1080p 30fps VS 720p 60 fps - The 2012 poll

[Shifty Geezer]

That makes the assumption that the extra power will be spent solely on more pixels and not better quality pixels. Bandwidth looks like it may only be getting a 4x upgrade. That, in simple terms, will mean either 4x the assets or same assets at 4x the pixels (1080p60 vs. 720p30).

 

[zed]

Yes, Just like with every console generation there will be better quality pixels
I thought most ppl here would be picking next gen for >75% of games being 60fps, aint this the case? surprising

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Framerate has never improved thanks to a generational advance, so there's no real reason to expect as such next-gen or pick next-gen for its higher framerate.

 

[tuna]

Framerate has never improved thanks to a generational advance, so there's no real reason to expect as such next-gen or pick next-gen for its higher framerate.

Frame rates improved quite a lot in the PS1->PS2 step. Ridge Race, GT, MGS all whent 60 fps, and I am sure you can find more examples.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't think so. Sure, early on we see a framerate increase, but that's because towards the end of a generation, devs start to load up on effects and drop the framerate. Next gen with current-gen games running on new hardware, framerates will pick up, but they'll drop again as the hardware gets used differently. That's also pretty obvious from the history of consoles - if consoles offered better framerate each gen, we'd have 15 fps on PS1, 30 fps on PS2, we'd be on 60 fps on PS3 and looking at 120 fps on PS4.

Framerate has always been either 60 fps or 30, with different decrease of instability. Last gen had a full range of a framerates and stabilities, same as this. New hardware doesn't usher in a new period higher and more stable framerates, and I question any console owner running out to buy a new machine because it'll offer better framerates. We've had 60fps since SNES.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Zelda on the N64 was 20fps?, I believe.
Also if you look at 3D games on the SNES you don't quite have a stellar framerate.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Framerate has never improved thanks to a generational advance, so there's no real reason to expect as such next-gen or pick next-gen for its higher framerate.

And in return, that doesn't mean that next gen is somehow weak like people were inferring from Carmack's infamous "30fps" tweet.

Things like this happen regardless of how powerful the consoles are or are not.

 

[function]

I'm a child of the arcades and home consoles in the 1980s. Silky smoo'd 60 fps (none of this tearing business) is like going home.

The PS1 and Saturn lowered the framerate bar to 25/30 fps for most games. And the N64 came along and kicked the bar off and sent it rolling along the floor. Things have never been the same since.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Basically, as soon as 3D rendering came into the pipeline. Its not as simple as saying "this certain generation did it"

3Dimensional Graphical rendering was always going to be more taxing to fixed hardware. At the beginning of its life when things when kicking off to today when things only get more complex as time goes on. By definition my friend, 2D rendering these days is almost always done in super high resolutions at 60fps and pretty much completely non taxing to the hardware. What your looking for, my friend, is more "retrostyle" 2D games

 

[Alucardx23]

I think it would be a good idea to have 60 frames with a dynamic resolution, Rage did this and it was not really noticeable for me, since most of the time it dropped during explosions or fast moving scenes. Rage went from 640x720 to 1280x720, it should be even less noticeable if the range is something like 960X1080 to 1920X1080, that way you can have the best of both worlds, 60 frames on fast moving scenes, and high detail resolution when you're just admiring the graphics.

Face-Off: Rage
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-rage-face-off

I guess no one agrees with the technology that Lucas arts showed
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-force-unleashed-60fps-tech-article

 

[Nesh]

I'm a child of the arcades and home consoles in the 1980s. Silky smoo'd 60 fps (none of this tearing business) is like going home.

The PS1 and Saturn lowered the framerate bar to 25/30 fps for most games. And the N64 came along and kicked the bar off and sent it rolling along the floor. Things have never been the same since.

Things were pretty good with the DC and PS2. Lots of 60fps games at the beginning fof those consoles' lives.
It was gaming heaven. Its like 60fps was aimed to become the standard.
I was like "holy shit" when games played so smoothly with such amazing visuals at the time. Such a huge jump from the previous generation.
When I bought my PS2 in November 2001 I remember that the majority of games I played were silky smooth 60fps. Usually it was some slow paced games or open world titles that that run at 30fps were 60fps did not make sense.
But later on devs begun to sacrifice framerate for better visuals. Things begun to get worse later on as the XBOX came and devs were trying to create multiplatform games which had to have more and more sacrifices on the PS2.

 

[tuna]

That's also pretty obvious from the history of consoles - if consoles offered better framerate each gen, we'd have 15 fps on PS1, 30 fps on PS2, we'd be on 60 fps on PS3 and looking at 120 fps on PS4.

We definitely saw better frame rates on PS2 than on PS1, but the advances kind of stopped there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Zelda on the N64 was 20fps?, I believe.

Wasn't SotC on PS2 similar? I think if you look at averages across a platform's life, framerates start higher and begin to diminish. There's certainly no standard where new hardware has equalled better framerates for gamers.

As for 2D, playing Awesomenauts splitscreen has noticeable framerate decrease. We can't even manage 60fps consistent 2D across the board!

 

[Inuhanyou]

Shadow of the Colossus went down to 14 fps on very stressful scenes and that was a lot of the time. It was only 30 when you were out in the open and just standing there, even just on your horse the framerate would go down a lot.

I actually played it so much that i could not get used to the HD version when i played that, because i was so used to how low the framerate was in the original game.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

SotC PS2 had that 'cinematic feel'.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Yes. And now name me one other 60fps shooter.

Meh, across all platforms the cod franchise has sold 150+ million copies, who cares about the rest xD

 

[Inuhanyou]

SotC PS2 had that 'cinematic feel'.

Well yeah...i dunno if i said it before, but i really did think that was one case in which the super low framerate really worked for the feel of the game. It really felt like it was a game that pushed the PS2 to its absolute limits rendering these huge beasts that you could actually scale in this vast and huge world.

The motion blur (which i had never before seen in a game before that point) and monochromatic look of the game really sold it in addition.

One of the first games i thought represented a "next generation console experience" when i didn't know anything real about what 360 and PS3 would be like hardware wise or visual wise. Of course at that time i was still a young teen, didn't really look into that stuff.

 

[function]

3Dimensional Graphical rendering was always going to be more taxing to fixed hardware. At the beginning of its life when things when kicking off to today when things only get more complex as time goes on. By definition my friend, 2D rendering these days is almost always done in super high resolutions at 60fps and pretty much completely non taxing to the hardware. What your looking for, my friend, is more "retrostyle" 2D games

Well I do still like a good 2D game - the precision with which you see the position of objects within the game space is perfect, with no spatial ambiguity introduced. I'm not too bothered about retro graphics though - although I'd love to see 2D hand-drawn sprites make a comeback, complete with labour intensive 60 fps animation!

Things were pretty good with the DC and PS2. Lots of 60fps games at the beginning fof those consoles' lives.
It was gaming heaven. Its like 60fps was aimed to become the standard.
I was like "holy shit" when games played so smoothly with such amazing visuals at the time. Such a huge jump from the previous generation.
When I bought my PS2 in November 2001 I remember that the majority of games I played were silky smooth 60fps. Usually it was some slow paced games or open world titles that that run at 30fps were 60fps did not make sense.
But later on devs begun to sacrifice framerate for better visuals. Things begun to get worse later on as the XBOX came and devs were trying to create multiplatform games which had to have more and more sacrifices on the PS2.

I think the DC was a bit of an anomaly because it's Naomi bro and hardcore arcade following meant it got a constant stream of 60 fps titles. And in Europe for the first time we actually did get 60hz (along with progressive scan!). DC grown stuff like Shenmue and JSR tended to be 30 fps though...

PS2 was something I was probably underestimating in its early days. I know that by 2003 more than half of the PS2s output was 30 hz - Sony put out some tech analysis paper for devs with data drawn from lots of games - and as you say more and more games were 30 hz in the later years. Still, better than the DC who's output was 0 hz at that point ...

 

[Inuhanyou]

Dreamcast was a great system loved it, still love my dreamcast infact. The difference between DOA2 cut scenes in the PS2 version and Dreamcast versions was very noticeable side to side.

I never knew why the dreamcast version had the cut-scenes in 30fps and PS2 had them in 60fps

 

[function]

Most likely the cut scenes were using something stressing the CPU (which did all the vertex processing on the DC). I seem to recall something about additional light sources in the cutscenes, so that could do it. Possibly the CPU was also required to do decompression of assets being loaded from disk while the cutscenes were on (cutscenes masked loading time in a rather impressive way).

PS2 had rather more processing power so it could keep the frame rate up.