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So you can't tell the difference between movie and home video? Source for you, in a any case:
http://www.100fps.com/how_many...
Whatever floats your boat: I can personally see difference of 60fps to less, and I quite like 60fps.

... Considering most people can't perceive frame rates faster than 30 ...

This myth needs to die.

Everybody can perceive frame rates faster than 30 fps. In fact, almost everybody can perceive frame rates faster than 100. Check the linked article, this is really a tricky question. Some things to consider:

- Games have no motion blur, or, as many modern games are implementing now, they use a pathetic, fake imitation that looks worse than no motion blur at all. Hence, they need much higher frame rates to show fluid motion. At 60 fps with current technology (including so-called next-gen), motion will look much better compared to 30.

- Decades of cinema have been training most people to perceive low-quality, blurred animation as 'film quality', and smooth, crisp animation as 'fake' or 'TV quality'. Many, many people consider a 48fps Hobbit to be worse compared to a 24 fps one. This is a perception problem. Games could have the same issues, except they've evolved much faster and most people didn't have the time to get used to bad quality.

- Consider the resolution problem. Higher resolution requires higher fidelity. At higher resolution, you'll demand higher quality textures and shading to reach similar levels of immersion, since details are now much more apparent. Same thing happens with animation and higher frame rates. This doesn't meen we should stay at low resolutions, 16 colors, black & white, or 30 fps. This just means we need to do better.

- And... a game is not film, and latency matters. A lot. At 30 fps, you need to wait twice the time to see any feedback from your input. In most games you will just train yourself to input the commands in anticipation without even knowing a word about latency, but in action games, where your reaction time matters, latency is a problem. And many other sources of latency add to the sum, such as clumsy 'smart' TVs post-processing your images, or badly engineered 'casual' motion wi-fi controllers.

In other words, yes, I'd rather have half the detail and 60 FPS. Except if your game is no game at all, and just a 6 to 10 hours movie. Since most of the top videogame chart entries fill this description today, I can see why many developers will remain at the 30 fps camp.

You can train your brain to pick up more than you realise. I used to work in a TV station. I see even a small speck on a single frame.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm gives quite a good description of how eyes work, and the framerates involved. Depending on what you are looking at (light on dark vs. dark on light), you might well notice a 120fps flash, though most people won't, and in most normal cases, you wouldn't be getting that specific a setup. I note you added "with proper motion blur", (which he wasn't saying) - of course you wouldn't be able to see 120fps with motion blur, but that's not what he's talking about... and neither is he talking about 120fps; he said 24fps.

Yes, 120fps with blur would be overkill. 48fps most certainly is not.

I think the grandparent's comment about MP3 artifacts is a good one - if you train yourself to see or hear artifacts, you can pick them up a lot. 24fps annoys me no end, so I hope 48fps stays (especially in many modern action movies - Transformers is a prime (sic) example).

there is no difference in between 25 fps, or 30 fps or 40 fps to the human eye playing a game. other than the counter fraps shows. there wasnt any difference in between these with respect to human physiology and eye-brain connections either. we were still perceiving 24 fps as smooth, and anything over 30 fps as very smooth. thats why hdmi standard used to mandate 24 fps.

You gereralize way too much there... It depends greatly on what is being displayed. Please read : http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

there is no difference in between 25 fps, or 30 fps or 40 fps to the human eye playing a game. other than the counter fraps shows. there wasnt any difference in between these with respect to human physiology and eye-brain connections either. we were still perceiving 24 fps as smooth, and anything over 30 fps as very smooth. thats why hdmi standard used to mandate 24 fps.

You gereralize way too much there... It depends greatly on what is being displayed. Please read : http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Human eye does not see in frames per second. It has a certain data transfer speed, and the way brains process the information is also not as discrete as you might want to wish.

For example, the flicker fusion point (inability to distinguish alternating black and white images) is somewhere around 60fps and the army has done experiments on showing images for a very short time to see whether they could be identified by pilots. The shortest intervals were way less than those postulated even by the flicker fusion point. It also matters greatly how large amount the object moves in your absolute field of vision between frames for your brain to understand motion and simulate smooth movement. Your brain has interpolation algorithms that piece together information streams to form smooth motion.

This has some information, but not many references: http://www.100fps.com/
Wikipedia has more stuff and it's a starting point to look for research. Here's some by BBC on fast-moving objects in sports: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP169.pdf

Also, you can test the difference of 30 and 60 fps here: http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/
At least to me, it is blatantly evident.

You were wrong, and acted like an ass over it towards me and other posters. Will you please apologize and shut up?

Here's a good one http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
"So the conclusion is: To make movies/Virtual Reality perfect, you'd have to know what you want. To have a perfect illusion of everything that can flash, blink and move you shouldn't go below 500 fps."

Also from Wikipedia to debunk the 24fps recording thing:
  Judder is a real problem in this day[when?] where 46 and 52-inch (1,300 mm) television sets have become the norm. The amount an object moves between frames physically on screen is now of such a magnitude that objects and backgrounds can no longer be classed as "clear". Letters cannot be read and looking at vertical objects like trees and lamp posts while the camera is panning sideways have even been known to cause headaches. The actual amount of motion blur needed to make 24 frames per second smooth eliminates every remnant of detail from the frames. Where adding the right amount of motion blur eliminates the uncomfortable side effects, it is more than often simply not done. It requires extra processing to turn the extra frames of a 120 FPS source (which is the current recording "standard") into adequate motion blur for a 24 FPS target. It would also potentially remove the detail and clarity of background advertising. Today, devices are up to the task of displaying 60 frames per second, using them all on the source media is very much possible. For example, the amount of data that can be stored on Blu-ray and the processing power to decode it is more than adequate. Though the extra frames when not filtered correctly, can produce a somewhat video-esque quality to the whole, the improvement to motion heavy sequences is undeniable. Many televisions now have an option to do some kind of frame interpolation (what would be a frame between 2 real frames gets calculated to some degree) using technologies like Trimension DNM. Sophisticated algorithms can utilize motion compensation information to achieve a very high degree of accuracy with few artifacts.

Balls in your court now.

OH MY GOD WILL YOU PEOPLE STOP PERPETUATING THE FACT "MOVIES ARE 24 FPS SO THAT'S ALL YOU NEED"

No but seriously, movies and tv are only at 24 fps because of motion blur. If you play a game on a computer where you can control the frame rate (via video options), get an application like Fraps that will show you the frame rate and try to get the game to run at 24 fps, then at 60 fps. You will see a massive difference because the game is showing individual frames with no motion blur.

This link is very informative on the topic:
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Movies have motion blur, games do not. More information

Not to mention that 60FPS is overkill - the human eye can't see any faster than 50FPS. Making 60FPS a complete waste of data.

48FPS is an unfortunate choice because it isn't a smooth 50FPS, meaning that it'll have weird pulldown issues on all TVs, but at least it's not throwing away frames the human eye is flat-out unable to see.

50 fps is noticeably jerky - you're just used to it. The idea that the human eye can't even see something faster than 50 fps is preposterous. Take a look here for some solid debunking of this silly myth: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Please. We humans do NOT only perceive motion as Frames Per Second. Much as 3D sensing is done by a complex array of perceptions, Motion is much more dependent on our brains than our eyes. Read this carefully: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

They have an interesting page about the question of "How many frames per second can the human eye see?"

120hz displays make a lot of sense in the near term, but even that frame rate may be woefully inadequate for providing a true, indistinguishable from reality VR experience. (Of course, it will be a while before the resolution and color reproduction also catch up, but it is an interesting topic.)

In any case, no one really knows what will be enough, but 24fps is certainly not. 120hz displays will be a great improvement, both for gaming and video. The latter, because both 24fps movies, and 30fps video (or perhaps 60 fields/s interlaced) divide into it nicely. (If you want to be pedantic, it isn't exactly 30fps, but it is close enough, and even PAL would look better.)

The 30-fps-is-all-you-can-see myth was probably born of the notion that the illusion of continuous movement starts to set in around 25-30fps (in film for example). Therefore actually 30fps is the minimum you need rather than the maximum you can perceive.
I could tell in a glance the difference between 72fps and 100fps (both common refresh rates that translate to the max fps when v-sync is on) in Counter-Strike just by briefly moving the mouse to pan the scene.
This site has had the definitive explanation on this issue for a long time, along with many other useful faqs: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Mod parent up. And here is a page that explains some common misconceptions.

I recently bought a 9800GTS ($70 w/tax @ Best Buy - I'm on a budget here!) and the first thing I did was install the Crysis demo. The question you ask about 24FPS being 'just fine' somewhat boggles me. I maxed out the settings and was running at 15-20 FPS, depending on what was happening, and it looked great.

Now, I hate Crysis - it's a objective based FPS - give me Quake I anyday, but my game of choice today is WoW. I went from 25 FPS to 45 FPS and still notice no *real* difference. Frame rates are getting more credit than they should. Sure for benchmarking, it's important, I guess. But films are 24 FPS, and they look great to me. (But this is due to blurring in frames... some frames have blur which makes your eyes think there is fluid movements).

Now if we dropped to 5 FPS you'd notice a difference. Maybe I'm slow - but on the right games I just don't see it.

More on how your eyes actually work

This is an old myth, the human eye can see a difference far higher that 25fps.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
"So what is "Enough fps"? I don't know, because nobody went there so far."
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/TempRate.mspx
"Whatever temporal sampling rate you choose, it's unlikely to be fast enough"

Standard 24fps film is nowhere near high enough to reproduce real motion, as anybody who's watched 60fps Showscan film will know. The difference between 60fps gaming and 100fps or higher gaming is also obvious. And if you carefully examine high contrast fast motion you can notice a difference at even higher frame rates.

And while 10ms latency may not be perceptible, latency is cumulative from all sources, and every millisecond added to your reaction time puts you at a competitive disadvantage.

I knew somebody would make some gross misstatement like "The human eye only sees at 25 fps anyway"

And for that, here is the obligatory link to 100fps.com

In short, the shortest flash a human eye can see depends on a lot of things. These factors are explained thoroughly on that web site. The tl;dr version is this: The human eye can discern A LOT MORE than 25 fps.

...Your eyes can only pickup 80fps anyway; you wouldn't know if it was 100 or 10,000 fps unless the fps counter didn't say.

Some truth in that, but you are making something of a generalisation.
I've linked to this page a few times; it explains things nicely:
How many frames can humans see?

Your eyes can only pickup 80fps anyway

You might find this interesting. http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

I fell obliged to serve this link http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm/. Short story: 500fps.

Here is a link that discusses this further. They mention that a human can see an object that is displayed for one 500th of a second, if it is bright enough. In RL your eyes do the motion blur for you. This is also similar to how anti-aliasing works, which in its basic form is rending the frames at a higher resolution than the monitor can display and then downsizing the picture so we can averaging the pixels.

The human eye can see some things at rates of over 500 fps. Learn at http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

More to the point, though, this is a benchmark. The monitors most people use today don't go over 75 fps. No one claimed that 300 fps was needed before you brought up the topic. If it can run this particular simulation at 300 fps and the CPUcan run it at 15 fps, then when the scene is more complex and the CPU is at 2, the GPU will still be at 30. Or, alternatively, that means that the CPU can focus on throwing geometry to the GPU, and the GPU can spend 90% of its time rendering and still have enough oomph left over to drive physics at 30fps with no help from the CPU.

There's definitely a different between say, 30 and 100 fps: http://100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

If we can't perceive anything faster than 24 FPS then tell me why I can tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS in a game?

I wish people would stop spouting this lie, and just let it die. The human eye is not limited to any tangible amount of FPS. The human eye is analogue. PERIOD.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_s ee.htm

Enjoy.

How many times does this have to be debunked before this myth will go away?

You're a little off, here. People can most certainly see the difference between 24 frames per second and, say, a 60 frame per second film (i.e., something actually filmed at 60 FPS). (Showscan: How it works talks about an actual application of 60 FPS filming.) You really should do a little more research than whatever site said "18 fps is all you need!" because that's really, really wrong. Start with http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_s ee.htm but for real fun, go get AVISynth, VirtualDub, and the MVTools plugin and convert a 24 FPS film to 48 FPS. There'll be some frames that break apart because any such conversion can't be perfect, but even going to 48 FPS for, say, the water running part of "100 Mile Dash" in "The Incredibles" looks much, much smoother, like you're right there watching it... er, if you were a cartoon character anyhow. :) (The jungle scenes become almost abstract as MVTools tries to figure out the interstitial frames, but the parts not in the jungle look gorgeous). That the regular devices out there update the DISPLAY at 60 hz, that's nothing to do with how many frames of different video are being displayed. 60 Hz display of 24 or 30 FPS film or video, is just flashing the image in front of you twice as fast. Even theaters actually show 24 FPS films at 48 or 72 hz to reduce flicker, but the frame rate is still 24.

Just a minor quibble, but only NTSC video is at 30 FPS (60 half-frames per second). IIRC it was chosen to match the 60Hz of AC power, so that there would be less interference. PAL and SECAM both use 25 FPS, both to match the 24 FPS and because of the frequency of AC current in Europe (50Hz).

One of the better articles about frames per second is at 100FPS.com, where the topic of how many frames per second a human eye can see is discussed. It covers in compact form a lot of what I had to learn when becoming a multimedia producer. (I wish I had been able to read that site back then, but it probably didn't exist back in '96).

Jesus, this is the OLDEST Internet rumor that has yet to die off. It's damn near "640k should be enough for anyone" in legend.

Please read this this and get educated.

...users of [firmware versions] 1.5 and above obviously requiring the eLoader exploit.

Just like 44,100 Hz, 16-bit digital sound with multiple redundancy doesn't sound like vinyl ... thank the gods.

I'm no expert obviously, but I'd guess that the reason cinematographers complain about higher frame rates is the reduction of motion blur, which leads to a consequent reduction in fluidity. I suppose it's in principle possible that more fps would actually increase the sense of stuttering (though surely that could be compensated for by increasing motion blur? -- I'd guess, again as a complete non-expert, that very slight over-exposure could achieve that).

Just for reference, I found some discussion here; and there's a fairly detailed article about the fps problems of digital filming and of transferring movies to HD format here; it has some choice quotes --

For a century both the industry and audience standard for exposure duration has been 1/48th sec per frame (for features shot at 24fps). This shutter speed combined with the frame rate has a characteristic sharpness and judder that is in my view the strongest characteristic of what we call the film look.

In my view the judder effect of progressive capture at 1/48thsec shutter is the single most obvious technical factor for an audience that distinguishes film from interlace video. To put a figure on it I'd say 85% of the difference between film and video is bridged by using progressive capture.

Also it links to a chart of recommended panning speeds. The article concludes by suggesting that 60 fps capture is likely in the next decade, and that audiences

of the future may find the judder of 24fps movies made in the 20th century hard to bear.

Interestingly, a Wikipedia article mentions that

The current specification for digital projectors calls for three levels of playback to be supported: 2K (2048x1080) at 24 frames per second, 4K (4096x2160) at 24 frames per second, and 2K at 48 frames per second.

-- though it doesn't mention whether the 48 fps playback is actually capable of 48 fps or is just using each frame twice per second; it also doesn't specify progressive or interlaced.

You need as many fps as you can get for sharp graphics / lines edges:

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_s ee.htm

Rubbish, it's telecined from 24p to 60i. Check various doom9 posts and 100fps.com if you don't believe me.

Please mod parent up. It's by far the best explanation of the 30 FPS vs. 60 FPS curiosity (see, e.g., http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_s ee.htm ).

Games are trying to emulate filmed motion, hence the motion blur. It would be as if you were watching a film where things were moving too fast to be captured correctly, and a blur results. Motion blur is also good for smoothing low fps motion to seem more fluid.


more info here: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_s ee.htm

I realise that they most likely did this becouse it would be damn hard to get any higher with that amount of data per frame, but still, if your someone who is designing a spec and aiming for a new super dooper standard, PLEASE UP THE FRAME RATE. 25 FPS SUCKS for fast action.

also, anyone who is going to argue with this and say 25 is all you need, please read and understand this before hand, or else shut up: www.100fps.com

You can, probally not easily and probally not everybody (think eSport people), but 60fps is certainly not the upper end.

Hmm, I'm still not convinced, but I found some interesting pages on a Google search:
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_s ee.htm

This seems to indicate that humans can see identify pictures flashed at them for only 1/220th of a second. Very interesting.

However, it also says that with blurring, the human eye will see even 18fps as smooth and continuous. And it says that continual motions require much lower frame rates to seem smooth than sudden changes.

So while this fills in the blanks a bit as to why Sony might think it's important, I'm still not sure if the difference will be noticable in PS3 video games, since unless the game is totally spastic, 60fps should be enough to see it all smoothly. I guess we'll have to see actual games to know for sure, however.

(And this is all assuming you have a display device that can SHOW 120fps, of course.)

Apparently they can...

Check out Test 2 and Test 3... http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_s ee.htm

Test 3 is actually quite intriguing in that apparently Air Force pilots were actually able to not only sense a difference in light, but could identify a picture of a plane that was only flashed for 1/220th of a second. Now recognizing a picture at 1/220th would imply that recognizing a difference in light would be possible at much shorter intervals. Regardless though, I am certainly not an optometrist with a real answer.... that site should be helpful though.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_s ee.htm

You can possibly see changes up to 300 frames per second. It all depends on the factors listed in that page.

My goodness, there's a lot of idiots out there.

The whiners in TFA mistakenly assume that 2 fields of 1080i = 1 frame of 1080p. This is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

It cannot be assumed that the following field has anything to do with the current one. See the "not resized or deinterlaced" picture here:

http://www.100fps.com/

When the television takes the 540 lines in a given field, interpolates the missing lines, and scales to 720 lines, it is DOING THE RIGHT THING. Otherwise your TV would look like the first two example pictures at the above site.

Nathan

I know a lot of people seem to quote 30fps as being the maximum the human eye can see, but I have a feeling this is simply the minimum required to make a projected film look smooth. I know that all games look choppy to me until they get above 60fps, and around 85fps they look smooth. I think this link goes a long ways to explaining it.

30 is an extreme minimum. Actually, you want it to match your refresh rate (or be higher) at all times. That way you can enable Vsync and get rid of screen tearing.

Also, just because you get 30fps staring a wall, doesn't mean you'll get that when there are 20 rockets, 10 explosions, and 12 players on the screen at one time.

decent explanation here

The film is at 24 FPS, but the display is 48, although I'm reasonably sure that you can get that on old Hardware too. And here is a discussion of why movies can get away with 24/48, and games cannot.

You mustn't forget that human perception varies and 80fps isn't 5 times human perception.

Very true. Instead of commenting, here are a couple of links: How many frames can the human eye see?

http://www.100fps.com/

You mustn't forget that human perception varies and 80fps isn't 5 times human perception.

Very true. Instead of commenting, here are a couple of links: How many frames can the human eye see?

http://www.100fps.com/

Sigh...

Your mind sees approximately 22-30 frames per second. This is why a 1080i is indistiguishable, frame rate wise, from 720p. Very very very very few people can see the difference.

Bullshit. Modern science has not found the upper limit that the eye can distinguish. I found a nice link simply by searching Google, so you can do the research yourself about what information is out there.

Given various different tricks (motion blur, mostly), your eyes only really need 18fps to determine motion, but even at higher frame rates you'll still be able to detect flicker and jerkiness. Next time you watch Return of the King, look for any long horizontal pans (caveat: I haven't seen the movie yet, so I don't know if there are any good examples in the movie). If the pan is fast enough, you're going to see flicker and jerkiness. This is also why you need a much higher frame rate for video games, because proper motion blur is computationally expensive and current hardware still can't handle it and everything else while maintaining a smooth rate (the other issue in trying for the highest possible frame rate is that games measure averages, so a 30fps average means that the rate will drop below 30fps. A locked 30fps, like many consoles games do, guarantees the game will not drop below 30fps at the cost of visual quality). Look out of the corner of your eye at your computer screen. If you're using a CRT, you're going to be able to see flicker even if you're running a higher refresh rate (some people can't detect it past 85Hz or so, but most people can). Work in an office with all flourescent lighting, and see how long it takes you to get a headache. You may not physically see the flicker, but your eyes do and the headache is caused by strain because of it.

Between 480i and 480p, I can certainly tell a difference in refresh rate. Turn off progressive scan output on your DVD player, watch a scene, and turn it back on, or play with the progressive settings in the DVD player setup. If you can't tell a difference, you're a rare person, not the average. Just because you can't see the difference doesn't mean that other people can't either.

Not exactly the answer you were looking for, but this webpage has lots of information.

Theater movies are shot in 25 fps, but the cinema projector displays every frame three times, resulting in 75 fps. but since the movie is shot at 25 fps, motion can still flicker.

lots of info (about deinterlacing, fps and other interesting stuff) is avalibe here.

really?