad framerate".

 

[Evonisia]

Uncharted was always just a poor man's Gears of War (or hell, a poor man's third person shooter in general) in the gameplay department, if the fans can tolerate it I say why not push the gorgeous visuals? They were probably the best part of the second game, the third not so much.

Though in general, pushing graphics over framerate is sad, and it's disappointing. Somebody call up the devs of Wolfenstein: The New Order, that game was big, looked gorgeous and ran at 60fps.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Not much to add to this. Kudos for honesty I guess. It's not NDs fault that the new gen consoles underperform from the lofty promises made in the run up to their release. They could prioritise aesthetic quality as opposed to graphical fidelity, but I think Sony is pushing their exclusives to maximise "grefix"... which is too much for the hardware on offer.

I've seen the argument Framerates cropping up again. Just look at this image:

This image illustrates the difference in quality when you halve frame rates. It uses 50/25/12.5fps as opposed to 60/30fps which games are most often played at, but the principle is the same regardless.

To be perfectly honest 30fps is fine for most games as far as player experience is concerned, but certain genres are handicapped by low frame rates. Games that require high degrees of precision greatly benefit from higher fps. My gripe with the consoles is that 1080p 60fps was promised as the "standard", but so far it's the rare exception.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Not all of us are equal biologically, as unfortunate as that may be

I can believe you, that you might have relatively poor eyesight. Though FPS is also felt when you have control ?

I dont know, the difference between 24, 30, 60, 75 and 90 are CLEAR AS DAY to me.

Same with 720p, 900p and 1080p.

One of the reasons I had problems with TLOU on the PS3 was its terrible frame rate and low resolution. It was awful

Yeah, a friend and I actually ran some blinded experiments with resolution and fps.

We could tell the difference between 720p and 1080p fairly reliably (we didn't test 900p), but neither of us were able to pick out which screens were 30 fps and which were 60 fps in a side-by-side comparisons of unlabeled videos at a rate that was significantly better than random chance. Admittedly, we were watching gameplay videos, not actually playing the games ourselves, so that may have had an impact. That said though, when I'm playing with Fraps open the framerate has to drop into the 20s to get me to notice it and think "that's a bad framerate".

What's your Monitors refresh rate? If your monitor can only display 30fps (30Hz monitor) then no matter how good your setup is you will never be able to see 60fps (though you might feel it when playing, due to reduced input lag).

The biggest issue with framerates is when they fluctuate. If your game transitions from 60fps to 40fps or lower periodically, you WILL notice it. However if you gradually reduce 60fps to 50fps, then down to 40fps and so on, you will probably only start to notice around 30 fps that something has changed.

Look at the image I posted above and see if you notice the difference between halved frame rates.

EDIT:

If anyone has Resident Evil 4 on PC and it's running at 60fps, grab the bolt action rifle and fire off a round and reload. The animations for the reload are fixed at 30fps (they were likely animated at 30fps, so the only fix would be to reanimate it at 60fps). You will notice this difference.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/254700/discussions/0/558751813290495585/

Yeah, not a credible source for this, but here are others noticing this difference.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Dear Naughty Dog,

Please release your games on PC. I would love to play Uncharted and The Last of Us but I don't want to buy a Playstation. I don't care if you just port the games to PC just make it happen.

It'll never happen. Sony Entertainment OWNS Naughty Dog and other studios for the express purpose of making games for Playstation and bolstering its exclusive titles.

 

[Denamic]

It is technically 'easy' to get 60 FPS. Just reduce the fidelity and you've got more FPS. That they're saying it's hard tells me they don't want to sacrifice the graphics to achieve a higher FPS, which I can appreciate. At least try to keep it at or above 30 FPS and I'll be happy.

 

[rgrekejin]

What's your Monitors refresh rate? If your monitor can only display 30fps (30Hz monitor) then no matter how good your setup is you will never be able to see 60fps (though you might feel it when playing, due to reduced input lag).

The biggest issue with framerates is when they fluctuate. If your game transitions from 60fps to 40fps or lower periodically, you WILL notice it. However if you gradually reduce 60fps to 50fps, then down to 40fps and so on, you will probably only start to notice around 30 fps that something has changed.

Look at the image I posted above and see if you notice the difference between halved frame rates.

Two PCs were used for this test: a desktop that was connected with an HDMI cable to an HDTV with a 60 Hz refresh rate and a laptop with an unknown refresh rate, although it's less than a year old and high-spec, so I'd bet at least 60 Hz. So unless there's some kind of weird compatibility issue going on here, I doubt that's the issue.

I can see the difference on your moving line example (on the test laptop, as a matter of fact) but I've been empirically shown to not be able to tell the difference when judging the more detail-rich footage of sample gameplay. I tried to do it, and I couldn't. Make of that what you will, I suppose.

 

[Callate]

Well, that's refreshingly honest. I'm sure no one will possibly fault Naughty Dog, given their forthright candor on the subject.

(...Must...Keep...Straight...Face...)

Maybe it's time we just admit there are limits to what programmers can accomplish on hardware manufactured at the sub-$400 price point consumers seem willing to accept, even with economies of scale and a willingness to take a small hit on the price of the components with the hope of later recoup on software taken into account.

More grimly, though there will probably be some small improvements down the line as the inevitable processes of finding new tricks to squeeze the last drops of performance possible are revealed to coders, the underlying commonalities of the x86 hardware underlying both the PS4 and XB1 with each other and PCs makes it likely that said stretching isn't going to be nearly as impressive as it was in generations past. (Or more simply said: the bones of these machines have been around long enough that most of what they can do has already been realized.)

...Can't hardly wait for those 4k and 5k televisions, huh, gang?