What do you prefer for games: Framerates and Resolutions? [2020]

[Xbat]

Answering the threads question about frame rate or resolution it's not that simple. Certain games like Warzone definitely frame rate but a game like The Last of Us part 2 not once did I think I wish it was 60fps ( don't get me wrong 60fps would be better ) in fact I would go as far as saying the hits they would have to take to make it 60 fps on a base PS4 would not be worth it and would hurt the game.

And what KeanuReeves says if using a mouse frame rate is much more important.

 

[iroboto]

Answering the threads question about frame rate or resolution it's not that simple. Certain games like Warzone definitely frame rate but a game like The Last of Us part 2 not once did I think I wish it was 60fps ( don't get me wrong 60fps would be better ) in fact I would go as far as saying the hits they would have to take to make it 60 fps on a base PS4 would not be worth it and would hurt the game.

And what KeanuReeves says if using a mouse frame rate is much more important.

I think if you saw TKOU2 in 60fps, you’d want that. Temporal resolution is a big issue, and whenever you turn in TLOU2 it’s super blurry until you stop and everything reforms. Having that 60fps would create much closer spacing between frames creating significantly better sharpness in motion.

 

[Xbat]

I think if you saw TKOU2 in 60fps, you’d want that. Temporal resolution is a big issue, and whenever you turn in TLOU2 it’s super blurry until you stop and everything reforms. Having that 60fps would create much closer spacing between frames creating significantly better sharpness in motion.

Yes 60 fps is obviously better but at what cost on a base PS4? For my opinion in a game like The Last of Us on PS4 I much prefer the "graphics" and everything else they can do.

Now on next gen the differences might be more subtle I suspect and in that case 60fps might win out.

Obviously all this is my opinion and it's an opinion of someone that's played way to many games on every imaginable platform and for me in a game like The Last of Us I would take more realistic looking hair( or something similar ) over 60 fps.

 

[jlippo]

Yes 60 fps is obviously better but at what cost on a base PS4? For my opinion in a game like The Last of Us on PS4 I much prefer the "graphics" and everything else they can do.

Now on next gen the differences might be more subtle I suspect and in that case 60fps might win out.

Obviously all this is my opinion and it's an opinion of someone that's played way to many games on every imaginable platform and for me in a game like The Last of Us I would take more realistic looking hair( or something similar ) over 60 fps.

This is the reason why I think frame doubling and quadrupling might be viable for some games.
Increase motion resolution with hopefully only small amount of visual errors.

There should be quite many ways to do this in reasonable frametime and without too much CPU use.

 

[Globalisateur]

I think if you saw TKOU2 in 60fps, you’d want that. Temporal resolution is a big issue, and whenever you turn in TLOU2 it’s super blurry until you stop and everything reforms. Having that 60fps would create much closer spacing between frames creating significantly better sharpness in motion.

Yep, 99% of games (when there is motion) benefit from higher framerates. And TLOUR at 60fps proved it. It's so much better than at 30fps (even the devs agreed on it). We are getting to a point where temporal resolution improvement is much more noticeable than static resolution improvement. Particularly when games are still at 30fps on consoles. At 1080p 30fps I'd say screw higher resolutions, give me 60fps first. Then improve the res if you can.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think if you saw TLOU2 in 60fps, you’d want that. Temporal resolution is a big issue, and whenever you turn in TLOU2 it’s super blurry until you stop and everything reforms. Having that 60fps would create much closer spacing between frames creating significantly better sharpness in motion.

However, enabling 60 fps would disable all the nice shading that people like so much. It'd be a smoother, blander looking game.

 

[ultragpu]

60fps titles even from next gen just don't stack up visually vs the 30fps titles. For example Call of the Sea is 4k/60 even with RT but it looks largely like a current gen game as opposed to 4k/30fps heavy bruisers like Kena and Ratchet, the latter two titles could pass for early Pixar movies in comparison within the cartoony style. And once again history repeats itself, most people were wowed by R&T, Kena far more than Call of the Sea graphically.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For example Call of the Sea is 4k/60 even with RT

You might have an argument, but your example is nowhere near valid. CotS is a budget cross-generation Indie title. You need to compare next-gen 60 fps games with next-gen 30 fps games, and you'll have to wait until into the generation to do that.

Instead, if you want to make that argument, you should review this and last gen. Compare the best looking 60 fps games with the best looking 30 fps on PS4 and PS3.

 

[ultragpu]

You might have an argument, but your example is nowhere near valid. CotS is a budget cross-generation Indie title. You need to compare next-gen 60 fps games with next-gen 30 fps games, and you'll have to wait until into the generation to do that.

Instead, if you want to make that argument, you should review this and last gen. Compare the best looking 60 fps games with the best looking 30 fps on PS4 and PS3.

Kena is an indie title isn't it?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yes, but you don't know what the budget is. To compare 30fps games to 60 fps, you need to eliminate all the other variables. There are many factors affecting look beyond just of framerate. Hence you should build your argument on released games from the past generations, rather than trailers for unreleased games (that may get downgrades).

 

[ultragpu]

Roger that. Now some quick examples.
Gears 5

Tlou2

The resolution and density of the foliage are much higher in a 30fps game

Gears 5

Tlou2

Again, massive increase in world geometry in Tlou, Gears 5's assets look blocky in comparison. The lighting and shaders also look more complex in tlou as it appears far more natural than the plasticky look in Gears.
Yes, Gears 5 on the 1X is rendering at dynamic 4k vs 1440p on the Pro but you give Pro the same power and you'll get the same resolution not to mention possibly with even more density etc.

 

[iroboto]

However, enabling 60 fps would disable all the nice shading that people like so much. It'd be a smoother, blander looking game.

in static shots for sure. Motion is another discussion.
It is true the game is probably slow enough to not matter, most times people are methodically moving around really slowly.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

in static shots for sure.

As you move around the world. Moving at 60 fps doesn't make the lack of solid contact shadows any less jarring. 60 fps chunky shadows still look wrong in motion versus smoother shadows attainable at 30 fps. If you're trying to resolve action, the prettiness of the environment isn't as important as how quickly it draws, but you still have to sacrifice prettiness to gain clarity. There's no situation where speed obscures blandness - it's just preferable in some cases. And realistically, if you are targeting higher framerate, you should pick an art-style that'll tolerate bland. Generally it won't need to be too bland in such cases. If you're going for realism (or pseudo realism in ND's games), higher framerate is going to hamper the look of your game until we reach a point where the visual delta between 30fps photorealism and 60fps near photorealism is close enough that the benefits outweigh the costs. Which isn't next gen, for sure.

 

[iroboto]

As you move around the world. Moving at 60 fps doesn't make the lack of solid contact shadows any less jarring. 60 fps chunky shadows still look wrong in motion versus smoother shadows attainable at 30 fps. If you're trying to resolve action, the prettiness of the environment isn't as important as how quickly it draws, but you still have to sacrifice prettiness to gain clarity. There's no situation where speed obscures blandness - it's just preferable in some cases. And realistically, if you are targeting higher framerate, you should pick an art-style that'll tolerate bland. Generally it won't need to be too bland in such cases. If you're going for realism (or pseudo realism in ND's games), higher framerate is going to hamper the look of your game until we reach a point where the visual delta between 30fps photorealism and 60fps near photorealism is close enough that the benefits outweigh the costs. Which isn't next gen, for sure.

I would probably say that it depends on the focus for the game. Just because you lose power to draw double the number of frames doesn’t mean you are getting a worse off image.

analogous to watching a video, If resolution is the number of pixels on the screen, then Framerate is equivalent to the bit-rate. Which I know absolutely everyone has been complaining about since these trailers started showing up online.

In next gen especially where there is enough power to do a variety of things, you can have a great deal of things moving at once on screen. And this is where temporal resolution will matter more.

more moving particles, more actors on screen, more animations on screen, temporal stability will matter significantly more than static image quality. I think you’ll see this as being the case for next gen.

 

[iroboto]

Roger that. Now some quick examples.
Gears 5

Tlou2

The resolution and density of the foliage are much higher in a 30fps game

Gears 5

Tlou2

Again, massive increase in world geometry in Tlou, Gears 5's assets look blocky in comparison. The lighting and shaders also look more complex in tlou as it appears far more natural than the plasticky look in Gears.
Yes, Gears 5 on the 1X is rendering at dynamic 4k vs 1440p on the Pro but you give Pro the same power and you'll get the same resolution not to mention possibly with even more density etc.

Good job, to prove frame rate doesn’t matter you provided examples of game stills where nothing is moving. But in your example Gears 5 is outputting the equivalency of 4x the number of pixels than TLOU2.

I'll put this succinctly, seems like a lot of people can't seem to notice resolution differences, or graphical differences unless DF is there to point out to them where 2 things are different side by side.

But you've got to be daft to not see the visual difference between 30 and 60 fps, and you immediately see and feel the difference without needing to do any form of side by side.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

He didn't say framerate doesn't matter. He said the visual appeal of the game is affected.

Whenever this conversation comes up, it always collapses into semantics as people argue 'moving smoother' is part of 'looking better'. Though true, the conversation is distilled into 3 aspects:

1) Quality of the pixels on screen in terms of shading and lighting, including post processing to create an aesthetic
2) Quality of the image in terms of image resolution and detail resoluting (anisotropic filtering, shader aliasing)
3) Motion resolution

For the technical parts. There's also art for the artistry.

All three are important and in balance, and a short-coming in any can ruin a game - I doubt you'll find anyone who'd champion photorealism at 240 fps in a 160x120 resolution image. That's not being disputed by anyone ever. The discussion is over which compromises to make when. When talking about a game 'looking good', that's invariable the language for aspect 1, with better lighting and shadowing and shaders. We just don't have a clearer language than that, so we should just work with it. If this conversation is ever going to achieve anything new over the many previous attempts, it needs to try to do things differently, which I think means avoiding the same arguments over what 'looks good' means and instead looks at what differences exist between 30fps games and 60 fps games. How dialled back do the rendering features need to be?

Edit: having thought about it a bit more, it comes down to information processing and what a person's brain prefers. I'd break my above three elements into

1) Complexity - how much detail and info is within the scene
2) Clarity - how well the information is impacted
3) Coherency - when the information is changing, how well it's tied together to keep track of what's going on

When someone like Ultragpu is talking about a game 'looking good', he's talking about the information complexity within the graphics, which is reviewable in static screenshots. His brain favours information density within the scene over coherency so long as the coherency isn't too low, whereas someone like Iroboto's brain prefers coherency of complexity and registers greater approval when the information presented is connected more closely to that which went before. None of these aspect is the most important nor worthless and they must be balanced to create a game.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But you've got to be daft to not see the visual difference between 30 and 60 fps,...

That's a misplaced and insulting assumption. I tried this exact test with Age of Booty on PS3. If you forced 720p, it ran at 60 fps. To me, it was way better and I played it this way. To my friend, he couldn't really notice a difference and preferred 1080p.

Before calling people with different perceptions daft, you should read this, in particular the Green test: https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-didn-t-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-times-evidence-science

Then dial back the faith that how you see the world is the same as everyone else and your preferences are the right ones because they seem the most significant to you.

 

[ultragpu]

Good job, to prove frame rate doesn’t matter you provided examples of game stills where nothing is moving. But in your example Gears 5 is outputting the equivalency of 4x the number of pixels than TLOU2.

I'll put this succinctly, seems like a lot of people can't seem to notice resolution differences, or graphical differences unless DF is there to point out to them where 2 things are different side by side.

But you've got to be daft to not see the visual difference between 30 and 60 fps, and you immediately see and feel the difference without needing to do any form of side by side.

I’ve played them both on my screen, gears 5 did not magically increased geometry density or improved lighting, shading when moving in 60fps. It’s just a smoother and clearer version of gears 5 in 30fps.

 

[iroboto]

He didn't say framerate doesn't matter. He said the visual appeal of the game is affected.

Indeed and he chose the wrong set of examples to prove his point.

That's a misplaced and insulting assumption. I tried this exact test with Age of Booty on PS3. If you forced 720p, it ran at 60 fps. To me, it was way better and I played it this way. To my friend, he couldn't really notice a difference and preferred 1080p.

I didn't say it's daft to prefer lower frame rate over higher frame rate. I said it's daft to claim to see no difference between frame rates of the same thing. Not quite an apples to apples statement I'm making here. Your example isn't 30vs60fps. It's 720P@60 to 1080p@30. This is gaining sharpness at all times in exchange for some blurriness during movement. A lot of people will take that trade as your friend did and that's actually normal, not daft. Our visual acuity is based on sharpness. People will take higher frame rate when they can no longer complete the required activity at hand - as in, when it actually counts to proceeding forward in the game, high frame rate makes beating the game significantly easier than low frame rate. Our ability for our brains to interpolate direction, and thus react to it, is based on frame rate, the higher the frame rate, the easier time we have of it. So if the game doesn't need it, then aiming for a higher resolution is going to be the preferred choice.

Then we get into the discussion of whether or not your display supports a high motion resolution anyway.

 

[iroboto]

I’ve played them both on my screen, gears 5 did not magically increased geometry density or improved lighting, shading when moving in 60fps. It’s just a smoother and clearer version of gears 5 in 30fps.

You couldn't qualify what increased geometric density or improved lighting and shadows are anyway, you don't know the costs to achieve them.

And to you every game as long as it's Sony is the best looking thing ever made. You're generally incapable of any form of objective view on any topic so long as Sony games are involved.

In a comparison between lowering and increasing settings to achieve lower and higher frame rates on the same title. You've instead gone and compared 2 completely separate titles, on 2 separately different resolutions and frame rates, with 2 completely separate gameplay goals on 2 completely separate consoles, and declared the winner. In an objective test between choosing between soft pasta and al-dente, you've declared sausage the winner.

As posted earlier, most users are not capable of seeing the difference on those items despite there being a 2x framerate differential. _this_ is how you compare geometric density, improved lighting and shadows in exchange for frame rate.