[Update 2] How/why are console gamers satisfied with 30 fps?

SUPA FRANKY

New member
Aug 18, 2009
1,889
0
0
SupahGamuh said:
You should've been there when the N64 and PS1 standards were between 15 to 30 FPS, very rarely did any game saw 60 fps in any of those consoles and personally I didn't care.

Nowadays... I'm a PC gamer and I still don't care. Sure, 60 fps is nice and all, but I honestly don't care if a game runs at 30 fps or lower, I still play some N64 and PS1 games and I'm yet to care at wich speed they're running.

I do notice the difference, however, but honestly, I don't care.

TL; DR - I don't care.
That's not really relevant, because you know...those consoles are like 20 years old. That's like a millenium in technology advancement.

But whatever. Make your game 30 FPS. But if there is no way to uncap the framerate ( I don't mind 3rd Party Framerate), then it's a no buy for me.
 

BarkBarker

New member
May 30, 2013
466
0
0
I have only ever noticed when they are side by side or from a massive leap. Standard all 30fps game? doesn't catch. Smash bros 3DS with 60fps characters and 30fps assists and pokemon? OH BOY, does tat look creepy and weird.
 

lapan

New member
Jan 23, 2009
1,456
1
0
I usually don't notice unless it drops too low or I see a side to side comparisson
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
8,407
0
0
Ishnuvalok said:
Strazdas said:
Ishnuvalok said:
for example: A 48" 4K display is indistinguishable from a 1080p display past 2 meters or so.
this is false. there is a circling false graph that seems to claim that, however the graphc is incorrect because it assumes we are using only small part of our vision to see the screen. it also worth mentioning that our concetration point (whithc shifts around hundreds of times per second btw, our eyes move like crazy) has up to 457 megapixels resolution. thats over 21000p on only our focus point. so the whole "you cant see 4k on small displays" is pure bullshit.
Our eyes don't see in "megapixels", the limit to what we can see is determined by its angular resolution. Which, for the human eye, is about ~1 arc minute (1/60th of a degree), slightly more or less depending on individual vision acuity.
At 200-250mm, this means that the smallest objects we can see are around 50-70 micrometers.

Resolution suffers from diminishing returns, though, just look at 1440p and 1080p ~5.5" smartphones.
We can't appreciate a difference in resolution between those displays. Although the moment a dead or stuck pixel presents itself, we tend to notice it.

That's why 4K displays are, for large TVs viewed at distances between 2-3 meters, for the most part worthless.


But this is a thread about framerate, not resolution.
they dont see in megapixels, however for comparisons sake we simplify all the biological science of our eyes because lets face it it would bloat this discussion immensly. Theoretically, our eyes ability to see object size is limited by color wavelenghts width. however our eyes are more "special" Than that. for example we got a blindspot, which would be pretty much unacceptable on any monitor, and yet is on eyes. its hard to directly compare resolution and ability to see it, however it is determined that humans CAN see much higher resolution than we currently use in our technology.

Now you are right that it is diminishing returns, like almost anything. Increasing food quality is diminishing returns too, however we still do it. Thats because even though the returns arent as good as they was in previuos improvements, they are still worth doing. and same is true with resolution. higher resolution benefits are still very much worth it. the natural antialiasing thats done in your vision instead of downsampling is good enough reason to go 4k even if for some reason you are unable to see 4k resolutions (if you would youd still see aliasing on 4k TVs, and thus multisampling would still be needed). and im talking about the real antialiasing here, not the FX or MX thats popular nowadays that while using far less resources all they do is blur the image enough for you to not be able to notice the inperfections though the blur. like if you look through a wet glass and cant see that the table is stainy. its still stainy, you just cant see it.

Well i havent touched a 1440p smartphone yet so i cant tell if i can appreciate it or not, however when it comes monitors the differentece is very visible.

SmugFrog said:
you need to go to youtube, enable HTML5 play and then set playback speed at double to make this comparison doable, thus embeding it in flash form is completely pointless. youtube is a bad place for video comparisons anyway due to their compression. there are websites that support native 60fps videos, but the name slipepd my mind now sadly.

Adam Lester said:
Due to the lack of reference level and also because playing with a keyboard is a pain in the ass.
what does framerate have to do with keyboard? you do know you cant even plug keyboard into a console?



SupahGamuh said:
You should've been there when the N64 and PS1 standards were between 15 to 30 FPS, very rarely did any game saw 60 fps in any of those consoles and personally I didn't care.
"Back in my days people used to walk 5 miles top school through snow uphill both ways. now you got these "cars", meh, i personally dont care!"

just because you dont care does not mean its something worth fighting for. for example as a male i personally dont care for female rights, yet i will fight for them because i think its fair that they have them. the "personally dont care" is the shitties attitude you can have.

Jonathan Hornsby said:
Progress implies that something is being improved upon. That isn't the case here, because as has been established the "improvement" 60fps is over 30fps is negligible at best, but more often unnoticeable.
Can we please stop telling this lie?

What I mean by that is that there is no reason to keep improving rendering quality to the point that you are rending something in a higher resolution than the human eye can see, at a higher frame rate than the brain can process.
True, but we are not even close to either of those.

Danny Dowling said:
keep the frame rate down, keep the cost making the game down, keep the dev financially sound, dev keeps making games.

the rate video games have been going it's no secret it's becoming unsustainable.
so, keeping the framerate down somehow makes it cost less to develop? please explain what kind of logic you used to determine that.
 

Irick

New member
Apr 18, 2012
225
0
0
Aaron Sylvester said:
"At Ubisoft for a long time we wanted to push 60 fps. I don't think it was a good idea because you don't gain that much from 60 fps and it doesn't look like the real thing. It's a bit like The Hobbit movie, it looked really weird.
"And in other games it's the same - like the Rachet and Clank series [where it was dropped]. So I think collectively in the video game industry we're dropping that standard because it's hard to achieve, it's twice as hard as 30fps, and its not really that great in terms of rendering quality of the picture and the image."
So even if the hardware is capable of 60fps, they will keep it locked to 30 to make it feel more "cinematic". But really it's because it seems most gamers are very happy with 30fps, which is disappointing as far as progress goes.

Update 2: Wow, what is going on? Now we've got Evil Within...
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/478493/the-evil-within-on-pc-is-locked-at-30fps/
Bethesda has confirmed that the PC version of The Evil Within will be locked at 30 frames per second.
According to the publisher, the PC version of the game will be identical to the console versions, and as such will feature the same frame rate.
Bethesda says this was due to the wishes of the game's director, Shinji Mikami, who wanted all versions to look and feel the same.
I really hope this isn't becoming a thing.
....
They took John Carmack's engine...
John Carmack, the champion of low latency gameplay.
John fucking Carmack, the first real software engineer homegrown in the game industry.
JOHN, FUCKING CARMACK. HIS GAME ENGINE.
They took it, and decided to framelock at HALF the typical refresh rate?!

God. Fucking. Damnit.
Shinji Mikami, I understand you are an autour. I do not question your vision, but I question the _hell_ out of your tool choice. This is the engine that John Carmack painstakingly created to give a fluid 60fps experience on last generation hardware. If you're just going to half-ass it with all of the damn work done for you on hardware that is at least five times more powerful...

Look, I can maybe understand the argument that the lower framerate is cinematic. I can maybe understand that the 3rd person horror game isn't going to have the same design decisions as a FPS, but this 'feature parity' argument is some bull. Greater men than you have already done 60FPS fluid 1080p gameplay using the same damn engine on the same damn hardware.

You have no excuse other than lazyness. No excuse at all. You have probably one of the best engines available for making the most of limited hardware resources, a 30 FPS goal is just not even trying.
 

Baron Teapot

New member
Jun 13, 2013
42
0
0
Consoles are typically played on low-resolution televisions that are a few metres away. Especially on an old television, it's difficult to determine the jumping you get from 30FPS from that distance.

PC games are typically played on high-resolution monitors that are between one or two feet away. It is very easy to tell when a PC game is running at less-than 60FPS.

Our eyes can't detect greater than 60.

I think it's important, as even more than graphically, if you have 60 updates per-second, rather than 30 updates, you can perform twice as many physics calculations; it's more efficient and just generally better.

With a console, you didn't build the hardware. But with a PC, gamers tend to build their own - they chose the parts themselves, at least, which means they want the most possible performance from them. That's why people care about frames-per-second. It may not be important to you, but 60FPS is better than 30FPS, empirically.

The more frames, the smoother it looks (up to 60).

Plus, PC games have been running at 60FPS for decades. As PC gamers, we're quite used to it. You'd notice it too if suddenly your Xbox or Playstation only ran at 10FPS. "Why is the animation so jerky? Why is it stuttering?"
 

Rozalia1

New member
Mar 1, 2014
1,095
0
0
Irick said:
....
They took John Carmack's engine...
John Carmack, the champion of low latency gameplay.
John fucking Carmack, the first real software engineer homegrown in the game industry.
JOHN, FUCKING CARMACK. HIS GAME ENGINE.
They took it, and decided to framelock at HALF the typical refresh rate?!

God. Fucking. Damnit.
Shinji Mikami, I understand you are an autour. I do not question your vision, but I question the _hell_ out of your tool choice. This is the engine that John Carmack painstakingly created to give a fluid 60fps experience on last generation hardware. If you're just going to half-ass it with all of the damn work done for you on hardware that is at least five times more powerful...

Look, I can maybe understand the argument that the lower framerate is cinematic. I can maybe understand that the 3rd person horror game isn't going to have the same design decisions as a FPS, but this 'feature parity' argument is some bull. Greater men than you have already done 60FPS fluid 1080p gameplay using the same damn engine on the same damn hardware.

You have no excuse other than lazyness. No excuse at all. You have probably one of the best engines available for making the most of limited hardware resources, a 30 FPS goal is just not even trying.
Taking it a bit far aren't you? You're talking as if its some grand show of disrespect, I assure you that neither Mikami or Carmack are going to concern themselves with such trifle.

What you're saying isn't unexpected but I have a question/s to that. I always hear people talk about (especially here) how the "make no compromise" artistic choice should be respected, yet the "parity" artistic choice is often maligned...why? Is it terribly wrong if he wants each consumer of his art to experience the same experience? Perhaps you think that lessens his art...how? Why? The man isn't an artist because he looks to churn out the top graphics possible, his appeal and his style is something beyond that.
 

Irick

New member
Apr 18, 2012
225
0
0
Rozalia1 said:
Irick said:
....
They took John Carmack's engine...
John Carmack, the champion of low latency gameplay.
John fucking Carmack, the first real software engineer homegrown in the game industry.
JOHN, FUCKING CARMACK. HIS GAME ENGINE.
They took it, and decided to framelock at HALF the typical refresh rate?!

God. Fucking. Damnit.
Shinji Mikami, I understand you are an autour. I do not question your vision, but I question the _hell_ out of your tool choice. This is the engine that John Carmack painstakingly created to give a fluid 60fps experience on last generation hardware. If you're just going to half-ass it with all of the damn work done for you on hardware that is at least five times more powerful...

Look, I can maybe understand the argument that the lower framerate is cinematic. I can maybe understand that the 3rd person horror game isn't going to have the same design decisions as a FPS, but this 'feature parity' argument is some bull. Greater men than you have already done 60FPS fluid 1080p gameplay using the same damn engine on the same damn hardware.

You have no excuse other than lazyness. No excuse at all. You have probably one of the best engines available for making the most of limited hardware resources, a 30 FPS goal is just not even trying.
Taking it a bit far aren't you? You're talking as if its some grand show of disrespect, I assure you that neither Mikami or Carmack are going to concern themselves with such trifle.

What you're saying isn't unexpected but I have a question/s to that. I always hear people talk about (especially here) how the "make no compromise" artistic choice should be respected, yet the "parity" artistic choice is often maligned...why? Is it terribly wrong if he wants each consumer of his art to experience the same experience? Perhaps you think that lessens his art...how? Why? The man isn't an artist because he looks to churn out the top graphics possible, his appeal and his style is something beyond that.
Because they're not arguing this choice as a visionary choice. They're arguing it as an artificial limitation provided by the medium. As the medium (the engine) has priorly been used to provide a fluid experience in the same sorts of situation, this lazy difference _is_ insulting to the work that Carmack has done to optimize that engine. It _is_ insulting to see him flat out give up when he is given tools that someone spend decades refining to the express point to lower the difficulty in giving a fluid and uncompromised experience.

like i said, I can understand a cinematic argument. His fixed aspect ratio would even imply this is the case, but for them to come out, point to the consoles at the limiting factor and go "consoles suck, so we don't have to optimise for past 30FPS is dishonest, disingenuous, and not owning up to that fact is insulting to the hard work put into that game engine, not to mention the work put into the console design themselves.

This, as it has been communicated, is a lazy, not artistic choice. It is a choice to not do more work, despite how much has already been done for him.

So yeah. This isn't a rational reaction. This is me being very angry at someone throwing away decades worth of work because of their unwillingness to spend the time and effort to do it right.
 

likalaruku

New member
Nov 29, 2008
4,290
0
0
I often play MMOs at 30fps on PC. I either don't notice any significant show-stopping lag, or I'm just used to it or willing to live with it for enjoying the graphics maxed out.
 

Caiphus

Social Office Corridor
Mar 31, 2010
1,181
0
0
I think it's probably a mixture of:

1) Not knowing that there is a 30fps/60fps debate (although console gamers who visit gaming websites are probably aware there is a debate at least)

2) Not being able to tell the difference

3) Being used to 30fps

4) Not caring.

5) Emotional backlash against being told that their platform is inferior.

6) Emotional response to being told to care about something.

7) Belief that 30fps makes games more cinematic, or whatever.

And probably more. I certainly can tell the difference between 60 fps and 30fps when presented side by side, or immediately after one another. However, I couldn't tell you which of the ps3 games I've played recently have been 30fps. I'm sure some of them were, and I never noticed it.

That said, I'd rather framerates weren't locked on PC. That seems to ruin one of the points of having a PC in the first place. It also seems like it would be cheaper to aim for 60 fps on consoles (since it would mean you need to shove less graphics tech into your games). But I'm hardly an expert.
 

ninja51

New member
Mar 28, 2010
342
0
0
They're satisfied because PC's capable of playing new games even close to 30 fps are expensive and out of range for alot of consumers. A cheaper dedicated machine that can for the most part reliably always give 30 fps is an enticing option. Developers have to cater to that machine so most optimize it pretty well getting good graphics absent the potential of crazy unique to pc display issues from a lack of catering to specific pc hardware on the developers part. Its pretty clear to me.
 

Lord_Gremlin

New member
Apr 10, 2009
744
0
0
Back when I used to give a damn about PC I was all about best graphics. Even if that meant dipping below 30 FPS.
I honestly don't notice the difference if it doesn't dip below 30. What I can say is that cutscenes feel better at 30 FPS. Above that they get this strange feel to them... Hard to explain, play Yakuza Ishin on PS4, has gameplay at 60 FPS, cutscenes at 30 but some at 60. It's very easy to notice there.
 

laggyteabag

Scrolling through forums, instead of playing games
Legacy
Oct 25, 2009
3,301
982
118
UK
Gender
He/Him
Aaron Sylvester said:
Update 2: Wow, what is going on? Now we've got Evil Within...
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/478493/the-evil-within-on-pc-is-locked-at-30fps/
Bethesda has confirmed that the PC version of The Evil Within will be locked at 30 frames per second.
According to the publisher, the PC version of the game will be identical to the console versions, and as such will feature the same frame rate.
Bethesda says this was due to the wishes of the game's director, Shinji Mikami, who wanted all versions to look and feel the same.
I really hope this isn't becoming a thing.
You can actually unlock it, but it is just locked by default. Not that it justifies it's existence though, because it is still a dreadful thing. I understand parity between consoles, because they are pretty much identical in terms of what they can output, but promoting parity between consoles and PC is just plain silly, especially when the bar is set so low. I personally play my games at 60FPS without fail, so to make me have to dig around in the files to make what I consider should be an industry standard available is a pretty stupid thing to do. That said, if the recommended specs are anything to go by, then I am unsure if a large amount of people will be able to play this game at 60FPS anyway.
 

DoPo

"You're not cleared for that."
Jan 30, 2012
8,665
0
0
Jonathan Hornsby said:
Aaron Sylvester said:
So even if the hardware is capable of 60fps, they will keep it locked to 30 to make it feel more "cinematic". But really it's because it seems most gamers are very happy with 30fps, which is disappointing as far as progress goes.
Progress implies that something is being improved upon. That isn't the case here, because as has been established the "improvement" 60fps is over 30fps is negligible at best, but more often unnoticeable.
[citation needed]

Jonathan Hornsby said:
What I mean by that is that there is no reason to keep improving rendering quality to the point that you are rending something in a higher resolution than the human eye can see, at a higher frame rate than the brain can process.
So, on one hand, we have actual scientific evidence that you're wrong, on the other we have your word for it. It's hard but I think I won't take your word for it unless you provide a citation, as requested.
 

SmugFrog

Ribbit
Sep 4, 2008
1,239
4
43
Strazdas said:
you need to go to youtube, enable HTML5 play and then set playback speed at double to make this comparison doable, thus embeding it in flash form is completely pointless. youtube is a bad place for video comparisons anyway due to their compression. there are websites that support native 60fps videos, but the name slipepd my mind now sadly.
DOH! I just realized that a bit after posting it too. I figured it was buried far enough in the forum no one else would catch it, but yeah. My mistake! I saw the website on google search (can't remember the name right now) but I will check it out when I get home from work.
 

Danny Dowling

New member
May 9, 2014
420
0
0
Strazdas said:
Danny Dowling said:
keep the frame rate down, keep the cost making the game down, keep the dev financially sound, dev keeps making games.

the rate video games have been going it's no secret it's becoming unsustainable.
so, keeping the framerate down somehow makes it cost less to develop? please explain what kind of logic you used to determine that.
your superior knowledge of this precedes me, enjoy your... erm... victory.

as i see it you have double the images to make, eh, bollocks to that sounds too much like hard work especially if the game is using hand drawn style artwork it'd take double time.

i don't really care too much about the ins and outs though so feel free not to correct me.
 

Pseudonym

Regular Member
Legacy
Feb 26, 2014
802
8
13
Country
Nederland
I'd like to ask a question to those who know more of these fps things. In a multiplayer game my ping is almost always above 17 meaning it takes more than a 60th of a second between me pressing a button and the server knowing I did. Much of the time it is above 33 ping turning that to a 30th of a second. Does it then still matter whether the FPS is 60 or 30? If the server doesn't yet know that something happened 2 frames after it happened then for gameplay-purposes those frames can hardly have mattered, right? Or does it work in another way?
 

DoPo

"You're not cleared for that."
Jan 30, 2012
8,665
0
0
Jonathan Hornsby said:
DoPo said:
So, on one hand, we have actual scientific evidence that you're wrong, on the other we have your word for it. It's hard but I think I won't take your word for it unless you provide a citation, as requested.
How about the pages and pages of people in this very thread saying they can't tell the difference?
Doesn't strike a scientific. More like anecdotal. Yes, some people may not be able to tell the difference, however, to take that as "The brain can't process it" is not only stupid, it's intellectually dishonest. Again, especially when you have actual scientific proof of the opposite.