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

A high framerate is not anywhere as important as a consistent framerate. I'll take a constant 30 FPS over a fluctuation between 20 to 50. Guess which one PS2 belongs to?

You will need a pretty old and worn-out pair of eyes to not be able to notice much difference between 30 and 60 FPS.

This just reeks of a sperg-out. Yes, yes, for "tournament" play the additional frames are very useful, perhaps needed.

To state the game in day-to-day is "unplayable" below 30 fps is an arbitrarily and bizzarely absolutist way of thinking. It's no different than those people who want all but a witch hunt to stop people from "keyboard turning" or "clicking" in MMORPGs. Laughably petty.

If you saw the framerate I play at you'd likely have a heart attack.

@LordMond

"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."

Whaa?

What does a skinner box have to do with how many FPS you can see?

How does a skinner box apply to this, or did you just say skinner box cause it sounds smart?

Seriously I'm trying to figure this out, how does a skinner box apply to this?

They don't know its researched unless its researched? Wha?

The Skinner box is that until you do something, you will not know if a outcome is positive or negative -IE- is the cat dead or is the cat alive. Thus you are in a state where you have to assume something is right and wrong at the same time. But the end result is eventually you must look in the box.

How many FPS the human eye perceives has been well, well, well documented and researched, this isn't just hap hazard data (Though I am trying to find the articles myself ATM, its been YEARS).

Another fact I forgot to mention is the reason your eye has to come to a complete standstill before it "Snaps a image" is because if the eye was in motion while it was taking the picture, the image would be incredibly blurry, your eye has to freeze to take the picture.

Sorry I should have included that at the very start, its part of the key info the scientist listed how it debunked eyes constantly feeding data vs. eyes having to stop moving completely per image taken.

You can actually test this yourself by keeping your eyes perfectly still and turning your head from side to side, the image will be incredibly blurry. Now turn your head side to side but let your eyes look around naturally, it will be far, far clearer. Another way is to look at something, focus on it then move your hand in front of your vocal point. Since your eyes are fixated on the image you are looking at, and are not constantly adjusting for your hands movement, your hand appears blurry.

The scientist gave results for tons of experiements, I'm just listing the few you can do yourself at home.

The idea of the OP that's being mostly ignored by the thread is the laughable idea of "the human eye can see X number of frames. If every single possible frame is not being utilized, the game is unplayable, you NEED those frames".

No because a skinner box level of analysis just looks at the behavior that comes out, with the internal workings being irrelevant. Unfortunately a lot of the stuff we've found out since, for example with change blindness studies, or split brain cases shows that verbal reports are incredibly unreliable.

Just because a person says they have seen something ,and behaves in a certain way that makes it look like they have perceived something, doesn't necessarily mean they have perceived something. Split brain cases are the best example of these kind of problem.

So there are more possible explanations for the observed behavior than 'he saw that'. The problem with studies back in the 1970'ies is we didn't have any ability to treat the human mind beyond simple behaviorism and its why most people wouldn't touch it with a ten foot barge pole as 'legit science' until fMRI really came into its own in the 1990'ies.

Its an aside really, by and large im agreeing with you. Gaming at 30fps, demonstrably is not a problem.

However, there is certainly an element of 'detectability' in 40 or 50 fps. though its a lot less to do with the visual and a lot more to do with your motor systems in how you perceive it (though strictly speaking you can view the visuomotor system as a single system as its all about having an organism moving through its environment, not see X, compute X, produce behavioral movement)


Honeslty, I'm probably doing a really ****** job of explaining all of this, largely because its hard to explain as even though we are still scratching the surface, its increasingly the case that none of our intutions on how the human mind works, conform to how we can actually observe it to work. In short terms in regards to this debate, it can to an extent be summed up as this.

Can you see more than 30hz? No not really. Are you sensible of more than 30hz if its a environment your trying to navigate through. Yes. But there are seriously diminishing returns after 40-50hz.

It's frustrating with 20-30 fps, because you want to aim at something moving (e.g. close range 1vs1) but it feels sluggish and you can't follow it for some strange reason. The controls feel like you move through jelly and don't match your actual movement. At one point i thought it was just me beeing horrible at PS2, but it turns out it's the low framerate, because if it's higher everything its precise as i expect it to be.

I'm doomed to a pretty low framerate. I rely on shotguns, explosives, c4/mine traps, and tactical maneuvering (it's amazing how thrown off some "elite" gunners are if they're attacked from an unexpected side) to get the kills I can.

@lordmund

*facepalms*

The skinner box is that something is both right and wrong at the same time, and you will not know the outcome unless you make a decision -IE- is the cat in the box dead or alive?, thus you have to assume both answers are correct at that very moment, and unless you act, both answers will be correct.

The skinner box has nothing to do with behavior, or how we act, or HOW MANY FPS THE EYE SEE'S, the skinner box is that two possible outcomes are both correct UNTIL you take an action to prove one of the outcomes false.

Its like the old saying "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" that came from is that is there heaven when we die.

The saying was created because if you believed there was a heaven, you had to go to church otherwise you would be damned to hell, but if it turned out there was no heaven, you just spent all those years wasting your life in church for nothing, hence, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Same deal with the skinner box, we don't know if the cat is dead, so we must assume the cat is AND isn't dead at the same time, hence, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Stop saying skinner box unless you know what it means, it just sounds like you're throwing it in there to sound intellectual but its actually making the conversation confusing.

I still can't apply the skinner box to how your eyes perceive how many FPS it views.

They -FILMED- the eyes movements, they -MEASURED- the impulses along with each eye movement, they -MEASURED- the brains activity, there is no skinner box here.

http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

If you can't tell the difference between 30 and the 60FPS one, you are blind.

If you can tell the difference, you have debunked your own statement.

Uh...thats Schrödinger's cat. Thats something different.

A skinner box, specifically (I've actually made an error, here I was confusing it with the beetle in the box, which is an application of behaviorism. but whatever) is a box Skinner developed back in the 1930'ies to study animal behavior. basic idea - you put a small animal in and use to study its behavior, by giving it stimuli (input) and then allowing it a limited range of action in order to study what its behavior will be (output). so rat has two buttons to press, one gives food one shocks it sorta stuff.

either way my point about behavior being an unreliable guide largely stands. You introduce someone to an artifical situation and study their behavior, you don't necessarily learn much about the inner workings of their mind.

Haw! True, true true. Sorry both with S's

That said, the skinner box -STILL- does not apply, because the skinner box is where something is conditioned to expect a response if a repetitive action is performed, and after the action stops, will still have the same reaction

-HOW- does this apply to FPS? If we BELIEVE something will be seen, we will see it?

This makes no sense

The skinner box was that you put a rat in a box with a light and a feeder tube. When the light turned on, a food pellet dropped in. Eventually the rat figured out when the light turned on, food was going to appear.

Then, they would turn the light on but NOT drop the food in, the rat would run over to the tray expecting food (Result) but didn't get it

-HOW- does this apply to -HOW WE SEE THINGS?- If we watch a man walk around a corner 59 times in a hour, we will -SEE- him walk around the corner in the next minute even if he didn't appear there?

Simplified example nothing like an actual FPS game, we are discussing is simplified and nothing like an actual FPS game we are discussing.

Moreover that example completely skips over the stuff i've been saying about interaction with the enviorment your perceiving. Of course an object that moves a certain amount per frame against a fixed field of reference in both a linear and angular motion, is going to look faster or slower indeed 'smoother' if there are more 'frames'.

*facepalms*

Its -RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU- on -THE SAME MONITOR- you -PLAY GAMES ON-

-WHICH- one is more fluid, the 30FPS one or the 60FPS one?

*EDIT* I am not continuing this discussion until you answer, as it seems like you are avoiding the question so you can stand behind your 30FPS limit statement.

Which is more fluid, the 30FPS or the 60FPS? Or to you do they look the exact same since you have a "limit" of 30FPS.

I will flat out refuse to keep continuing this discussion with you until you answer.

I have played with 5-10 fps since starting.

So ******* difficult

I've allready explained why its not analgous.

As i've already discussed the reasons this example is disanalgous and not equivalent to what we are actually talking about is obvious.

consider action movie, at 24fps. does it feel choppy no. Why, your a passive observer.

Now consider the same in next to any FPS. 24 will be well into the area in which most people will feel its choppy. Why? As i've already explained the important difference is in you interacting with the scene you are perceiving.

Beyond a certain, suprisingly low point in terms of the visual field you are perceiving changing (and it is at about 24 hz is), what you perceive in 'slowless' of 'lagginess' is not what your seeing, its your visuo-motor system getting confused at why what it expects to be happening (movement and perception of movement) is not occurring at the speed it expects - indeed this is why the point about people training themselves to recognize 120hz leaves this all as an open question. But at this point the whole debate collapses, as whether a given person is sensible of a change in their visual field at 40hz vs. 60hz, beyond them simply interacting with it, starts to become a matter of that persons individual history combined with a huge range of other factors like what the exact nature of the stimuli in that field are (another important reason why a jumping box against a plain background, is completely different to a battle in PS2)

I appreciate its a counter intuitive fact. But it also happens to be true. A lot of this debate I see based on the USAF study, or jumping boxes or peoples reports about what they can see. Is simply not where the understanding of the neurology of perception is at in 2013. Mostly because and I can't labour this point enough, personal experience and outward behavior is it turns out a fairly unreliable indicator of whats going on. I can't condense 20 years of cognitive science into this post or any post. Just if you want to actually understand 'da fuq' google 'neurology of perception' or 'neurology of perception and action' and get reading.

Moreover, its a banal and demonstrable fact, from the entire console market that 30fps is sufficient for a statistically significant proportion of the FPS gamerz community.

WOW this is the most ridiculous thing i have read in months

yes generally speaking your right higher frame rate IS important, much higher then 30FPS ... but not because ANY of those pseudo science fairy tale reasons you listed ALL of your reasoning altrough the test results are probably correct, your conclusion is absurd

the reason in a VERY short version lays the way ALL monitors (CRT/LCD/PLASMA/any) work compared to the human eye, the brain processes the 30FPS as full and complete frames, each frame all "pixels" simultaniusly = ANALOG, where ALL our display technology including old CRT is processing the image pixel by pixel = digital (even the CRT) , there for you never see a complete image on the display but a combination of several frames, higher frame rate you will see a higher combination of frames ... of course it a bit more complicated then this, but this are the basics

similar reason the analog real life vision is true as well, you see a plane fly really close, your sensors in your eye will see a fuzzy image because the sensors are slower then the actual object, BUT your brain is capable of decoding that image in a way that you actually see movement at higher speed then the technical capabilities of sensors actually would allow you to see, you train your brain (like the hokey player) your brain will predict smooth movement of the object even trough you actually did not received the full sensory input

Now for the hard part: getting the game to run at more than 30 fps.

god, and to think I used to survive in games when i had less than a constant 8 fps. Q_Q

Stopped reading there

Using Supreme Commander is really just reinforcing what I said. If you think that StarCraft doesn't have a huge amount of strategy to it you really didn't get into it, at all. Keep turtling with your infinite resources.

Do you have like, any idea at all what you are talking about? That's the same population that claims they can't tell the difference between a DVD or even an analog signal and 1080p. Consoles don't even handle native 720p nevermind 1080p for the vast majority of games. It has nothing to do with compatibility. Their hardware is just that poor.

The only reason it's even remotely acceptable on consoles is because you have a limit on your camera movement. You are not directly and precisely controlling it. There's a colossal difference between direct and smoothed/limited control. 30 FPS is going to severely kneecap your ability to react as fast as you can where you want when are not playing on a handicapped system. Theres also the fact that console gamers just don't care and likely havn't used any better.

You might as well be saying VSync, Triple Buffering and a Flip Queue don't negatively effect you because <insert random person here> doesn't notice it. All of them are adding unwanted latency. Competitive gaming has a focus on removing everything you can that is going to get between you and the game. This isn't questionable, low FPS and any other latency inducing factors are bad.

You didn't need a textbook on neuroscience to figure this out.