You must have bought the shittiest LCD TV out there. Even my four year old secondary 37" LCD shows the difference between 60fps and 30fps perfectly fine without little to no blur.
Insomniac says no to 60 frames per second
- Thread starter obonicus
- Start date
You must have bought the shittiest LCD TV out there. Even my four year old secondary 37" LCD shows the difference between 60fps and 30fps perfectly fine without little to no blur.
How much R2 did you play again?
You traverse the levels a lot in R2, especially if you're playing in larger sized matches. The battle is constantly moving, as is your squad and the enemy squad. Not once have I played a game where the battle stayed in the same area. Be it playing king of the hill, or chasing down the opposition, it's constantly moving and you are constantly spawning in different area's. The big maps offered plenty of scale, especially if you played in a 40 or 60 player match.
I can agree about your comments with regards to the SP.
I disagree with regards to you merciless request for HDR etc. It's just not necessary at all. Those resources can be better spent in other area's. The problem isn't the lack of HDR, it's that they baked shadows but not ALL shadows.
Also, the scale wasn't in traversing terrain, it was in the length of the levels you played and the quantity of the enemies you encountered. It wasn't just about a lot of geometry and big bosses. You missed a lot of that, eh?
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Well LCD's really do suffer from low motion resolution, which makes the image look really blurry compared to static scenes/images. I don't think it affects the smoothness of 30 vs 60 fps, but in general motion resolution is poor in LCD's compared to Plasma TV's.
Iron Tiger
Regular
There's something about the refreshing of a phosphor screen that makes 60fps motion seem more vivid than on an LCD. Why don't they introduce blanking for intermediate frames on 120Hz+ TVs? At least it should be an option for "gaming" modes.
specwarGP2
Regular
IIRC, Philips and Samsung both had TVs a few years ago that had strobing backlights. The problem with that was that at 120hz the strobing wasn't fast enough and made the screen look a lot dimmer.
Samsung is currently working on a 480hz TV that is incorporating black frame insertion for improved motion resolution. The higher refresh should solve the issue with the backlight appearing to be too dim.
The milk was rancid, why would I need to drink the whole carton just to prove that it was?
Two rounds of beta and a bit of retail (didn't like the way MP competitive in R2 was set up to begin with and couldn't really stand playing anymore especially knowing that none of my neogaf clan mates wanted anything to do with it even after having given it a chance by buying a copy of the game, and probably too much co-op during the beta rounds already, didn't like Orick much but I can't stress how much I hated the Chicago map, it was a mess, the subway was totally meh and just not very memorable, none of them particularly fun to fight in, none of them looked good), more than enough to know I don't ever want to touch the MP ever again.
I absolutely hated the execution of the AI general, it was the worst idea ever, basically being rushed from one bloody beacon to another bloody beacon, the player never got to understand the significance of each objective, absolutely terrible compared to RFOM where people were free to make up their own squads and figure out unique strategies to capture whichever node they want, communication was so vital in RFOM, where the teams had to work towards the same overall goal, but they could exercise their imagination and come up with their own tactics.
I wanted quality levels, quality modes, it didn't matter that the map area was large or they could fit a lot of people in the maps, it's like ordering a steak but instead being served cans upon cans of beans, I never asked for beans, I didn't care if they were many, many cans of beans, they weren't even good beans, I would have even settled for lambchop, or a decent meatloaf.
Well it's good that after all this time at least we have some sort of agreement on something.
Sometimes they didn't even bake the shadows for objects right in the middle, that was how sloppy they were, it was like tech art wasn't even allowed to retouch the levels to add in effects and make sure everything looked right after design was finished finalizing the levels, and because objects didn't dynamically cast shadows, they were left with some objects basically without any shadows.
Without HDR R2 looked flat, there's no way around it, they simply couldn't get the lighting to have that "pop" without it, and it's a HUGE difference between a game that has HDR and one that doesn't (other developers didn't use HDR just for the hell of it, it's a bloody pain to figure out a good way to implement HDR, they do it because they have to, it's like self-shadowing, none of these techniques are cheap, they're necessary).
And length is not scale, each combat scenario never really featured an area that was particularly big or flexible.
Why would the "length" even matter if the actual encounters were basically set in linear and narrow hallways where the player didn't get much room to maneuver and flank, or be creative in how to approach every engagement? There was no clever use of cover, no surprises, the invisible enemies were a joke (they weren't even hard to kill, they were just cheap, basically used to punish careless players), enemy behaviours were lacking, there just wasn't much thought put into how enemies would behave or react. It's like they've lost their sense of where the franchise should go and had to basically slap a game together in a very short time, they kept talking during their podcasts about that "Insomniac polish" in the last couple of months but the final product was anything but polished, polish takes time.
I like the party system though.
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Okay, before this turns into another R2 vs RFOM discussion, maybe we can focus on the 30 <> 60 fps aspect of the argument. Since RFOM and R2 are both 30fps, they don't really have much place in this discussion.
I think the core of the argument, is the framerate and them wanting to sacrifice some of it in the future, to perhaps make a bigger impact on the graphics side. I think one of the things they are missing (and this is where R2 comes into the discussion, it being one of their 30 fps titles), is that the games that make the come across as the most impressive ones, graphically speaking, are not necessarely the ones with the greatest technical achievements.
I think GT4 (yes, the one on PS2) demonstrates this quite nicely - with most of its "WOW factor" being attributed to their assets, detail to attention and impressive lighting. They have great artists that can make due with less resources and make it looks very great.
This should be also possible with R&C. It's also one of its kind with practically no competition at all (I don't know of any other shooter/platformer), so graphics should be less of an argument to sell the game. As I said, even if they drop the framerate to 30, I doubt they would make a larger impact that would result in more sales.
Maybe they should rethink their marketing. Perhaps they should focus on the more impressive locations in their demos (the Ratchet one is quite impressive), some bullshots and perhaps tout the 60 fps advantage in their commercials?
Even if most casual gamers don't know much about framerate - they definately appreciate the higher framerate as well.
I think the core of the argument, is the framerate and them wanting to sacrifice some of it in the future, to perhaps make a bigger impact on the graphics side. I think one of the things they are missing (and this is where R2 comes into the discussion, it being one of their 30 fps titles), is that the games that make the come across as the most impressive ones, graphically speaking, are not necessarely the ones with the greatest technical achievements.
I think GT4 (yes, the one on PS2) demonstrates this quite nicely - with most of its "WOW factor" being attributed to their assets, detail to attention and impressive lighting. They have great artists that can make due with less resources and make it looks very great.
This should be also possible with R&C. It's also one of its kind with practically no competition at all (I don't know of any other shooter/platformer), so graphics should be less of an argument to sell the game. As I said, even if they drop the framerate to 30, I doubt they would make a larger impact that would result in more sales.
Maybe they should rethink their marketing. Perhaps they should focus on the more impressive locations in their demos (the Ratchet one is quite impressive), some bullshots and perhaps tout the 60 fps advantage in their commercials?
Even if most casual gamers don't know much about framerate - they definately appreciate the higher framerate as well.
They're basically finished with Ratchet after ACIT, so why is the argument for keeping Ratchet at 60fps even relevant? Acton's blog piece was a bit of a bait-and-switch when the only franchise that we know Insomniac Games will be working on, namely Resistance, has always been and will still be 30fps. They're not going from 60fps to 30fps to achieve great graphics as the franchise has always been 30fps and has not achieved great graphics. Their engine(s) has not supported effects like HDR and more dynamic shadowing, or realistically looking/reflective water for that matter, regardless of whether it runs at 30fps or 60fps, that's the real problem. Better lighting and shadowing and better shader support is not as trivial as just giving the developer a better ability to produce bullshots for marketing, the effects and explosions, as well as the materials and the overall scene look tangibly better and have way more pop to them. Why aren't we asking the question of why even at 30fps the Insomniac engine is still relatively dated, lacking the ability to render more convincing lighting, shadowing and shader effects?
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No more Ratchet & Clank after ACIT?
Ok, that's news to me (haven't played ACIT yet, still waiting for Amazon to deliever it so no spoilers please). Even though, I do hope they aren't turning their backs on the platformer genre. That would be a great loss.
They kept saying the storyline is pretty much wrapped up, I haven't finished ACIT yet, but it's been really good, I would say it's one of my favorites this year, I think they're pretty burnt out on the series, which is why I think the whole 30fps Ratchet outrage is irrelevant at this point.
They're basically finished with Ratchet after ACIT, so why is the argument for keeping Ratchet at 60fps even relevant? Acton's blog piece was a bit of a bait-and-switch when the only franchise that we know Insomniac Games will be working on, namely Resistance, has always been and will still be 30fps. They're not going from 60fps to 30fps to achieve great graphics as the franchise has always been 30fps and has not achieved great graphics. Their engine(s) has not supported effects like HDR and more dynamic shadowing, or realistically looking/reflective water for that matter, regardless of whether it runs at 30fps or 60fps, that's the real problem. Better lighting and shadowing and better shader support is not as trivial as just giving the developer a better ability to produce bullshots for marketing, the effects and explosions, as well as the materials and the overall scene look tangibly better and have way more pop to them. Why aren't we asking the question of why even at 30fps the Insomniac engine is still relatively dated, lacking the ability to render more convincing lighting, shadowing and shader effects?
Resistance engine is good enough imo ,it just needs better art that has nobody from the Rachet influence working on it.
The water in R2 is very impressive and gives more wow than a reflection like Uncharted2 imo, and it has very good shaders in parts that are just as good as any game on consoles ,they just need to use better placement like Killzone and Uncharted to fake it better.R1 had good shadows when using the flashlight,better than R2 I thought.
Because it's the most common signal rate for HDTV sets and monitors. 85-90 frames per second would be better. But beyond that it's diminishing returns.
The most important thing about 60 fps is that it improves the game play itself (game responds better, you have reduced input lag, you have smoother vision). 30 fps is always a sacrifice to the game play to get better graphics quality.
I love doing stuff like this.
Example: in MGS2 I'd blow up many C4 charges at once. With Crysis, go into the Sandbox editor and establish large amounts of enemies, and watch the FPS go up as they get killed (CPU bound in that regard). I get a kick out of doing such things, because I'm a geek, and it's fun to test the limits of a system, most notably a PC. Unfortunately there are not too many opportunities to do this console games, though I must give my regards to the Wii games Boom Blox and Elebits because they have "create a level" modes that allow you to really bog the system down, or at least try to. The "Black Hole trick" with Super Smash Brothers Melee was lots of fun to do, especially with friends
Love_In_Rio
Veteran
The only thing IMHO Insomniac should look at COD is the marvellous shooting feedback feeling from those games. I don´t know if it is the sound, the death animations, the recoil, the sights or a pack of everything.
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Why bash UE 3? what it has to do with insomniac? (overall I agree with your point in regard to frame rate and INsomniac).
UE3 is pretty potent and still evolving tech. UE3 has been using SSAO, Spherical harmonic for a while for example. It packed great tools and possibly the best of the business content creation pipeline, etc. I'm willing to see if their next console game is going to make use of their "mass light" GI baked GI solution for example (some shots here ).
UE 3 doesn't a lot of things on a lot of platforms, it's a bit unfair to bash it imho. Rein stated sometime ago that it became lighter too which I understand as it should perform better now. I mean is not to steal Insomniac some merit but I often read what sounds like unfair comments in regard to what Epic is achieving with UE3.
After reading the spin off thread about COD MW2 for example I wonder how UE 3 would fare against Infinity Ward tech (in the same conditions, 640p AAx2 and ~60fps).
Now UE3 is free if some moders have...free months to port a COD level we may have a better clue (<= this is a joke
).
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It may not be that simple. In no way to slight Insomniac, but given the same game design parameters could they make a game that visually matches/surpasses MW2 at a stable 60Hz?
IW talked a bit about MW1 when it came out, about how they actually dropped poly counts and shifted decidely toward simple normal maps (and weren't aggressively persueing some of the newer techniques as the core emphasis of the engine). While IW used a number of post processing effects and filters, the game (as you noted in another thread) really pushed more well understood techniques with strong developer pipelines. Where MW really excels is they had strong art direction and cohesion and were able to put and end product on screen that was more than the sum of its parts. It isn't just, "Oh, look, the underside of the jeep has AO!"
I think MW is a more subtle example; I think Team Fortress 2 is the best example this generation. The renderer is dog old in most ways. Geometry is simple, characters aren't very high in regards to poly or texture detail, particles are simple, shaders aren't very complex, etc. TF2 ran a LOT better on my old PC GPU than MW1. Yet TF2 routinely is praised for the visuals. The simple reason why is the game has a great and distinctive look that matches the gameplay perfectly. Valve's documentaries on the art process and how it motivated technological decisions is absolutely fascinating.
I am not sure many companies have matured to that level--and even fewer who have matured to that level across projects on a consistent basis. This is why I think some companies fizzle graphically: They hit a sweet spot where the art matched with their technology and in many ways these companies are more technologically oriented. But that is a tough edged sword to walk.
If your art designs draw more heavily on technology (as realistic based games tend to) to emphasize and distinguish the product I think your window is smaller.
If you gave the MW engine to most developers with the same budgets and criteria I don't think most game settings and developer art direction would match what IW pulled off with MW1. It isn't a technology issue, but a design one. I think this is where UC2 is really, really amazing. Seeing how they push their technology and were able to conceive contexts that push right up to those boundaries is amazing. When you have art folks working that cohesively with your tech people like that it is
So the 30Hz issue, I think, is a way to be competitive where they think their design process takes them. MW2 @ 60Hz proves that 30Hz isn't the end-all-be-all for awesome graphics.
But how many companies have what it takes to pull off great graphics at 60Hz? The compromises most make--and the inability to artistically adjust--really make this hard.
And this isn't a criticism toward Insomniac, only an observation that even at 30Hz a lot of games make concessions that are bad for their design. e.g. Halo 3 (a game I like) I think made a huge mistake having HUGE open areas and HUGE forerunner objects with flat sides and clean edges and not using texture filtering. It really was a bad compromise IMO.
For whatever reason it seems some companies (luckily?) seem to make better compromises. It is hard with huge teams, for sure. The guys who plot the technology and art for a project really are visionaries if you ask me. The window between having AF, and not, is small percentage of overall performance, and missing the boat is pretty small. Making the wrong bet in big things can be disasterous--was IW crazy for focusing on normal maps over newer techniques and aiming for 60Hz? Sounds like a recipe for an antiquated engine. But somehow they overcame the 60Hz and "inferior tech" and put up a compelling visual package. Pretty gutsy call!
I would guess a lot of the decision making is being made by a perception of 'the public' rather than artistic ideals. In any creative industry, creativity ends up takng a back-seat to commercialism, as, after all, these artists need to make a living by creating something the masses want to pay for. In this case, Insomniac have spelt out how they feel the pressure of the marketplace is affecting their choices, and they believe 60 fps is not what the public wants. "Snakes on a Plane" is another good example of the creators bowing to a perceived public pressure and making choices which they feel will satisfy their market and lead to a better public reception and sales.
It could well be that the current line of thought in the decision makers is that the public doesn't value AF over other effects, and to generate sales they are better off losing the AF, much to your disappointment. And that same thinking means dropping 60fps support, much to my disappointment. The only way to know for sure is to conduct proper market research, which I don't think anyone does. It would have been great, for example, if MW2 was tested at 30fps and 60fps builds prior to release to see what people want. As it is, we don't really know if the 60 fps choice is beneficial to sales or not. It seems daft to me though to second-guess the public instead of ask them. And by ask them, I mean test them, rather than have them give opinions that, in reality, wouldn't lead to a game they like!