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DOOM III to be capped at 60 fps
StupidKatz writes "The Inquirer reports that DOOM III will be capped at 60fps, primarily to prevent certain exploitations of the game engine (reminiscent of Quakers that could jump higher, etc.). Although the game's graphics challenges most cards to keep up with the 60fps figure, what might this do to ATi and Nvidia sales figures, considering that the next DOOM incarnation is set to be the next heavyweight graphics upgrade reason? More importantly, might this possibly keep the anticipated price drop for the previous vid card generation at bay? The horror... On a more positive note, it is good to see designers anticipating problem exploits - no one likes a mutiplayer cheater." H : Sorry; it's a dupe. My fault.
From the repost-from-Thursday-dept.
Don't worry, it was only the single biggest-interest Games story in weeks. Noone will have noticed.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
Someone will write a patch/crack of some sort to make this not go. Someone else will write mods/total conversions that don't have 60fps caps. Someone else yet again will find some way to benchmark your computer using the game and not have an fps cap. A steady fps and a vertical sync will look better than a dynamic framerate over 100 anyway.
Remember those screenshots that were accidentally on medium quality? Even with the latest cards nobody will be able to turn the graphics all the way up and have a steady 60fps. Well, maybe some freaks with $5000 computers. Maybe people will start going by how many graphic enhancements they can turn on and still get 60. That's what it's really all about to me. How good can I make it look while keeping it playable. Not how many useless extra frames can I render that don't matter 99% of the time.
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I am sure there will be a benchmark mode of some sort where there is no cap.
For the life of me I can't figure out the connection between a client's FPS and his ability to perform unreasonable jumps in the game world as generated on the server. But what the hell, the devs pro'lly know what they're talking about.
More to the point though (on FPS limiting) - can someone with GPU/DirectX internals knowledge explain why doesn't a game (or a GPU) that realizes its churning more than the 30fps that the human eye can discern dynamically (and automatically) enable FSAA (AntiAliasing) and/or AF and use the spare GPU power to enhance picture quality, then dynamically stop doing so once you need the power to keep up with a playable 30 FPS?
Seems like a MUCH more efficient way to use your GPU. At LP's I'd always switch off FSAA&AF even when most of the time I'm pumping 70fps, just to keep above 30 on those few tight&insane spots.
ATI? nVidia? Microsoft? Anyone?
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Sweet!!!!! Thank you Hemos!
The physics are calculated on the client and use the framerate as the timer. So, higher framerate messes with the time for the jump. I think that connecting the two is a bad idea.
I will now have a lot more time between frames to consider the multiple ways in which I will KICK YOUR ASS. Bwahahahaha!
Let me be the first to embarrass myself to future gamers by saying:
640kb primary memory... i mean 60 fps should be enough for everyone!
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Can't slashdot cap dupes? ;)
-K
Redundant for pointing out a redundancy... aww.
Didn't realize that not all stories make it to the front page. Hrmf.
Pretty sure he said game tic, not frame rate?
The difference is the ai/physics/game rules will be updated at 60hz, whilst the rest(sound video) could be updated at a different rate.
The benefits for the fixed rate are a few. It is almost very similar to having your elapsed time calculations between frames being fixed.
The biggest advantage of it is in terms of game play. You can be garaunteed that most players will see a very similar game world each time they play. For example imagine there is a slide which the character has to run down. Then there is a big hole in the ground which the character has to jump over onto a platform past this hole. With a fixed tic rate you can place the platform at such a place that the jump must be timed just right. That is the player will not make the jump unless they jump right from the end. But with a variable tic rate you can not be sure that the player will be able to be at that exact position. Time may move too fast and they may miss the perfect jump location.
Another important reason to have a fixed tic rate is so that motion looks smooth. There is no point in having all animations being updated 300 times a second in one room, then pause for a quater of a second. It would look jerky.
It can simplify calculations. Allthough this doesn't really matter too much for someone writing a fairly complex physics simulation like they are. But making sure every thing is done within 1/60th of a second is simplified if you know that rate is fixed. If there is time left over you can do some preprocessing for the next frame if you want.
Having a slower than maximum tic rate can also allow you more time to render a purty scene, calculate nice interactions with the world etc.
Have fun!
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The summary actually contains a dupe acknowledgement!
Run for the hills! The end times are upon us!!!
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
Looks like they really are doing a sequel, the original Doom FPS was also capped (to 31fps if I remember correctly) Maybe there could be motion blur support to use when cards get fast enough to be able to run it for more than 60fps?
about the only way you're going to get 100fps in most modern games is to shut off all graphical detail and play in about 800X600. if you're playing with that level of detail, there's no real reason to play any of the new games. quake II, halflife and all the mods for them will give you everything you need.
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"On a more positive note, it is good to see designers anticipating problem exploits - no one likes a mutiplayer cheater."
Is it a cheat if the only thing it requires is skill, without any modification to the game?
been playing first person shooters since wolfenstein3d. 60 fps is fine. I'll put up with 30 if I get all the pretty graphics options with it. most monitors don't support 100fps, anyways.
While I agree that 60 fps is fine, I have to take exception with the 'most monitors dont support 100fps, anyways' portion. I'm currently running at 1280x1024@32bpp @100Hz, so 100 fps would be just fine (and make it 120-150fps just to make sure the v-synch has new frames every time).
about the only way you're going to get 100fps in most modern games is to shut off all graphical detail and play in about 800X600. if you're playing with that level of detail, there's no real reason to play any of the new games. quake II, halflife and all the mods for them will give you everything you need.
On one hand you mention modern games on the other you say Q2 and HL are all you need. Which is it? I can play Q2 at 1600x1200 w/ more frames than my monitor can display, and HL is probably close, if I didn't have fps_max set to 60. I'm not sure what 'modern' games manage, as UT2003 is the best example I can think of, and while the demo ran fine the original release did not (on my computer), so I guess that'd be 0 fps (maybe I'll install that again and patch it and see how it goes). Until Doom 3 and HL2 come out, UT2003 is pretty much the only modern FPS on a modern engine, unless you're going to count Q3, which is still a bit over 3 years old iirc, and just as capable of running at 100fps at high resolutions as most of the others.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
if you think you can see more than 60fps you are either full of shit, or you are full of shit.
and if you believe that, you are full of shit.
30 fps is just above the minimum to see fluid motion. The maximum has been charted as somewhere in the hundreds or thousands, and can vary a great deal from person to person.
That being said, when playing a video game, the minimum for fluid motion is all that's required, but for best results you'll want a steady framerate, which varies very little.
I think a lot of people are going to form new opinions about framerates if Doom 3's FPS cap remains in place. 60 fps is very definitely within the limits of what a person can see, but the only real reason for pushing more frames is to maintain the highest possible minimum framerate. Framerate caps only leave room to drive the minimum up near the maximum, thereby making the play experience as smooth as possible. If more people learned that lesson, they'd be happier with their computers overall. If you're pumping out a 100fps average and the framerate drops to 60 you're going to feel like pulling your eyeballs out of your head, like everything's crawling, but if you had capped it at 60 to begin with there wouldn't have been a drop and everything would've played smooth as glass.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Me too, especially when considering that (NTSC) tv's are interlaced and operate at ~30 FPS
I would like to know why they picked 60 FPS. 72 or 75 FPS would have been a better. It just seems to me that since flourescent lighting flickers at a 60Hz rate that 60 FPS would have been best avoided.
I meant that if all you're looking for in games is a blazingly fast frame rate, you don't need games that have all the bells and whistles; the classics will serve you just fine. now, if you appreciate all the amazing things that they're doing with graphics engines these days, you're going to have to take the hit on frames per second. while some people can afford to keep SOTA so as to have all the graphics options on and keep an insane frame rate, most can't and we're happy with 30-60fps.
and I maintain that most monitors don't support 100fps. yeah, some do and it's nice that you have one that does, but look around stores and check the specs on them. the vast majority are not capable of running at 100Hz. you'll see that most top out around 60-85.
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nd I maintain that most monitors don't support 100fps. yeah, some do and it's nice that you have one that does, but look around stores and check the specs on them. the vast majority are not capable of running at 100Hz. you'll see that most top out around 60-85.
Anything that 'tops out around 60-85' is doing so at the highest resolutions it supports. Most people don't play games at the highest resolution possible, unless they are playing older games. In the case of high-end 19" CRTs, this means that 85Hz is at 1856 x 1392 or higher resolutions, 1600x1200 for mid-range, and 1024x768 or 1280x1024 for low-end monitors. That means that most people running 19" CRTs are probably able to get a refresh rate comperable to mine at 1024x768, unless they went to the store and saw a monitor strobing (1024x768 or 1280x1024 @ 85Hz) and decided to take it home with them. As an added bonus, the particular monitor sitting on the desk in front of me is about 4 years old, and a similar one I had at home was a year older and stopped working 18 months ago (due to a number of contributing factors, like speakers and a laserjet printer too close to the monitor and being turned off and on much more often), meaning that the technology is nothing new, and the cost is significantly lower than it was when this monitor was originally purchased. 17" CRTs tend to be similar in numbers, though the mid-range would tend towards 1280x1024 as the 85Hz resolution.
Of course, there are always people sitting around using 10+ year old monitors, but those people are giving themselves more eye-strain than it's worth. I also happen to know a handful of people that feel some insane need to upgrade to fairly SOTA monitors from time to time, but I can't afford to go in that direction, let alone justify those types of expenditures. The monitor should be one of the (if not the single) most expensive parts of a computer, because your eyes are worth it. However, that doesn't mean you need the absolute top of the line, and for a good CRT (as opposed to LCD) you can do very well for a low price today (unless you absolutely must have a 21" or larger display).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
"ask top cs gamers "
Why would anyone want to ask a bunch of pasty face adolescents with no life anything about anything??
"Game consoles can output theirgraphics non-interlaced and thereby do acheive 60 fps"
And on an interlaced TV screen thats how much use exactly? Or are you suggesting that they send some
magic signal down the cable that makes the TV electronics suddenly switch into a hidden non-interlaced mode?