Is 100 FPS excessive?

[LurkerOnly]

Lots of people say "you can't tell the difference."

15 years ago people said "The human eye can't see any higher resolution than 1920x1080." which we now realize is A) bullcrap and B) pretty subjective.

Just like there are benefits to extreme resolutions (less jagged edges, therefore less need for Anisotropic filtering and Anti-aliasing, improved color quality because of reduced apparent dithering and blocking) beyond "how many pixelz it is", there are benefits to large framerates. That includes "if it's higher than your refresh rate you won't notice."

That's just not true. When you get used to the extra frames, you notice that even though you can't specifically point out the difference (although you might be able to, my wife bitched at me when we first got married that anti-aliasing and higher frame-rates were pointless and she couldn't tell the difference, now she insists on the highest possible frames and AA because she sees it, now) you'll be able to tell that it looks better somehow. Like the difference between the ipad2 and the retina ipad. You can see it, you can't necessarily just point out "where's the difference?"

But, if you aren't used to it, you probably won't notice the difference at all, so you won't miss it, probably.

[chazus]

As far as I'm aware: science hasn't been able to prove it one way or the other.

It hasn't? I was under the impression that it was pretty concrete that people can.

Regardless of being able to 'see' it or not, anything below 80hz on a CRT gives me a headache, so see it or not, I can't survive on anything less than about 95.

[Holyshnikies]

There is a pretty big difference between 30-60 fps. And most monitors/tvs run at 60 hz. So your not really going to see anything past 60. Now on the other hand, if your monitor/hdtv can run 120 hz, you'll see better motion rate but not necessarily frame rate.

So if you can enable vertical sync, do it. anything over 60 is overkill.

[Milkshake86]

The jury is still out on whether or not the human eye can detect higher frame rates. That being said, 100FPS is generally excessive because most people use monitors with a 60Hz refresh rate, which means the monitor can only show 60 FPS at most.

As for whether or not there is a difference between 30 and 60 FPS, I'd say yes, I certainly can tell a difference. Above that I'm not sure, my monitor is only 60Hz.

The rendering of the image is the flaw the eye see's, we cannot 100% absolutely not see past 30~ fps. Eye ours do not shutter there for the only graphic abnormality we ever see is rendering being a bit behind which would make us perceive a lag effect.

[Fojos]

It hasn't? I was under the impression that it was pretty concrete that people can.

Regardless of being able to 'see' it or not, anything below 80hz on a CRT gives me a headache, so see it or not, I can't survive on anything less than about 95.

Do you use a different screen to watch movies then? Considering they run at 24 fps.

[Espe]

The human eye and its brain interface, the human visual system, can process over 9000 separate images per second, perceiving them individually.

As for WoW gaming, if you take the camera and shake it around quickly, does the screen tear through the middle? If so, you want to limit your fps, either through Vertical Sync / Triple buffering or the built in frame limiter.

[Zyzzyx]

The human eye and its brain interface, the human visual system, can process over 9000 separate images per second, perceiving them individually.

As for WoW gaming, if you take the camera and shake it around quickly, does the screen tear through the middle? If so, you want to limit your fps, either through Vertical Sync / Triple buffering or the built in frame limiter.

"Both the two basic speeds employed throughout film making history (16 frames per second and 24 frames per second) adequately provide the requirements of visual continuity."

Not sure which side your quote was meant to go with, but that's from the same source.

Images does not equal frames.

Also, I did play rift but I'm not the Zyzzyx the other guy is looking for.

[Thelxi]

Yes our eyes can tell the difference between 60 and 120 fps, and yes anything over 60fps just for wow and mozilla is an overkill.

[lordjust]

It hasn't? I was under the impression that it was pretty concrete that people can.

Regardless of being able to 'see' it or not, anything below 80hz on a CRT gives me a headache, so see it or not, I can't survive on anything less than about 95.

Science is still unsure what framerate is necessary. All we know is that everything above 14 fps is considered motion and everything above 20fps is considered as a fluid motion. So 20-30 fps should be enough but a lot of people can see a difference between 30 and 60 fps.

As for your problem with CRT monitors. When you play with 80hz you get only half the framerate because you have always a black screen between the pictures and you get a headache because the screen is flickering which you can't see but your brain recognizes it and tries to adjust the iris of your eye at the same rate. With a LCD monitor you don't have that problem because it's backlit so that the screen is always illuminated and not flickering.

So what can we say about fps? Everything under 20fps is bad and everything above it is good. The optimal framerate? Depends on your body. Some people feel fine at 30fps and some at 60fps and some will swear that 120fps is even better.

I can see CF lights flickering (flicker with doubled AC frequency so in Europe they flicker at 100hz) and everything under 60fps doesn't feel right to me.

[Cyanotical]

Quote taken from wikianswers (Not the most reliable source): The human eye processes about 20 frames per second, but can go as high as 60 when in panic.

So I'm constantly in panic mode during gameplay

it's not only unreliable, but completely wrong



in one of the many threads like this that has been locked, a link to a scientific paper on how the human eye works was posted, due to how the rods and cones are not in sync, and each can pick up signals 200MS apart, it is possible for the eye to see an individual frame at speeds as high as 1000 fps

that does not mean that you can see 1000 fps. you don't see in fps, the eye sees in true motion, not individual frames

things that affect how sensitive you are to framerate changes can vary from your genetics to how much caffeine you've had

20-ish fps is the point where the brain starts to see a moving image from composite frames, it has nothing to do with how quickly it can pick out a single frame

[chazus]

Do you use a different screen to watch movies then? Considering they run at 24 fps.

FPS and "Refresh Rate" are two different things. Not only that, but I use LCD's now, fixing that problem entirely. You misunderstand how that stuff works.

CRT's literally 'blink' at their refresh rate. At 80hz, that blinking hurts me.
LCD's 'change' instead of 'blink' so even if the refresh rate is lower, it doesn't bother me, because it's not flashing on and off.

Try videotaping a CRT and LCD, you'll see what I mean.

Not only that, but even if a movie is filmed at 24fps, there are movie/video modifications made to fix that. 120hz TV's look better because sometimes they flash the same image multiple times so your brain doesnt need to 'fill in the blank spots'.

Since almost everything is LCD now, I rarely see CRTs. As to why TV's don't bother me, I'm actually not sure. It's specifcally computer CRT monitors. It may be because distance. Monitors I'm 1-2 feet away, TV's I'm 6-8 feet away. The technology involved may also be different.

[Sweetleader]

http://www.asus.com/Display/LCD_Monitors/VG278HE/

Buy one of these and be done with all the fps bs arguments. I promise you won't regret doing it.

[DeltrusDisc]

http://www.asus.com/Display/LCD_Monitors/VG278HE/

Buy one of these and be done with all the fps bs arguments. I promise you won't regret doing it.

1080p across 27".

Nope, Chuck Testa.

[Deleted]

120fps if you can sustain it on a nice 120hz monitor looks amazing on pretty much anything you can notice it on wow when you move the camera around
The easiest test to see the difference between 120 hz and 60 hz is to just get a window and drag it around, you will see what I mean

The only exception to the 120 hz looking amazing would be if you interleave a video to 120fps instead of the standard 25-30fps, as that leads to it looking rather odd

[Senathor]

I'm quite sick of this myth going around. People have been able to see above 200 FPS. It's been tested in labs and everything. Please stop the misinformation. Thank you.

Source please.

[Yohassakura]

I'd say that some games appear to have increased fluidity when above 60fps even whilst using a 60Hz monitor.

We definitely can see over 60fps, if the monitor allows for it (or in the case study of flashing a light at the equivalent of 200fps+).

I believe that the previously linked website explains some aspects of FPS quite well.

[a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51]

The jury is still out on whether or not the human eye can detect higher frame rates…
As for whether or not there is a difference between 30 and 60 FPS, I'd say yes, I certainly can tell a difference. Above that I'm not sure, my monitor is only 60Hz.

People have been able to see above 200 FPS.

Vision is sort of a thing I study (4th year neuroscience major) but nobody wants a lecture and I'm not digging out text books that nobody would check references on anyway. Rather than everyone asserting things, let's just go for a demonstration:

Reith is technically correct but leaves out the fact that context is very important. There are simple experiments you can perform to show that you can resolve events as quick as 8000 frames per second (have a friend take your picture: can see the flash?) You an also show that you don't experience events as slow as 1/4 frames per second (stare at the sun for a minute - blink - you still see that searing white hot ball of light despite not getting visual information for .25s). It doesn't really make sense to say "people see at x framerate" because we don't see the world as a series of frames - but that admits the topic is hard and makes it really hard to chest-thump about one nice neat number.

Someone linked a page talking about film which is related but not exactly applicable. The effect is much larger on film than in video games because of the nature of recording to film (increased blur with longer exposure). I think this example is better for computer games. Set the background motion to 0 pixels/second. Turn off motion blur for all three options. Set the top ball to 60 FPS and the bottom ball to 30 FPS. Set the motion to something like 5 pixels/second. You'll probably find it hard to notice an important difference between the two balls. Next jack up the speed to 500 pixels/second - the 60 frames/second ball should appear much smoother. If you have a monitor capable of 120 Hz then you could increase the frame rate of one of the balls to 120 FPS and notice a similar difference in the apparent smoothness of motion, especially if you increased the speed even further (say 2000 pixels/second).

30 frames per second is the minimum you need for that particular region to have enough new information to give the illusion of smooth motion to most people,most of the time. The real question is if the experience of 120 FPS vs 60 FPS vs 30 FPS is worth the extra cost required to achieve it. You can probably tell the difference between a 160k and 320k MP3 file with a little training on what to listen for. Most of us never listen to music in an 'clean' environment and we rarely have hardware that doesn't color the sound anyway. For most people, most of the time, there's no difference in the sound they experience (as opposed to the sound they hear) so it's not really worth worrying about. Increased frame rate is the same sort of thing: the quality of motion you experience probably isn't that big of a step up that you need to worry too much about it.

However, just because seeing 120 FPS all the time vs 60 FPS all the time isn't a huge increase in experience quality, there are good reasons to want a computer capable of very high frame rates. Being able to play at 100 FPS+ means that you've got some room for the frame rate to drop without losing the apparently smooth motion you see. if you know a raid is going to reduce your frame rate by some fixed amount (say 50 FPS) or some percentage (say 60%) then being able to run the game at 150 FPS ensures that when things get 'tough' you still stay over that 30 frames/second threshold needed to keep smooth motion. A slower system that can only sustain 80 frames per second may start to feel choppy when things get tough despite feeling very smooth most of the time.

If I render 1 frame at the start of a second, then nothing for 0.5 seconds, and then 29 frames at 60 FPS for the last half of the second - that still counts as 30 FPS. An image that stays unchanged for 0.5 seconds is very noticeable. What you really want is a computer that can ensure that you will get 1 new frame drawn every 1/30 second, you may need something capable of much higher framerates (say 120 FPS) in order to make that guarantee. You can always imagine situations where that isn't possible (/console spelleffectlevel 200000) so you'll want to ensure that level of performance some percentage of the time. "99.99% of the time my computer can draw 1 frame every 1/30 seconds)" is the statement you want to make -- but it's hard to internet argue around something as well thought out as that.

(feel free to adjust numbers up and down according to what you think the minimum acceptable amount is).

[BurningSkies2018]

What an awesome reply Evn. You made it 100x easier to understand!

[Sweetleader]

1080p across 27".

Nope, Chuck Testa.

I used to think the same thing, and then I bought one. While at first, coming from a 1440p Dell, it didn't look quite as good, you do get used to it. Considering it's used primarily as a gaming monitor you don't even notice the pixel difference. The smooth buttery feel of 144hz refresh rate is 100% worth the loss of pixels.

[xStevooo]

120hz 3d LED pro gaming screen looks stunning 120fps +