Does 30fps feel more "cinematic" than 60fps?

For example, even at a tech driven company such as Id Software, apparently John Carmack had to put a serious effort to convince the studio to stick to 60 fps for Rage. Luckily he is in a position where he can probably just veto any other option, but that's rarely the norm at other studios where the tech team is most likely not running the show.

What team is running the show then? The game design team? The art/graphics assets team? If these choices are not based on what people actually thinks looks and plays good (and what kind of development resources you have available), what are they based on? Ease of development?
 
It's hard to prove because it's very subjective. Even if a person subconsciously prefers 60 fps they often don't associate it directly as consequence of frame rate, but rather label it as "poor / good hit detection" or "responsive / laggy" etc.

If you are going to make a new candy you do not ask people how high sugar content the candy should have, you make test versions and let people taste the different versions and give their opinion. If you make a game you can't ask people what they want in the game. This is basic product testing methodology which all serious game developers should know.
 
If you are going to make a new candy you do not ask people how high sugar content the candy should have, you make test versions and let people taste the different versions and give their opinion. If you make a game you can't ask people what they want in the game. This is basic product testing methodology which all serious game developers should know.

Sure, I get that, however what I'm saying is that a 60 fps checkbox is a lot less easily marketable than a good looking screenshot.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I fully believe in 60fps as something that truly helps the user experience. I'm just playing devil's advocate here.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Pretty visuals tend to help my user experience a lot more than higher framerates. (differs from one game to the next of course) It's not like good graphics only show in screen-shots.
 
If you are going to make a new candy you do not ask people how high sugar content the candy should have, you make test versions and let people taste the different versions and give their opinion. If you make a game you can't ask people what they want in the game. This is basic product testing methodology which all serious game developers should know.

I think it was Insomniac who actually did this a few years ago, and overwhelmingly people preferred prettier graphics over 60fps.
 
We did some tests when I was working on sports games back in the 2005-2007 timeframe. People noticed 60fps, and even noticed subtle changes like double buffering vs triple buffering during very timing sensitive parts of the game. But that's sports games, those tend to be far less resistant to going 60fps compared to other genres. Personally I think 60fps is a huge upgrade on *any* game, but reading the constant forum posts of "cant see the difference" when comparing 30fps console games to their 60fps pc counterparts (and all the other improvements pc provides) has left me confused on the matter truth be told. I guess it was noticed en masse in the Snes/Genesis days, but not so much anymore.

The difference is much easier to see with linear motion, which was the case with pretty much all sprite based games, and particularly on interlaced displays. We're also talking about games that had < 30ms latency controller to screen rather than the 100ms+ that's not uncommon today.
It's much harder to quantify with rotational motion, though I believe most people could a/b it pretty trivially
In general though I agree, I always pushed for 60Hz over "better" graphics, but the limited data I've seen says while better graphics affect game sales 60Hz doesn't.
 
What data are you basing this on?

A combination of focus tests I've sat through on various products and hear say for the most part.

Here is Mike Acton's blog discussing there study
http://www.insomniacgames.com/how-much-does-framerate-matter/

It's mostly interesting because they were very pro 60Hz.

IME if the studio is technically strong, the technology group is often pushing for 60Hz and the producers and artists are usually the ones pushing for "better" graphics on the grounds they can't see the difference.

The bigger argument for me for 60Hz was always around control responsiveness. Most people notice the difference between 30ms latency and 60ms of latency, and even if they can't describe it exactly they prefer the reduced latency. That argument has been eroded since the advent of HDTV's with significant latency, in some cases so much it dwarfs everything else in the system.
 

Interesting, so it was pretty much a pure business decision on their part.


The difference is much easier to see with linear motion, which was the case with pretty much all sprite based games, and particularly on interlaced displays. We're also talking about games that had < 30ms latency controller to screen rather than the 100ms+ that's not uncommon today.
It's much harder to quantify with rotational motion, though I believe most people could a/b it pretty trivially

I can see that for 3d games where you are moving forward into the screen, in that case large chunks of the world aren't moving much frame to frame so 30fps could be ok. But what about shooters, especially during close quarter batlles where you are paning around like mad, in that circumstance I figured it would be both visually obvious and beneficial to gameplay to have smoother 60fps pans. Think about an enemy you are targetting that is just 20 feet away from you, at 30fps he moves in chunks during a pan making aiming more difficult, but at 60fps he is easier to track with smoother pans. Maybe that's where a game like 60fps COD/MW just feels better and/or less frustrating to play compared to 30fps shooters.
 
That same is probably true for racing games. The faster you drive, the more meters you will pass in each frame (though, even at 360km/h, you'll only pass 100m per second).
 
I can see that for 3d games where you are moving forward into the screen, in that case large chunks of the world aren't moving much frame to frame so 30fps could be ok. But what about shooters, especially during close quarter batlles where you are paning around like mad, in that circumstance I figured it would be both visually obvious and beneficial to gameplay to have smoother 60fps pans.
Absolutely. Any rotation creates massive deltas from frame to frame. finding a target during a pan is much easier at 60 fps vs. 30. Both increased spatial and temporal resolution are huge advantages for shooters.
 
That same is probably true for racing games. The faster you drive, the more meters you will pass in each frame (though, even at 360km/h, you'll only pass 100m per second).
When moving into the screen, distance objects change very little even travelling 100m a second, and near objects can be suitably blurred both adding to sense of speed and hiding their judder. Even turning a corner takes a more subtle trajectory over an on-the-spot pan.
 
Sure... and when a car is in front of you and you need to slipstream and overtake it etc... I for one cherish my 60Hz racing games, instead of the (intentionally) blurred messes that reach the market also. But that's also a taste thing.
 
Sure, 60Hz is better. But technically the difference between a racer's movements and a shooter's is pronounced, so the benefits of 60Hz over 30Hz is more significant for a shooter.
 
Maybe a difference is that people expect shooters to "look" cinematic because that's the only place they've ever seen that type of action, but expect driving to "look and feel" realistic because they've seen plenty of it IRL and also know what a sensation of travelling at speed is actually like.

If your cues are based on real life then 60 fps is a must, but if your cues are based on what you see at the cinema in action and sci-fi and fantasy films then you'll expect (and probably demand) a 30 fps motion blurred mess of jumpy frames and missing detail.

I really hope 48 fps movies take off.
 
Maybe a difference is that people expect shooters to "look" cinematic because that's the only place they've ever seen that type of action, but expect driving to "look and feel" realistic because they've seen plenty of it IRL and also know what a sensation of travelling at speed is actually like.

People seem to respond really well to the COD games, so this does not seem to be the case.
 
The CoD games are in a definite minority despite their high sales. The Halo's (3, ODST, Reach), the Resistance games, the Killzones, the Crysisisisi, Battlefield 3, Orange box & Portal 2. Pretty much all the high selling and highly regarded stuff apart from CoD. And it doesn't look to be changing: the next Halo is 30 fps and even iD are reverting back to 30 fps for Doom 4.

People seem to look down on 30 fps racers though - especially "hardcore" gamers. The CoD games otoh do get quite a lot of crap for lacking eye candy and being "sub HD" (as if that means a damn thing), even though it's necessary for 60 fps.
 
A combination of focus tests I've sat through on various products and hear say for the most part.

Here is Mike Acton's blog discussing there study
http://www.insomniacgames.com/how-much-does-framerate-matter/

It's mostly interesting because they were very pro 60Hz.

IME if the studio is technically strong, the technology group is often pushing for 60Hz and the producers and artists are usually the ones pushing for "better" graphics on the grounds they can't see the difference.

I would be very interested to hear more about your focus tests. Did the respondents actually get to try stuff at different frame rates, or did you just ask them questions?

Anyway, regarding Acton's/Insomniac's "study", I consider it severely flawed. They find a correlation between the final score reviewers give various different games (which are never explained) and what score the graphics score the game gets. They also find no correlation between 60 fps and higher graphics score.

The problem here is that they treat a higher frame rate as a graphical feature like anti-alising or global illumination. But the frame rate dictates the way that the game can be played. It is not a graphical feature as much as a game mechanics feature. You could run the same data, but instead of ~30 fps vs ~60 fps see if the player controlled character should be able to jump or not.

The study also totally neglect the need for different genres regarding fluency and responce time. If they only had studied games in the same genre (for example football games) then they would have some validity. For example, I would not know what FFXIII would have gained from a higher frame rate. Maybe it wouldn't be that much judder when you manually move the camera, but that is it. However, I do not think you can make a game like Ratchet and Clank be as much fun in 30 fps since you would have to slow a lot of things down or make them very difficult to control (camera, avatar, enemy movement etc).
 
The CoD games are in a definite minority despite their high sales. The Halo's (3, ODST, Reach), the Resistance games, the Killzones, the Crysisisisi, Battlefield 3, Orange box & Portal 2. Pretty much all the high selling and highly regarded stuff apart from CoD. And it doesn't look to be changing: the next Halo is 30 fps and even iD are reverting back to 30 fps for Doom 4.

People seem to look down on 30 fps racers though - especially "hardcore" gamers. The CoD games otoh do get quite a lot of crap for lacking eye candy and being "sub HD" (as if that means a damn thing), even though it's necessary for 60 fps.

COD dwarfs all of the others in sales, so those are in the minority. Especially Killzone, Resistance and Crysis. COD is also, from what little I have experienced, a much "faster" game than the others. Without the higher fluency that would not have been achievable.
 
Back
Top