Dispelling the myth you don't need more then 30FPS to play games

Sounds legit (not sarcastic by the way). Would've been better with a source though.

Though I'm usually fine with 30 FPS, and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference without comparing them directly, you'd have to be stupid to think that more FPS than 30 isn't better, especially since we have 60Hz monitors usually. And plenty of people have said that they notice the difference between 60 and 120Hz, and it has been tested as such.


This video is actually pretty interesting, and the video prior to this. It shows that somebody who isn't experienced with 120Hz wasn't able to tell the difference, but somebody who was experienced with it was able to do it. That shows that there's a visual and perceivable difference.

It's cute that you talk with authority about this.

A long time ago I had CRT monitor that would go up to 150hz refresh, and I loved showing it to friends. Every single person I showed it to easily identified the difference between 60fps and 120fps, because it's not subtle. At all.

In fact, if you've been playing a game at 120+ for a few hours, you become accustomed to it - then when you switch back to 60, it actually looks horrendously choppy until your brain becomes accustomed to that, which again can take a few hours.

And moreso, if you practice your game at 120+ in any game where extremely high precision and speed can pay off (such as Planetside 2) you will perform better. If two high-skill players compete at 120fps and win 50% of the time, then if you take one of those players and give him 60fps, he will usually lose. It's big.

The problem here as followed, what the 'eye' can detect is a misnomer, a more accurate way of fleshing out it would be what can the retina+optic nerve + thalamus + visual cortices VS1-VS5 can detect.

Even then, until that's made available to the 'global workspace' of the brain (importantly there is no CPU in the brain, its just the information being fed into the system as a whole), then you simply cannot be 'conscious' of it. Sorry, I don't care what you say, science. Specifically cognitive science of the last 30 years. For the purposes of this debate its important to note that of consciousness and cognitive studies the visual system is the one we are actually kinda close to getting (mostly because we can quite easily do activity studies in the brain (fMRI and MEG tend to be the most useful here). If you want to read more on the matter, i recommend anything that's come out of the Uni of Arizona, Uni Surrey with specific note to the work of Francis Crick (yeap, DNA map) and Christof Koch.

The important lesson is what you think is intuitive, and your own personal experience, means jack. Sorry but who we perceive the world and understand ourselves is pretty much non-veridical to how the human brain actually works.

now the question becomes, what can 'you' - where you is defined as your conscious mind. 'see'. Around 30-40fps, or to put it in more concrete terms 30-40hz is about where it starts to break down. Anything in that range, and generally speaking in a rich visual field, you will perceive most 'movement' within it as smooth.

HOWEVER, and this is a big BIG but. Seeing something as a passive observer is a drastically different thing to being an active observer. Its to do with the fact that your 'visual' system assigns salience to features of the world (i.e you notice things) far more when your dynamically interacting with it (I move, scene changes, scene changes makes me what to move, pretty obvious evolutionary reasons for this)

Whilst even as low as 24fps can look 'normal' if your simply observing a passive scene, if you allow to act and move in that scene (i.e in a game) it instantly becomes apparent and things will appear 'sluggish'. Its not the same as seeing it you will notice it.

Now so, is 30fps 'fine' yes. Will you notice 40, or 50 fps. Yes, but you wont 'see it' you'll feel faster, due to the fact that you can interact with the scene more fluidly. In short you have an extra 10 or 20 hz of possible movement going on and you'll be able to react in the visual space (aka the game, in a slightly more nimble fashion).

However, and I know this will upset a lot of 'pro FPS gamers - once you get to about 50hz, you get into massively diminishing returns land. Why, by the time you get to 60hz's your approaching the 'speed limit' of the neural system in virtue of the fact that singals have a real travel time, nerves can only fire at about (I think im right in this) 120 hz, and then information needs to be integrated as a whole.

So to conclude.

Can a game be played happily at 30fps, yes.

would 40fps be better, yes. Because your interacting with the scene your viewing.

Are there sinignificant diminishing returns beyond 50hz. Yeap.

It is an open question I might add if the brain 'could' potentially be trained to have useful reaction times and make higher hz' perceptible. Thats a separate question from

1) Can a game be enjoyed below that.
2) On a side by side competitive comparison would the person at say 60 or 120 hz, have a meaningful advantage over the person at 40hz.

Again I must MUST, stress here, you cannot fall into what is called the 'homunculus' fallcy in cognative science. There is no 'you' perceiving anything. There is information being fed into your global workspace (a lot of which is going to involve unconscious stuff you have no conscious access to). The conscious mind the 'subject' you, is very much an after thought at the end of it (indeed there is a view called epiphenomenalism, that is both very depressing and held by a lot of neurologists, that the conscious mind had no causal efficacy, in short your like the whistle on a steam train). Thus, conclusions you can draw from this (or others verbal reports) are extremely limited.

Some people like to trick themselves into believing comforting ****, and then they'll lie, cheat and steal to protect their precious ignorance.

Now if they would only lie, cheat and steal to get a better PC the problem would be solved....

If you only fed a person something more disgusting than feces, then feces can be happily eaten.

Maybe do some thinking with this brain thing you think you know so much about! /facepalm

You know that's not an argument right? Maybe you don't.

Fine, whatever. Its hardly surprising, every time you try to rationally debate on this topic, you get people come back with the same old line 'less than 60fupuses badz, you are the dumbs'.

Look pal, fact of the matter.
1) Nearly every movie (with often I note with motion blur, but thats something PS2 has, so dismissing it on this basis is moot) has been at 24fps for nigh on 100 years.
2) Its standard for every console (last 2 generations and the next generation) to be frame-locked at 30fps, for purpose of platform compatibility.

Therefore, it is acceptable to play at 30fps for a statistically significant proportion of the human population. QED.

And the counter point I am likely to face.

'no not, u are dumbs, think with brain'.

Furthermore, this debate, every time its between FPS gamerz, is so full of misconceptions, cherry picked data, confirmation bias and as i've noted, perhaps most absurdly anecdotal evidence and arguments to personal experience. Its hard to take it seriously. You want to actually educate yourself on these matters, the internet awash with actual papers on it. Just google 'neurology of perception'.

So whatever, said my bit, i'm out. Enjoy rationalizing your ignorant preconceptions. oxoxox

People who say there's no difference between 30 and 60 FPS just haven't played enough faced paced multiplayer games.

Wow I always knew that the "30 fps" was a lie and the op's post confirms this xD
I could easily tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps.

In my personal experience having 30 FPS, 60 FPS or 120 FPS makes little difference to me, whatever game I play, I still end up at the top of the scoreboard for the server or game session.

Only time I suffer is when FPS hits 15 and lower, so I highly believe it's down to the person in the end, we are all different.

There's a number games that really rely on having high framerate counts to have working gameplay, though. Fighting games tend to be smooth or have some option to run at 60fps due to the importance of individual frames for inputs and registering collisions.

It's pretty hard to say that you can't "see" more than 30fps or that anything more is redundant when you have games that put you in situations where you have to respond within 1-8 frames.

However, there's also a large number of games that don't even need more than 30 for anything other than comfort reasons. Earth Defense Force is a shooter where you fight gigantic bugs and robots, and there's nothing in the game that really requires you to be on your feet to win, besides running away from huge ants trying to bite you. The game is locked at 30fps, too.

I remember internet eye doctors saying the human eye can't see more than 30 frames in my Counter-Strike days. They were all terrible players who said that of course.

30fps IS playable, most console games runs at 30fps. Yes 30 and 60 looks different, getting as much fps in an FPS game is reasonable, I averaged 50-90fps in most FPS games I have played however with PS2 I was getting lots of ~30fps gameplay and I was fine with that as long as it didn't dip below 30, but when it did it was immediately noticable and impacts my ability to kill players, even 28 fps is noticeable compared to 30.

Years ago I took a break from SWG (after the NGE) and when I returned just before they shut the servers down the game looked different, SWG used to run at capped 30fps no matter what you did but when the game looked different, the devs increased the cap to 60 and I turned on Fraps to see what fps I was getting and I was impressed. It didn't change the gameplay, it just changed the way the game looked, it had a natural motion blur too.

Except the tests the government did with reflexes and FPS was that fighter pilots could see a image projected for one three hundredth of a second, not only that, they could describe what they saw with pinpoint accuracy

The average citizen could only do this up to one two hundred and fortieth of a second

And if your body can only "Impulse" 120x per second, explain why the human eye for trained people such as fighter pilots, hockey goalies and video gamers can be clearly seen moving at more then 300 actions per second, and also firing impulses at over 300 times per second.

I just did a quick google, your body's neurons fire at average between 300-400x per second, a low of 100x per second at absolute rest (Sleep) and up to 1000x per second under stress/duress/high activity.

Ok, a big part of my point is that talking of the eye makes no sense. The only level at which this really makes sense is either talking of the visual system as a whole, or in the case of the study you keep citing - 'subject is conscious of and able to verbally report a visual stimuli'.

Whether that actually corresponds to them perceiving it in terms of conscious perception and being able to act upon it, or whether

Frankly mate when its comes to cognitive science the 1970'ies were the very early days and the study your citing is practically poking a skinner box.

As to the speed of nerve oscillation, you could be right. however just because a nerve is capable of 400hz (honeslty that sounds too high). does not mean the global workspace is capable of processing fine grained information at 400hz. Indeed it'll be slower that by several factors in virtue of the time required for travel and integration of this information.

As to your particular question, I would suggest there that they were recalling something from memory not describing a novel phenomenon they were perceiving.

Would be nice to have the FPS displayed of your killer or victim. (like "You killed NoobyPro (12fps)". That might help measure your skill or that of your attacker better, of course there is also input lag / latency to consider in 1 shot kill weapon duels.

How to tell if something is strategy, or tactics. Strategy is free form, you have limitless options in how you approach a situation. You can plan dozens of steps ahead and usually rely on numerous components coming together. It's the big picture.

Tactics are the little sister of strategy. Tactics are on the more immediate level. While a strategy can unfold over a period of time, tactics happen in a relatively short period of time. They rely on actions that can be performed quickly. It is the small picture.

Starcraft is -NOT- a Real Time Strategy game. It is a Real Time Tactics game. Starcraft focuses on one battle, the actions taken happen within seconds or minutes and everything you do is effected by what is happening in the game at that moment. You are utilizing tactics to beat your opponent.

A game like Hearts of Iron, as posted, is a strategy game. Not real time, but a strategy game nonetheless. You have to look at the big picture. It's not just about making sure you have the unit that counters your enemy unit and making sure that unit attacks the location you want it to attack, when you want it to attack. You have to look at the entire theater of war. You have to look at the economic ramifications of your battles. It is multiple battles, not one skirmish. Those battles work in conjunction to accomplish an overall goal. It is large scale.

An example of a true RTS game would be Supreme Commander. SC is real time, yet still maintains the large aspect that is strategy. It also incorporates tactics, but to a much lesser extent than Starcraft.

Another example of strategy/tactics in games would be Chess and Checkers. Chess = strategy, Checkers = tactics.

I don't know about you, but I get 7-10 FPS and can play this game just fine. I'm not great, but that's more of personal skill than "OMG MAH COMPUTER CAN'T DO ANYFING!"

The difference here between 60 and 120 on that monitor is the response time, I can see a difference between a monitor with 2ms and 5ms and 9ms response time, I have an LG that has 2ms, next to me is an Acer that has 5ms and the time from input to the screen response is noticeable even if it's 3ms difference. It's just like seeing the very very slight delay from flicking the light switch to the light coming on, most people won't notice it.

Hmm let's break this down and try to find something of value:

Trolling.

More trolling.

Whether people accept something they don't understand has nothing to do with anything.

Trolling.

Trolling while admitting prejudice based on stereotyping.

Whereas what I did was knock down the self-appointed expert in neuro-science who thinks he can learn it well enough to put the knowledge to practical use simply by reading some papers on the net. And I did it by pointing out the obvious to everyone who knows. So more power to me.

Nice idea

You don't have an argument.