Poll of the Day > I still don't really understand 60 FPS

(+) Yeah! (+)

Whenever I play games or watch TV, it never looks like it's 60 FPS to me. Because when I watch videos on my computer in 60 FPS, I can tell a difference, and my computer monitors are nothing more than cheap TVs. So what gives?

Also, why does 60 FPS in gaming seem like such a relatively new thing, yet I've seen gameplay footage as old as NES in 60 FPS? Is that just some kind of upscaling from the capture? Did we just not have TVs that could display it fast enough back in the day?

probably because most tv/film is filmed at 24 fps and most console video games are ~30 fps.

So.
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Rockies posted...

Did we just not have TVs that could display it fast enough back in the day?

CRTs are at least 60 hz, sometimes faster.
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Smarkil posted...

most console video games are ~30 fps.

Are they though? Why would people be talking about 60 FPS so much if the games are still 30?

I just wonder why this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX3TjwF7bvw

doesn't look like it looked when I was playing it

Because people like jerking off about how their game is running in 60fps while everyone else's games are running in 30fps.

Rockies posted...

Smarkil posted...

most console video games are ~30 fps.

Are they though? Why would people be talking about 60 FPS so much if the games are still 30?

60's considered the gold standard, but many console games end up at 30 because the developers opt to push for graphical fidelity over framerate, and the consoles just aren't powerful enough to let them choose both.

Rockies posted...

I just wonder why this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX3TjwF7bvw

doesn't look like it looked when I was playing it

Probably because you have a sub-60 hz TV.
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adjl posted...

Probably because you have a sub-60 hz TV.

The TV I played on when docked is 120 Hz. I don't think there are any TVs within the past ten years (at least) that are below 60

Rockies posted...

adjl posted...

Probably because you have a sub-60 hz TV.

The TV I played on when docked is 120 Hz. I don't think there are any TVs within the past ten years (at least) that are below 60

I've got nothing, then.
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FPS hype is usually nonsense used by companies to sell their products. It's the same line as "ergonomically designed" which is another meaningless claim since most things are designed with the user's comfort in mind and most things claimed as "ergonomically designed" are no more comfortable than other products. In the case of the 360's controller, less comfortable.
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Rockies posted...

Whenever I play games or watch TV, it never looks like it's 60 FPS to me. Because when I watch videos on my computer in 60 FPS, I can tell a difference, and my computer monitors are nothing more than cheap TVs. So what gives?

Also, why does 60 FPS in gaming seem like such a relatively new thing, yet I've seen gameplay footage as old as NES in 60 FPS? Is that just some kind of upscaling from the capture? Did we just not have TVs that could display it fast enough back in the day?

What kind of TV and what kind of monitor? They are not all equal, you know. I would imagine your TV just has a worse refresh rate than your monitor but it could be a poor picture setting or just a cheap TV that is incapable of a great picture.

computer monitors are far better than TVs

legitimately, they use better panels in monitors than tvs.
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I'm not using actual computer monitors though and they are far lower quality TVs than my main TV

Rockies posted...

I'm not using actual computer monitors though and they are far lower quality TVs than my main TV

wtf are you using if they aren't actual monitors

are you using tvs

yes a tv is going to be lower quality than a monitor
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I notice FPS a *lot* more when I'm in control of the action. Small amounts of lag tend to blend, but when I'm trying to react to the screen in specific ways it's night and day between 30 fps and 60.

I've always liked this tool. Really paints a clear picture how different frame rates feel.
https://frames-per-second.appspot.com/
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Helly, I'm using TVs for my computer monitors, but I only use them as monitors. I use a different TV for playing console games.

I just looked at some OLED TVs today that were playing 60fps video. looked amazing.

Rockies posted...

Whenever I play games or watch TV, it never looks like it's 60 FPS to me. Because when I watch videos on my computer in 60 FPS, I can tell a difference, and my computer monitors are nothing more than cheap TVs. So what gives?

the game actually has to be generating 60fps content, which most/many console games don't. but there definitely are some, and you can usually tell.

it also depends how you connect. if you're using composite, not sure that will ever look good.
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After doing more googling on this, I'm going to say that when I see 60 FPS videos they must generally be interpolated. I guess that makes sense, but with all the hooplah over 60 FPS games I was surprised to learn that a lot fewer of them than I thought actually have native support for it.

ah yeah, big difference between 1080i60 and 1080p60
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I remember reading a review for Jet Moto 3 a long, long, time ago...

The reviewer made a statement that the game ran at 30 FPS. I'm going on thirty, but I must have been about ten then. The reviewer did explain in layman terms what that meant. Frames per second.

Anyway, when Christmas finally arrived, and to my surprise, I did open Jet Moto 3 (to much exclaim, I had the first 2), I enjoyed the game for its huge levels, superior visuals, and its fluidity.

Now I didn't become a graphic whore overnight. I still didn't grasp how this 'framerate' was any different from my other games.

Fasr forward to freshman year. At this point I had already begun researching video cards, technical specifications, etc, for a few years. My dad had purchased a new home computer. I sampled some game demos (Rainbow Six 3 for example). It was final. Frame rates definitely exist.

So anyway, when somebody talks about framerate, they aren't even talking about framerate. What they're discribing is fill rate, bandwidth, poly counts, etc and how that ultimately interacts with how many images you can fill in one second with said data. Benchmarks.

60 FPS is a goal benchmark. 30 FPS is a mandatory benchmark. Anything more is a waste of resources, anything less is a waste of time.

NA TVs have been able to display 60 fps since the 50s.
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People who downplay the importance of 60 fps are wrong. The PS2 versions of MGS2 and MGS 3 are night and day to one another. MGS2 is 60 fps, and you can feel it. Higher framerate looks so much better. In fact, 60 fps is what wow'd me when I was playing PS2 in the store, way back when. That's what made me say "I've got to have this console."

60fps is a standard
if a system can't do 60 fps for most of it's games then it means the resolution isn't done being worked on yet
like wii U vs ps3
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WarGreymon77 posted...

Higher framerate looks so much better.

Not once in my entire life have I ever really been able to see a difference worth caring about.


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Please try this link that was posted above, seems no one commented on it. https://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

Old consoles you probably played at 480i unless you used component cables. Gamecube and Xbox were probably the first times you saw actual 480p, where the whole frame was supported at 60fps. With 480i, half the lines were drawn in the first frame and half in the 2nd, so some PS1 games were 60fps, but really it was at 240 res per frame. NES games were never full 60 frames per second unless on an emulator.

Whenever a thread like this pops up I have to mention how weird dead space games look above 30 fps.

There is a term for when you lose the artist vision due to an increase in the frame rate in cinematography, can't remember what it is at the moment though - most people call it the "daytime soap effect" when it is mentioned in blogs.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

WarGreymon77 posted...

Higher framerate looks so much better.

Not once in my entire life have I ever really been able to see a difference worth caring about.

Some people just can't see it, that is why we still have these topics. My wife can't see the difference between 30 fps and anything higher either.

I figure it has something to do with the brain.
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144hz is the way to go. Trash any monitors that don't meet that standard
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I know people posting samples are just trying to help, but it's like, did you even read the fucking topic? I can visually tell the difference between the two. My confusion lies in the fact that people seem to be greatly overestimating how many games actually do it

The PS3/360 generation of consoles apparently had very little RAM, and therefore, 30 fps became the norm. Either that or the idiots developing/publishing the games decided resolution was more important. Very, very few 60 fps games in that gen.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Not once in my entire life have I ever really been able to see a difference worth caring about.

"worth caring about" implies that you'll just refuse to care, so ignoring that, yes there is definitely a huge difference. there's a sort of glassy silky smoothness to motions when you're getting true full screen 60fps. it's a HUGE effect when it's really there, it's just that it requires a game to consistently output graphics at that rate, and as chewy noticed, i60 is not really the same either, even if it's "60fps", those frames are only half the screen each.
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WarGreymon77 posted...

The PS3/360 generation of consoles apparently had very little RAM, and therefore, 30 fps became the norm. Either that or the idiots developing/publishing the games decided resolution was more important. Very, very few 60 fps games in that gen.

I dunno what RAM would have to do with it, but 60 is twice as much stuff to draw as 30, which is no problem if you can live with only half as much content on the screen, but otherwise you're making a tradeoff between content (and complexity of content) and framerate.
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PO thinks just about everything isn't "worth caring about"

Developers have always been fighting to chose between framerate and content on your screen, and most of the time they have chosen content.
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I could never tell the difference tbh
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Go play Starfox on the Snes and tell me that you cant see any difference.
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Sahuagin posted...

"worth caring about" implies that you'll just refuse to care, so ignoring that, yes there is definitely a huge difference.

Not really. "worth caring about" means that I can see the difference, but that it doesn't seem extreme or functional enough for me to make an issue over it, or have it in any way impact my enjoyment of a given game which is well-designed/well-written and which is graphically acceptable (whether that means high-fidelity graphics or just well-done sprite animation - I'm not a bleeding edge graphics whore). As long as the FPS isn't so jaggy or lagging that it becomes a gameplay problem, it's a meaningless issue for me.

Whether or not a given new game is 30 FPS or 60 FPS means absolutely nothing to me in regards to whether or not I want to play that game. Nor would taking a game I already enjoy at 30 FPS and upgrading it to 60 FPS improve my opinion of it in any way.

In a similar yet more extreme vein, I'm one of the many, many people who prefer 24 FPS in movies over 48 FPS, no matter how hard Peter Jackson tried to push it as the future of movies. But I also tend to see diminishing returns when it comes to resolution as a whole - I can acknowledge the differences between standard def, HD, and 4k on a TV, but ultimately, I've never seen those differences as being meaningful enough for me to care. I'll just as happily watch something on a standard def CRT TV as I will a massive HD TV or expensive monitor.

And because it doesn't matter all that much to me as an issue, it means that when I hear other people screaming that 60 FPS is the most important part of any game and that any developer who dares to release a game at anything less is an absolute disgrace, I start to assume those people are batshit crazy and begin to dismiss or ignore their opinions in the future. In the same way that I tend to ignore people who scream about how important it is for games to have photorealistic graphics that strain a console or PC's processing power. I can play a fucking text-based adventure game and enjoy it if the writing and design are good (which is why I played Kingdom of Loathing for years, and paid more in "microtransactions" to them than I'll ever give EA or Ubisoft).

In other words, what I'm basically saying is that way too many people make framerate as it currently exists out to be a far more significant issue than it actually is.



Rockies posted...

PO thinks just about everything isn't "worth caring about"

I care about lots of things. I'm sorry that most of the things that YOU care about probably aren't on that list.

Maybe you should start caring about better things.


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Wait a sec

How did you put three line breaks in there, when I quote it they are just normal breaks, but when I try to put in multiple breaks it automatically makes them one

There's more to monitors/TVs than frame rate, too. Response time, contrast and more all matter, and the average monitor does better there than the average TV.

OLED TVs are pretty sick (especially high end ones, otherwise input lag is a thing) and will beat even some (most?) high end monitors, but few people have those.

You don't understand 60 FPS cause you play Nintendo "consoles". Go get a real gaming device that actually outputs good graphics.

fuzzyman posted...

I remember reading a review for Jet Moto 3 a long, long, time ago...

The reviewer made a statement that the game ran at 30 FPS. I'm going on thirty, but I must have been about ten then. The reviewer did explain in layman terms what that meant. Frames per second.

Anyway, when Christmas finally arrived, and to my surprise, I did open Jet Moto 3 (to much exclaim, I had the first 2), I enjoyed the game for its huge levels, superior visuals, and its fluidity.

Doood! I loved the Jet Moto games!!! I only ever got to play the first 2 though. I can't remember if I ever had the 3rd one but I don't think I did.
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Old consoles were analog, they operated on the country's AC so UK games were 50hz(fps) while US was 60hz.

Digital allowed controlling output fps so PS3 and 360 dropped to 30fps to allow a significant graphic leap. PS4 and xbone aren't very far ahead from the last generation because they returned to form.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Old consoles were analog, they operated on the country's AC so UK games were 50hz(fps) while US was 60hz.

Digital allowed controlling output fps so PS3 and 360 dropped to 30fps to allow a significant graphic leap. PS4 and xbone aren't very far ahead from the last generation because they returned to form.

My head hurts from reading this.
Some of the early Pong clones were analog, but other than that, all consoles are digital.
They converted their digital signals to analog to be able to show it on an analog screen, with other words your TV, and they followed the TV standards, not the AC standard. That the NTSC, PAL and SECAM TV standards indirectly were based on the AC standard is a different matter.
But that didnt magically make the games run in 60 or 50 fps. Look at the PS1 and N64 games and you will see that most of them actually were running at 30/25 or below.
Heck, the Snes had sub 30/25 fps in some games, like Doom or Starfox, which could dip down to 13-15 fps.
Heck, multiple Gamecube PAL games allows you to run them in 60 fps over an analog cable.
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AllstarSniper32 posted...

You don't understand 60 FPS cause you play Nintendo "consoles". Go get a real gaming device that actually outputs good graphics.

We get it, dude, you hate Nintendo.

And can you really blame me for being confused why I wasn't seeing 60 FPS? There's a ton of misinformation out there. I still don't really know what's right because people are still spouting off crap, but I think Sahuagin's explanation makes the most sense - the older 60 FPS people are talking about describes images built from two frames, so it's effectively 30 FPS the way we see it.

AllstarSniper32 posted...

You don't understand 60 FPS cause you play Nintendo "consoles". Go get a real gaming device that actually outputs good graphics.

Trolo lo lo lo lo, trolo lo lo lo lo troll!
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Rockies posted...

Wait a sec

How did you put three line breaks in there, when I quote it they are just normal breaks, but when I try to put in multiple breaks it automatically makes them one

Line 1

<b></b>

Line 5

Line 1



Line 5

You just have to make use of empty markup. When you quote however, the empty markup has already been removed from the post before being stored in the database. So anytime you edit or quote a post that used empty markup to alter the formatting, you have to add it back in to maintain the formatting. If you quote my message, the visible bold tags will be parsed as markup and removed. If you want them to stay visible you have to put empty markup inside each opening and closing tag.


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You guys remember the dreamcast?
Good ol 480p before it was a standard.
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Rockies posted...

And can you really blame me for being confused why I wasn't seeing 60 FPS?

Rockies posted...

so I don't see the big deal with me not owning either.

You don't own them, so yes, you're completely to blame.

AllstarSniper32 posted...

Go get a real gaming device that actually outputs good graphics.

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adjl posted...

Rockies posted...

adjl posted...

Probably because you have a sub-60 hz TV.

The TV I played on when docked is 120 Hz. I don't think there are any TVs within the past ten years (at least) that are below 60

I've got nothing, then.

I do.

For PC games, as a former "Does it matter?" console-only gamer, PC games literally play WORSE under 60 frames a second. On consoles, developers use tricks like dynamic resolution, frame limiting and heavy motion blurring to make you not notice it.

And a controller is inherently less accurate than a mouse is, especially one with high DPI and optical tracking. On top of that, developers will also use aiming helpers like aim assist and auto-aim to help controllers match up somewhat with m/kb setups.

So all of that makes 30 fps on a console not a big deal. HOWEVER!!! On PC, when using a mouse, you can physically tell something is off. Not just performance-wise, but actually physically notice how much more sluggish and framey your input is on the game. For PC players out there, put the game on 30 and then on 60 and use a mouse and keyboard. You will feel it. Badly.

So yeah- playing Mario Odyssey on a controller with all of the developer tricks and trades, you won't notice it. But playing Overwatch, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Destiny 2 or PubG on 30 and then on 60, you WILL notice it.
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Part of the reason 60 FPS is nice is that if you have it during much of a game, then when you hit a poorly optimized area or a resource intensive area it should still avoid becoming noticeably stuttery.

If a game were able to run at 30 FPS without ever dropping below that frame rate, then it would be fine in just about any situation outside of a first person shooter.
.
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Zeus posted...

FPS hype is usually nonsense used by companies to sell their products.

They don't use that kinda stuff as hype. Most don't even care if it runs at 60. They just want the game to look pretty. :/
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