*spin* another 60 vs 30 framerate argument

[Billy Idol]

Considering the game already looks bloody amazing I would prefer if they focused further improvements mainly in the anti-aliasing aspect of the game, that'd be awesome. Of course, better everything, including texture resolution etc, is also welcome. However, aliasing is a really big distraction, especially on big-screen TVs, so getting rid of as much as possible of that is prio. #1, IMO...

Fully agreed. Aliasing is for me number one issue with modern games. Even on high PCs, aliasing artifacts are a major issue. I hope that devs are not happy with the status of AA on this gen consoles and shift some focus to this.

 

[Billy Idol]

I've been playing games for over 25 years. I just want to make sure that everyone knows this next bit is my opinion.

60 fps is nice and definately better than 30 fps but better graphics has a bigger impact. In other words 60 fps is nice but its not going to wow you like top graphics can.
It is also alot easier to advertise top graphics than framerate.

But high fps have also a visual impact. Of course not recognized in still shots (which are all bullshots anyway, so who cares?) but in my case definitively percieved as a graphical feature when playing, besides the gameplay impact.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Actually, I think if you would conduct blind tests on running the two games side by side, one in 1080p@30 and the same game 720p@60, I'd be surprised if people chose the higher resolution one over the one with the quicker framerate.

That would only be true if the content - the artwork, the number and cleverness of the enemies, the scale etc. - would be the same in both versions.

But the big problem with 60fps is that it puts a cap on every aspect of the game, not just the number of pixels you can push...

So if it'd be a fair test, you should also scale the content in the 30p version up accordingly, and on a blind test it's very likely that the increased detail and complexity would be more noticeable to the average user.

 

[Grall]

60 fps is nice and definately better than 30 fps but better graphics has a bigger impact.

Absolutely yes, on a console shooter which you play with a thumbstick controller. 60fps updating has its biggest impact in "twitch-sensitive" games, and turning with a controller just isn't very twitchy; if it was you couldn't aim worth a damn and would simply be spraying your bullets all over the place except at towards the enemy, like a certain late-night TV show host...

30fps is enough for console shooters. Not saying it wouldn't be better with 60, but it would be a huge sacrifice in quality to achieve the higher framerate. Too huge to give a big whomping "next-gen" type impact.

It is also alot easier to advertise top graphics than framerate.

That too!

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Absolutely yes, on a console shooter which you play with a thumbstick controller. 60fps updating has its biggest impact in "twitch-sensitive" games, and turning with a controller just isn't very twitchy; if it was you couldn't aim worth a damn and would simply be spraying your bullets all over the place except at towards the enemy, like a certain late-night TV show host...

30fps is enough for console shooters. Not saying it wouldn't be better with 60, but it would be a huge sacrifice in quality to achieve the higher framerate. Too huge to give a big whomping "next-gen" type impact.

That too!

I can aim perfectly fine with 14- insane setting on cod, which lets me do about 3 360 spins in one jump. That is higher sens than most pc games allow you to do. Just because you cannot aim with a thumbstick doesn't mean others cannot.

What your saying is essentially that the most popular fps franchise ever, which sold roughly the same as all other top 10 console shooters combined, should lower its framerate?

 

[valkyre]

I can aim perfectly fine with 14- insane setting on cod, which lets me do about 3 360 spins in one jump. That is higher sens than most pc games allow you to do. Just because you cannot aim with a thumbstick doesn't mean others cannot.

What your saying is essentially that the most popular fps franchise ever, which sold roughly the same as all other top 10 console shooters combined, should lower its framerate?

Thing is you talk about cod, a highly competitve multiplayer game that you have obviously mastered and you obviously represent a minority that can play at such insane sensitivity.

Hence why I said they can keep multiplayer portions at 60 frames per sec (they lower the gfx for multi anyway) and let the single player experience be even more eye candy.

So both worlds are happy

 

[Grall]

I can aim perfectly fine with 14- insane setting on cod, which lets me do about 3 360 spins in one jump.

...Considering console shooters routinely add auto-aim on top, I wouldn't put too much stock in my own self-professed insane setting aiming skills if I were you.

Just because you cannot aim with a thumbstick doesn't mean others cannot.

That's actually a non sequitur, my inability or not to play first-person shooters has nothing to do with wether graphics fidelity or framerate has the biggest impact in a console game.

What your saying is essentially that the most popular fps franchise ever, which sold roughly the same as all other top 10 console shooters combined, should lower its framerate?

Maybe you could quote the part of my post where I said that.

 

[milk]

Actually, I think if you would conduct blind tests on running the two games side by side, one in 1080p@30 and the same game 720p@60, I'd be surprised if people chose the higher resolution one over the one with the quicker framerate. IMO the 60fps would be much more noticable than the resolution increase on the other. But of course, going into next generation, 1080p is of course the big catch-phrase and bullet-point feature. And now that tablets and phones (especially iPhones that started with the retina catch-phrase) are making people aware of ever increasing screen resolutions, it's the new feature everyone wants to push.

Well this developer has done som blind testing, although the results are probably not what most internet IQ and frame rate aficionados would like to hear.

http://c0de517e.blogspot.com.br/2011/03/tell-internet-that-youre-not-moron.html

The actual tests were not regarding fps vs. spatial resolution (720 or 1080) but 60fps without motion blur or 30fps with it. Or in other words: High temporal resolution without anti-aliasing, or lower temporal resolution with temporal anti-aliasing (sorta, post motion blur is somewhat correct but not perfect of course, yet very close in most instances)

To quote the most important parts:

Fight Night Champion went from 60fps to 30fps. The most generous reaction among professional reviewers is that it was a step back done in order to have better lighting and graphics. Most of the general internet public just took it as a downgrade impacting both graphics and gameplay.
At a given point during pre-production, we started building tests for 30fps gameplay, first videos in after-effects (adding motion blur via optical flow), then after these proved to be interesting we went for a prototype in game and blind testing.
Most of our testers and producers likes the gameplay of the 30fps with motionblur version better than the 60fps one. Note that the game itself still runs at 60 (120hz for the physics)

 

[Cheezdoodles]

...Considering console shooters routinely add auto-aim on top, I wouldn't put too much stock in my own self-professed insane setting aiming skills if I were you.

Autoaim in cod is minuscule (not comparable to sp at all - if you aim at someone with non scoped weapons it will track the enemy slightly of they move slowly- if they run it helps nothing) and if you wanna win you play with it turned off as the stickiness as it often distorts your aim.

In any case I use hip fire which lets you aim faster but without any auto aim

Hence why I said they can keep multiplayer portions at 60 frames per sec (they lower the gfx for multi anyway) and let the single player experience be even more eye candy.

So both worlds are happy

I'd be happy with that

 

[owen]

I have heard that mario on the NES is 60 fps. How would it play if it was 30 fps? My problem with 30fps is that it sacrifices gameplay for fancy after effects which most people will only see when watching somebody else play.

 

[fearsomepirate]

60 fps is terrible because you get bad graphics and less fillrates and awful textures and last-gen effects and the potentials remain untapped.

30 fps is terrible because it's slow and my brain goes infinity fps and I can pretty much count the frames and I get a headache and everything is terrible and I can't aim or steer or select my chess piece.

In conclusion 15 fps 4 lyfe.

 

[Davros]

Quote from another thread

Did you know a F1 car can cover 10feet in 1/30th of a second, do you only want to see you car travel in 10foot steps ?

 

[Grall]

...And in a 30th of a second, a beam of light can travel 1/13th the distance to the moon. So what?

I also hate F1 racing games.

 

[Wynix]

Timothy Lottes suggested that games could just halve the resolution to offer the choice of 60hz to those who prefer it, i think that this is a good compromise.

My wish list for KZ4 would be better match making, less wait between matches (start loading the next map immediately after the match ends, when showing stats), 60 Hz even if I need to drop the resolution (if they target 1920x1080@30Hz, I want an option to take 960x1080@60Hz instead ... maybe if they support 3D, they could just offer a non-3D path at 60 Hz).

He was talking specifically about the new killzone but it should work well for all fast paced games that are going for the fidelity quality that 30hz offers.

 

[ERP]

Timothy Lottes suggested that games could just halve the resolution to offer the choice of 60hz to those who prefer it, i think that this is a good compromise.



He was talking specifically about the new killzone but it should work well for all fast paced games that are going for the fidelity quality that 30hz offers.

That only works if at 30fps your game spends half it's time twiddling it's thumbs waiting for a VBlank.
FWIW I've never worked on a game that did that.

 

[owen]

I think it all comes back to PR speak. Before the game is released there is all the hype about how it will have total immersion and how you will be playing the game every night for ages.

They say the new consoles are super fast and tons of ram but still the games come out as sub HD resolution, canned AI, tunnel shooter. All the extra power only for more of the same last gen stuff. The least they could do is ensure the game runs consistently fast. Everybody wants to make a movie game. Might as well strive for 24fps and get it over with.

I am sure the extra 6 frames can get you some nice AA motion blur.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, is that Timothy guy intentionally ignoring facts or is this a joke or what?

A 30fps game has the CPU potentially busy with game code, physics, AI, data streaming and decompressing and such for all the 33ms it gets. Cutting the resolution in half won't cut all these processing tasks in half too.

Then there's the issue of bandwidth - the game may address as much data as it's possible in 33ms. going to 60fps would cut the available data in half too. Should they reduce texture resolution and such as well?

 

[joker454]

The best way I can reply to the 30fps/60fps argument is with a quote from Glengarry Glen Ross:

"All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don't mind it."

Point being that much of this comes down to what you are used to. I used to not mind 30fps, that is until having games exclusively on pc at 60fps for the past couple of years. Now 30fps is simply not an option anymore as it both looks and feels absolutely terrible. Two years + 1 day ago I would have never said that. Now if I can't play a game at 60fps then I won't play it at all until I get a video card fast enough to run it at 60fps. Your mileage may vary of course, but I think the only way to really know how much frame rate affects you is to game exclusively at 60fps for a long period of time, then try a 30fps game and see what you think. You may be surprised at how awful it looks, I sure was surprised especially given how long I happily accepted 30fps.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

That may apply as an argument in general, but if you look back at the beginning of this thread, it was about why can't Guerilla make KZSF a 60fps game? Because there's "so much extra power", or because there's 8GBs of RAM instead of 4, or because people are buying COD games...

That's the start of this thread. Of course some trolling made it to diverge all around the map by now and it's somehow turned into a general argument.

 

[Davros]

...And in a 30th of a second, a beam of light can travel 1/13th the distance to the moon. So what?

You dont drive a beam of light, next time your driving get your passenger to cover your eyes for 9 out of every 10 feet

I also hate F1 racing games.

Well why didnt you say so earlier, Hey amd dont worry about performance in racing games Grall doesnt like them...