Importance of 60 fps in arcade/simulation racers *spawn

[Globalisateur]

1) You aren't always trying to simulate the eye. Games tend to favour simulating a video camera with shutter speed and motion blur

That's where lies the main problem. Motion blur in a videogame is there only to mimick a cinematic effect present in 24fps movies because of technical limitations of 20th centures devices. It doesn't come from eyes but cameras deficiency . It should not apply on all videogames by default.

2) You can't get the eye's natural motion blur without stupidly high refresh rates. The eye accumulates lights in a continuous sampling of the environment, whereas games render discrete samples and at best approximate the eyes' sampling over time. For a visual aesthetic regardless of realism, motion blur makes sense in some games, just as CA, DOF and lens effects do. Look at how impressed people are with Infamous:SS and it's photographic look in photo mode. I imagine a car game offering that for nicely rendered cars will reach plenty enough fans to make it a worthwhile choice. Those wanting 60 fps realism need one of the simulators.

But those aesthetic views are artistically subjective and really come from nostalgia. The nostalgia of good old 19th/20th cinematography/photograpy.

If videogames were invented during the era of impressionism, all videogames should aesthetically look like paints in motion with only brush strokes, like Braid. Some people really like Braid artstyle (I love it). But it's only one game. I wouldn't want impressionist colored brush strokes in all my videogames.

Though if I could choose I'd choose impressionist artstyle instead of DOF or artificial motion blur every day!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It doesn't come from eyes but cameras deficiency . It should not apply on all videogames by default.

That's untrue, unless you mean the particular implementation. Motion blur exists for the eye as experienced by anyone who's looked outside a passenger window. The difference of course is that a human can track a moving object and not experience motion blur on that object, which can't be done on a game applying moblur to that object. But blur, like DOF, is an artistic choice so one can hardly argue against its inclusion in every game.

But those aesthetic views are artistically subjective and really come from nostalgia. The nostalgia of good old 19th/20th cinematography/photograpy.

I think that's untrue as there's an intrinsic artistic aesthetic in DOF. Images without that DOF lack the image language that communicates so effectively. DOF is an artifact of photography (it does of course apply to the eye as well but it's not fixed in the eye), but one that is worth including as it makes things pretty. I'd say universally so, too. Any photo using limited DOF and bokeh when viewed in crystal clear 3D holography won't have the same artistry. Hell, a flower can look good with a macro where it doesn't when you look at it from 10 cm away.

But it's all moot anyway. The designers have chosen their art-style, whether that's realism, photorealism, impressionism, or abstractionism*. One can hardly claim they are lazy, careless devs for making that choice and implementing it. You're not a careless, lazy dev if you spend months creating a game that looks very much like a photograph even if some people don't want their games to look like photographs.

* That one's kind hard to play.

 

[Phil]

Lazy is perhaps the wrong word. IMO failed is more fitting. Failed, because clearly, somewhere along the production of this game, 60fps was a stated option, even if perhaps not realistic or no one ever really counted on it.

IMO - it's the wrong compromise - and I will voice my opinion by not buying it (although the lack of a proper racing game so far on the PS4 will make it hard not to get, despite my view and how I feel about the framerate). I also think the reason for this not being 60fps is not that the devs felt they wanted to make the prettiest game, but because they aimed too high and realized that what they (or Sony) have effectively shown to the public is what they now expect. Rather than to downgrade to match the framerate they perhaps wanted at first, they prefer to sell it on the stupid who will not notice the difference enough. Or at the point when they bought the game, will have already spent the cash on it.

Thank god for sites like DF that increase the public awareness of framerate and their impact on games.

 

[tuna]

So our choice of terminology needs to factor in countries with closed borders that don't contribute software to the international games industry, nor post on this forum? I'm not seeing the importance of basing our lexicon on what the Chinese (with their general ban on consoles) are doing. In all our spheres of experience, arcades came and went. Games are now played on home computing devices, but the terminology has been enriched by its heritage, just as many words and phrases have. eg. Okay comes from flag signalling. No-one uses flag signals any more but we use the product of that.

In my sphere of experience arcades went away and then made a great comeback in China. I had a great time playing arcade racers like Outrun and Initial D there. Now they are retreating there as well though. And how are China's boarders more closed than any other country?

 

[tuna]

It's a generalised term. I don't think there is even such a thing as a non-arcade fighting game. Look, everyone understands what an arcade racer is. Someone even posted it in Wikipedia. There's a distinction between game styles and everyone has been calling them 'sims' and 'arcade racers' for as long as people have been talking about racing games on this board. It's not confusing, and if it is a little muddled at some points, it can be easily clarified. So just as we all accept kilobytes isn't base ten, we can all accept 'arcade racer' is a genre of non-realistic racer. By all means type non-realistic racer if you want, but don't expect everyone else to change.

So what do we call actual arcade racers then?

 

[tuna]

That's not what you said at all. You said categorically that every 30fps racing game was the product of the developers not giving a shit about their art. I quote:
If you want to retract and qualify that statement, start with a, "sorry, I didn't express myself clearly," or somesuch.

Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly. What I meant is that if you are going to make a fast racing game that DriveClub seems to be you really need a high frame rate and if the developer does not understand that fact that is a symptom of not giving a shit about how their game actually plays and feels. You will always feel something is lacking and the game will always be slightly frustrating.

You could probably do a great lawn mover simulation with 30 fps because you are not moving very fast, and some people might be very happy with that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So what do we call actual arcade racers then?

Arcade racers for the game style, arcade machines for the kiosks.

Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly. What I meant is that if you are going to make a fast racing game that DriveClub seems to be you really need a high frame rate and if the developer does not understand that fact that is a symptom of not giving a shit about how their game actually plays and feels.

One can't help but imagine that they actually play their own game during development and enjoy it. I find it hard to believe that during this development, the developers experience is, "damn, this is a shit game we're making. That 30 fps makes it horrible to play. Still, I don't care. We'll take the gamers' money and smile."

I think your 'need' is subjective. I personally agree that fast racing games, or any fast game, should be high framerate, but there are people out there who don't feel the same and targeting them is a legitimate option not to be confused with not caring about your game.

 

[Xbat]

60 fps is nice but all this talk that there will be no sense of speed because its a 30 fps game is absolute nonsense.

 

[Shortbread]

60 fps is nice but all this talk that there will be no sense of speed because its a 30 fps game is absolute nonsense.

100% agree.

If this game had baked lighting, static/sprite crowds, average scenery, limited AA and low textures ...then complain about it. This game was built for sheer eye-candy purposes, and lots of it. If the trade-off was 60fps versus eye candy ...then give me eye-candy all day.

 

[Inuhanyou]

It all comes back to the fact that developers choose what they want to focus on. Framerate or graphics(even though personally if you try hard enough you can still have pretty good graphics at 60fps 1080p, just not anywhere AS good as you would at 30fps)

Its up to the consumer to decide whether or not its worth the money, i don't think the devs should be attacked for making their own decisions in this regard. 30fps vs 60fps can literally influence the entire game design, to the amount of polygons, to the size of the world, to the actual rendering techniques used in the game. Its not something you can just flip on and off like a PC port and expect to work, even if you reduced resolution

 

[Davros]

there is no reason why graphics settings cant be scalable on a console

 

[tuna]

60 fps is nice but all this talk that there will be no sense of speed because its a 30 fps game is absolute nonsense.

Who made that claim?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

there is no reason why graphics settings cant be scalable on a console

May be cost reasons for split development paths and testing. Historically there's been nothing preventing devs from allowing performance tweaks for console games, but they never have. Console gamers buy a one-size-fits-all product with no option to select higher framerate or more eye-candy.

 

[HTupolev]

People tend to treat configurability as an intrinsic positive, but I suspect that we don't always actually think like that.

Even if it's usually brought up as a plus for the PC space, I find it entirely understandable to not want to have to choose between resolution and framerate. There's simply less doubt when the option isn't there, less of a sense that you're somehow "missing out" on some aspect of the game. I would go as far as to say that that might be one of the appeals of consoles, even if people don't acknowledge it (or perhaps don't want to admit it, in some cases).

 

[upnorthsox]

Well you're just not going to have dials that'll let you go from 30fps to 60fps on a console, so what's the point?

 

[HTupolev]

Well you're just not going to have dials that'll let you go from 30fps to 60fps on a console, so what's the point?

Well, like people have brought up, you technically could have such dials.

That's the point.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Historically there's been nothing preventing devs from allowing performance tweaks for console games, but they never have.

G-Police on the PlayStation did (options for view distance, view angle and frame rate) but it's the only console game I've come across that let the player tweak the graphics.

 

[Inuhanyou]

vsync options are pretty much the limit of settings on console, if that. the bioshock series, infamous as well as killzone have all let you do it

 

[HTupolev]

vsync options are pretty much the limit of settings on console, if that. the bioshock series, infamous as well as killzone have all let you do it

I haven't played the InFAMOUS or Killzone games on PS3, but KZSF and ISS don't allow the user to toggle vsync. The toggle is for 30fps cap.

Disabling the 30fps switches those games to unrestrained triple-buffering.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

G-Police on the PlayStation did (options for view distance, view angle and frame rate) but it's the only console game I've come across that let the player tweak the graphics.

Warframe lets you change FOV, Toggle Bloom n DOF and lets you adjust the HUD size on the ps4. Thats the max I have seen on consoles.