*spin* another 60 vs 30 framerate argument

[Davros]

Vetz's post about Descent reminded my about something
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1716439&postcount=85

Many years ago in the Descent 3 forum someone posted that in Descent 3 ideally you need 300ish fps
(this was when 300fps was achievable) The poster backed this up with a whole lot of maths and measurements.
Size of the ships, distance they traveled per second, speed of projectiles ect.
it sorta made sense (not that i'm in agreeement)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You are making a lot of assumptions here.

Assuming that 60 fps is not the only reason COD is popular is making a lot of assumptions? I know dozens of people (kids I've worked with) who all bought COD because it was popular, who cared not one jot about technical elements. I'm sure 60 fps contributes to COD, probably encouraging adoption among 'serious' gamers that snowballed into Joe Gamer following in their footsteps, but I don't think it's the be all and end all. And I cite other popular games that weren't 60 fps (Halo, GTA) to show framerate alone isn't the deciding factor.

 

[tuna]

Assuming that 60 fps is not the only reason COD is popular is making a lot of assumptions? I know dozens of people (kids I've worked with) who all bought COD because it was popular, who cared not one jot about technical elements. I'm sure 60 fps contributes to COD, probably encouraging adoption among 'serious' gamers that snowballed into Joe Gamer following in their footsteps, but I don't think it's the be all and end all. And I cite other popular games that weren't 60 fps (Halo, GTA) to show framerate alone isn't the deciding factor.

Halo is less popular than CoD even if we only look at 360 sales. GTA is a totally different type of game. Are you going to bring up Angry Birds next?

Also, I never claimed that CoD is popular only because it is 60 fps. I believe that CoD is popular because it has, among other aspects such as it's setting, fun game mechanics which are enabled by the high frame rate. And if people had found anything more fun they would play that instead.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Halo is less popular than CoD even if we only look at 360 sales.

I was referring to last gen. There were plenty of 60 fps games last gen, but a number of stand-out, best-selling games were also 30 fps (or worse). So if we translate this discussion back to 2004, what would the argument be? "GTA/Halo is the best selling game. Joe Gamer loves playing GTA/Halo. That's 30 fps, so clearly 30 fps is important and next-gen should aim for 30 fps."

 

[Nesh]

I was referring to last gen. There were plenty of 60 fps games last gen, but a number of stand-out, best-selling games were also 30 fps (or worse). So if we translate this discussion back to 2004, what would the argument be? "GTA/Halo is the best selling game. Joe Gamer loves playing GTA/Halo. That's 30 fps, so clearly 30 fps is important and next-gen should aim for 30 fps."

Nobody said that 60fps is what defines a successful game. But that doesnt mean that it does not contribute to the appeal of certain games.

Just as free roaming in a real life large city is undoubtedly a key element for GTA whereas for Halo it is not. Or just as epic battles against large water horse beasts does wonders for God of War but its silly for Battlefield.

But we know that real life cities with high level of freedom is extremely important for GTA
We know that battling against large beasts is important for GoW
We know that simulation is important for Gran Turismo
We know that fast paced arcade racing is important for Wipeout or Burnout

These are important. Should we say they are not because they work for game A but wont work for game C?

If a 30fps game does some things right of course its going to be a success. But for some games 60fps along with other things is what makes those particularly appeal to the audience

 

[tuna]

"GTA/Halo is the best selling game. Joe Gamer loves playing GTA/Halo. That's 30 fps, so clearly 30 fps is important and next-gen should aim for 30 fps."

I do not know which GTA you have played, but the GTA I have played have all have fluctuating frame rate (from something like 15 - 30 fps). Maybe all games should do that as well?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm abandoning this thread after this post. I wasn't ever calling for 30 fps or 60 fps (actually, personally, I'd prefer 60 fps always). My contribution was only to challenge the views that COD is proof positive that 60 fps matters, and that 60 fps matters to joe Gamer for control sensitivity. Arguments presented in favour of 60 fps:

1) 60 fps provides better visual cues allowing for greater accuracy.
2) 60 fps has less controller latency (faster visual feedback) than 30 fps.
3) The best selling franchise of this generation is COD which is 60 fps, proving it's importance to gamers.

My responses:

1) Visual cues aren't that important as 30 fps provides enough info to track a moving object, which I retracted on further consideration.
2) Controller latency is considerable across most games (linked to examples of games with six or more 1/60th second frames of latency being common, excluding additional display latency) so 1/60th of a second isn't going to make a great deal of difference to the average Joe
3) The argument is weak as it falls over the moment alternative examples are considered. If best-selling franchise is an indicator of what gamers want and what developers should target, than that same argument applied last gen would see 30 fps (or worse, in the case of GTA) as the ideal framerate. If we don't accept that the best-selling franchises of last gen are an indicator, than we shouldn't accept the single best-selling franchise of this gen as an indicator.

I cited GTA only to disprove the validity of argument 3, not to advocate a lower framerate. I haven't advocated a lower framerate at any point, only discussing that its a subjective option that developers choose and different people will respond to accordingly, ergo no-one can rightly state either 30 or 60 fps being better and should be mandated. I have said in other threads on this subject that personally I prefer 60 fps and wouldn't mind it being mandated, but I'm not going to pretend that what I want is the Right Way and everyone who values different priorities is Wrong.

 

[Nevod]

However there are many techniques available that reuse old data and amortize the rendering cost to several frames. The smaller variation between frames, the smaller the cost to render a single frame. In a 60 fps game, the camera and animation moves at half the speed (difference from a frame to another). For example CSM scrolling (https://d3cw3dd2w32x2b.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/CSM-Scrolling.pdf) provides a pretty much constant performance hit for sunlight shadow map rending, independent of the frame rate.

There seem to be quite many techniques for processing cost amortization - virtual texture-like shader caching, reprojection, temporal upsampling - but do the modern high-end engines use at least some of these?

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I'm abandoning this thread after this post. I wasn't ever calling for 30 fps or 60 fps (actually, personally, I'd prefer 60 fps always). My contribution was only to challenge the views that COD is proof positive that 60 fps matters, and that 60 fps matters to joe Gamer for control sensitivity. Arguments presented in favour of 60 fps:

1) 60 fps provides better visual cues allowing for greater accuracy.
2) 60 fps has less controller latency (faster visual feedback) than 30 fps.
3) The best selling franchise of this generation is COD which is 60 fps, proving it's importance to gamers.

My responses:

1) Visual cues aren't that important as 30 fps provides enough info to track a moving object, which I retracted on further consideration.
2) Controller latency is considerable across most games (linked to examples of games with six or more 1/60th second frames of latency being common, excluding additional display latency) so 1/60th of a second isn't going to make a great deal of difference to the average Joe

Cod has 3 frames input lag

 

[tuna]

David Bierton from DF says it really well:

"On the PC the ability to run Tomb Raider at 60FPS makes a huge difference to how well the game plays. Lara moves about the environments smoother, the controls feel tighter and more responsive and the action generally looks and feels that much more polished as a result."