TV video signals send a frame sixty times every second. That's just how the standards are defined. If you want evenly paced frame output (without tearing), the framerate has to be this refresh rate divided by an integer.
For instance, frames at 60fps (60/1) are output as:
A B C D E F G H ....
Frames at 30fps (60/2) are output as:
A A B B C C D D ....
Frames at 20fps (60/3) are output as:
A A A A B B B B ....
But how does 40fps look? There's no way to divide it evenly into the signal, you have to split the difference through something like:
A A B C C D E E ....
Because frames are displayed for variable duration, it looks uneven and jerky. Judder.
Many many thanks for the detailed technical explanations, as usual. :smile2:
Isn't there a way to make the framerate even without having to resort to 30 fps all the time, by using a mathematical algorithm? So at 40 fps it could be A A B+A C C D+C A+B B B B+C C C A+C D D D+E E E A+E A A B+C C C -well, you get the idea-
Well, they certainly had something running back then. Doubt it was much of a game, though. Yes, they probably could have made a great massive game which adhered to those kind of lofty standards if they had the manpower to create the required assets for more than just a 10 minute snippet of gameplay. They'd better be content with merely selling a hundred thousand copies to the select few who could actually run the damned thing. It's not like the game is light on the hardware as is.
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Excellent comment. The tech demo was just that, a tech demo, much like the many CGI trailers of the past that pulled the smoke and mirrors trick some companies are known for.
I still play most of my games "old school" style with vsync off (unless they're hitting a fairly regular >60fps which is just about never in the games I play at the settings I play at. vsync off was the accepted standard on PC for decades before Digital Foundry started pushing it's holy grail target if 30 or 60fps. Honestly, I think it's overblown. A framerate that varies between 35 and 50 fps 98% of the time has very little tearing that I can see (it only get's bad for me at higher frame rates) and feels a damn site smoother than locking the game to 30fps with vsync - which I almost always try because I really do want to work out what this holy grail is all about, but I've never been able to find it!
Agreed. Irony of it is that the Xbox One version has Vsync engaged.
People are becoming far too dependent on Digital Foundry articles, and it's getting tiresome. Look at their wording in the article --thanks to
@DrJay24 for pointing it out, I didn't know there was a new DF article.
The framerate isn't a problem at all, but it does affect their fancy graph, so it must be fixed.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-should-you-install-the-witcher-3-day-one-patch
The big positive point for patch 1.01 is in performance, though it's not entirely ideal. What we get on Xbox One is an uncapped frame-rate that varies between 30-40fps, with v-sync engaged to avoid tearing. The unfortunate side-effect of not capping this at a straight 30fps is that frame-pacing wanders up and down the graph, causing the perception of stutter.
The sentence at the end of the article is suitable for framing and hanging on your room's wall.
On top of that, if CDPR can implement a 30fps cap with consistent frame-pacing, all the better.
Why would CDPR have to do that? Because you say so? Get over yourselves, you aren't gods.
