Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2015]

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What exactly do you mean by "killer"? Do you mean that you aim worse or that you just don't like it?
Both. Sorry but how on earth do you aim accurately when framerate keeps jumping? Not that it happens often in other games I've played, but when it did for example in Infamous games, it threw me off a fair bit.
 
How do you aim accurately with a jumping framerate? Easily? Unless it tanks where the game actually gets sluggish (sub 20s). Anything over 30fps is pretty responsive. Maybe if it was wildy swinging between 30 and 60 every few seconds, it would be annoying.
 
You shouldn't be aiming based on frame to frame changes, but feedback and predictions. As long as there's enough info to your brain to tell what's happening, you should be gauging where to aim (and when to stop moving) based on timings, not insanely fast reactions that can be thrown out by a dropped frame.
 
I dislike 30 fps shooters and I dislike even more "60 fps" shooters that dip to 40 fps immediately when something starts to happen and start to judder. Uneven frame time is even worse than bad frame time. This is most likely why I don't play much shooters on consoles. I used to own a 120 Hz monitor and play shooters on my PC with that (at 120 Hz locked). Maybe that got me spoiled.

Huge majority of the console games that I play are 60 fps games (mostly beat em ups, racing, indie games). I followed Major Nelson's Xbox 360 top 20 most played list for years (because our Trials games were present), and I noticed that on average over 70% of the games in the top 20 list were 60 fps games. This proves that it is a good business move to make a 60 fps console game. Players enjoy 60 fps games for longer time. It seems that players still prefer gameplay over graphics.
 
But if you have a
I dislike 30 fps shooters and I dislike even more "60 fps" shooters that dip to 40 fps immediately when something starts to happen and start to judder. Uneven frame time is even worse than bad frame time. This is most likely why I don't play much shooters on consoles. I used to own a 120 Hz monitor and play shooters on my PC with that (at 120 Hz locked). Maybe that got me spoiled.

Huge majority of the console games that I play are 60 fps games (mostly beat em ups, racing, indie games). I followed Major Nelson's Xbox 360 top 20 most played list for years (because our Trials games were present), and I noticed that on average over 70% of the games in the top 20 list were 60 fps games. This proves that it is a good business move to make a 60 fps console game. Players enjoy 60 fps games for longer time. It seems that players still prefer gameplay over graphics.

But one of the most played shooters ever were HALO and BF on consoles, both 30fps. Of course there is also COD on consoles, the question is if those really count as 60 Hz?!? I don't think that console gamers mind 60Hz shooters that much imo!

For me personally (as this is all subjective) I really want to have e.g. BF at 30Hz with enhanced destruction and physics compared to a 60Hz BF with lowered destruction/physics, because I prefer gameplay over everything else! :)
 
I agree with disliking sub 60 fps and judder, but it shouldn't affect aiming or control. Unless there's a neurological reason why spatial processing is thrown by uneven sampling?

Well, I'm sure some people are sensitive to it. Some people can't tell when a 60Hz game drops to 50 or 40. Some people can. I don't know what the split is. Really pro or competitive gamers play long enough that they may be more sensitive to it. I'd still take variable in the 40-60 range over locked 30, but that's obviously just person preference. I've never had a PC good enough to consistently game above 60 fps, so I've never been conditioned to higher framerates.
 
I agree with disliking sub 60 fps and judder, but it shouldn't affect aiming or control. Unless there's a neurological reason why spatial processing is thrown by uneven sampling?

You can see the study I linked to in the 60 fps thread. That showed that higher frame rates lead to better aiming.
 
But one of the most played shooters ever were HALO and BF on consoles, both 30fps. Of course there is also COD on consoles, the question is if those really count as 60 Hz?!? I don't think that console gamers mind 60Hz shooters that much imo!

I would claim that sales numbers and hours played online would dispute your claim.
 
It makes a world of difference. Controls become super responsive with just 1 frame of latency (warthog controls especially), and the clarity that 60fps gives to busy scenes with lots of enemies make it far easier to track where shots are coming from and where enemies are heading.

After playing Halo at 60fps there is no going back.

You are just trading spatial sampling for temporal. The clarity lost is the ability to resolve the enemy from non-enemy. Everything is a trade off.
 
It probably depends on the person. In my case an unstable framerate is a killer. It also probably depends on how variable it really is.

It would be an interesting experiment for you to play a game on a gsync monitor that's fluctuating between say 50 and 70fps vs one that's vsync'd at a solid 60fps and see if you can tell the difference. Maybe you could. I'm pretty sure I couldn't. Obviously without Gsync or if the fluctuating frame rate has vsync applied, the difference would be obvious due to tearing/judder. TBH though, without vsync, 50fps feels exactly the same to me as 60fps.
 
It would be an interesting experiment for you to play a game on a gsync monitor that's fluctuating between say 50 and 70fps vs one that's vsync'd at a solid 60fps and see if you can tell the difference. Maybe you could. I'm pretty sure I couldn't. Obviously without Gsync or if the fluctuating frame rate has vsync applied, the difference would be obvious due to tearing/judder. TBH though, without vsync, 50fps feels exactly the same to me as 60fps.
But the problem here is that a PS4 game won't have g-sync to the fluctuations will result in stutter or tearing. In this case I seem to have read that there's no tearing which means we'll get stuttering and frames all over the place.

Yes I feel particularly dramatic today.
 
You can see the study I linked to in the 60 fps thread. That showed that higher frame rates lead to better aiming.
I suppose it depends on how hectic the game is. For tracking a fine change, framerate shouldn't matter, but of course it will with wilder movements. I suppose I should retract my statement as not relevant to the particular context of the games.
 
Generally speaking I find specifically for shooters, the higher the frame rate the better, consistency also helps a lot. The more frames you can see it feels as though the target is moving slower, its easier in your mind to track things, to know how far ahead you have to put your cursor before you hit the mouse click. Fluctuating frame rates can really mess with your mouse aiming as you set your sensitivity against a specific frame rate, losing those frames will cause it to jump. Also, sometimes things move just the slightest bit at a distance, or your limited time to react to something is so small that without having high fps, you couldn't have seen it, or be given the advantage of reacting to it. Overall, I think for competitive play, I'll always go with higher frame rate over all quality of the graphics. If 60fps is the highest it goes, for competitive play I'd always want to see 60fps.

I can see why MS has been so adamant on making H5 60fps, as they are hoping this is going to be their eSport game. Hopefully it pays off for them
 
They are chasing COD and BF, being an esport isn't going to sell games, but being the only 30fps shooter left will hamper sales. I just don't understand why they care about 60fps in story mode. That compromise doesn't seem worth it.
 
It makes a world of difference. Controls become super responsive with just 1 frame of latency (warthog controls especially), and the clarity that 60fps gives to busy scenes with lots of enemies make it far easier to track where shots are coming from and where enemies are heading.

After playing Halo at 60fps there is no going back.
I dislike 30 fps shooters and I dislike even more "60 fps" shooters that dip to 40 fps immediately when something starts to happen and start to judder. Uneven frame time is even worse than bad frame time. This is most likely why I don't play much shooters on consoles. I used to own a 120 Hz monitor and play shooters on my PC with that (at 120 Hz locked). Maybe that got me spoiled.

Huge majority of the console games that I play are 60 fps games (mostly beat em ups, racing, indie games). I followed Major Nelson's Xbox 360 top 20 most played list for years (because our Trials games were present), and I noticed that on average over 70% of the games in the top 20 list were 60 fps games. This proves that it is a good business move to make a 60 fps console game. Players enjoy 60 fps games for longer time. It seems that players still prefer gameplay over graphics.
I agree with both of you. The difference can be ostensive. Frame transitions are visible at 30 fps, in my case at least, and a game like that looks shaky and full of jittery.

What you say about the games you play the most is true. I spent a lot of money in 30 fps games, even this generation, and I ended up leaving them and miss that money now -FC4, I managed to play 5 to 10 hours or so but I couldn't stand it, AC IV 2 hours, Need for Speed: Rivals.. 1 hour, etc etc-. The only 30 fps game that I enjoyed is TW3, but it's getting to a point where if a game is 30 fps I won't buy it, save for a CD Projekt or Bethesda game, and even so it kinda feels strange.

The games I am enjoying a lot are iD@Xbox games, which are simple games that run like the classics, at 60 fps. Pinball games, Killer Instinct, Diablo, kart games, and so on and so forth. One of the beauties of videogames is the smoothness, compared to movies and TV stuff.
 
Generally speaking I find specifically for shooters, the higher the frame rate the better, consistency also helps a lot. The more frames you can see it feels as though the target is moving slower, its easier in your mind to track things, to know how far ahead you have to put your cursor before you hit the mouse click. Fluctuating frame rates can really mess with your mouse aiming as you set your sensitivity against a specific frame rate, losing those frames will cause it to jump. Also, sometimes things move just the slightest bit at a distance, or your limited time to react to something is so small that without having high fps, you couldn't have seen it, or be given the advantage of reacting to it. Overall, I think for competitive play, I'll always go with higher frame rate over all quality of the graphics. If 60fps is the highest it goes, for competitive play I'd always want to see 60fps.

I can see why MS has been so adamant on making H5 60fps, as they are hoping this is going to be their eSport game. Hopefully it pays off for them
I just wish that Doom is finally 60 fps, because I wouldn't want to miss a Doom game. If not Carmack will be sorely missed, he was a 60 fps diehard fan and he didn't mind how rudimentary a game looked as long as the framerate was smooth.
 
They are chasing COD and BF, being an esport isn't going to sell games, but being the only 30fps shooter left will hamper sales. I just don't understand why they care about 60fps in story mode. That compromise doesn't seem worth it.
It's always worth it. The games were solid 30 fps are more or less bearable are suspense games, mystery games like the new Alien Isolation and stuff like that...
 
It's always worth it. The games were solid 30 fps are more or less bearable are suspense games, mystery games like the new Alien Isolation and stuff like that...

An absolute answer on something subjective? Always worth it for everyone? You have played a decade of Halo at 30,fps now 60 is an absolute must? Sounds like your opinion is just reflection of what they are targeting.
 
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