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PS3 To Run At 120 FPS?
Gamespot is running an article in which crazy man Ken Kutaragi boasts that the PS3 may be capable of running games at 120 fps. From the article: "Never mind that even newer TVs aren't capable of refreshing the screen 120 times in a single second. Kutaragi said that when new technology comes to market, he hopes to have the PS3 ready to take advantage of it. As for the Cell chip at the heart of the PS3, Kutaragi also had high hopes for its future beyond gaming. Using high-definition TV as an example, he said that the Cell chip could take advantage of the technology in many ways, such as displaying newspapers in their actual size, showing multiple high-definition channels on the screen at once, and video conferencing. He emphasized that the Cell can be used to decode more than 10 HDTV channels simultaneously, and it can also be used to apply effects such as rotating and zooming."
Have you tried running your monitor at a higher refresh rate? I can spot a huge difference between 144fps @ 144hz and 60fps @ 60hz.
What most gamers don't realise the importance of is sync. Ideally you want the refresh rate of everything to match-- FPS, Monitor, mouse refresh, game engine updates, etc.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
The Japanese article they quoted (http://arena.nikkeibp.co.jp/expo/news/20051028/11 4052/) says Kutaragi talked about PS3 playing movies, not games, at 120fps on future TV interfaces. I'm sure those with very basic Japanese skill can make out it. Huge shame on Gamespot.
while the Gamespot article is indeed misleading, I didn't see anything about movies.
Translation of the pertinent section:
Continuing, he outlined one future technology prediction: the moving image display frame rate. Regarding the 50-60 fields per second current televisions use and the 72-90 frames of PCs, with the PS3, in conjuction with future advancement of the display interface norm, he has decided he wants to be able to deliver 120 frames per second, etc., and higher frame rate imagery. What he brought out in relation to frame rates was a combination of image input and high speed frame rate. For example, the development possibility of a sort of new computer entertainment in which a high speed camera is connected, the meaning of its images quickly analyzed, and the result inputted into games, he expects, is large.
So, Kutaragi did speak of games, but only EyeToy-style ones, and didn't suggest such a high frame rate would be used for regular games, as the Gamespot article implies. The point Kutaragi makes is really just that the PS3 will be able to output at 120 Hz. No reference to movies being played at that frame rate was made, and movies are shot at 24 fps anyway, so you seem very much mistaken.
On the other hand, my Japanese abilities are basic, so if there are any mistakes in my translation, correct me.
People often get caught up in this mess because studies that try to determine what our senses are capable of are often based on being able to *differentiate* between two different triggers.
So yeah, pull up a gradient at 256 color, 16bit color, and 24bit color. You can see the steps in all of them, with 24bit being the best, of course.
Now pull up one shade of red that is only one step different from another shade of red, at the same time. Can you tell the difference between the two? At 256 color, probably. At 16bit color, no way. At 24bit color, absolutely not. Aha, well the human eye can only detect 256 colors! Wrong, clearly. What we have to realize is that all of this is limited by our BRAIN, not necessarily our EYES. The brain is not very good at differentiating between two very similar things unless that difference is magnified...and in fact it's quite easy to FOOL the crap out of the brain by simply telling an observer that two things are different, when they're not. So, when we look at two very similar colors, we might not recognize that they are different, because we're not so good at that. But we are good at seeing things like "blockiness" in gradients, even though no matter how hard we zoom in we can't quite key in on exactly *what* is causing the blockiness.
Our brains and senses are not simple sampling devices with well-defined limits.
The framerate thing is another good example. I know that movies at 24 frames per second at the theater don't bother me at all, even though I am well aware of the flickering if I concentrate on it (via peripheral vision). So why should 60 frames per second on my CRT monitor bother me? I dunno, but it does. Maybe it's because you have to throw in other factors like the fact that your focal point *moves* around the screen. Maybe it's the florescent lights overhead blinking away at a similar rate. Maybe it's analogous to the gradient effect! When you hit a sensor that is working more in a continuous domain with a discrete signal pretending to be continuous by moving very quickly...it sure seems to be easy to pick up. Dunno, but when I sit down in front of a computer with a CRT at 60hz I sense it *immediately* and adjust the rate up. Most people who are aware of the fact that they *can* adjust refresh rate and have seen the difference between 60 and 70+ will also immediately sense it.
The SMS' glasses were headache-inducing, and they didn't run at 60 fps, either. Television is 30 fps (30 frames, 60 fields) and in order to do one-eye-at-a-time rendering you're at half of that, so it was actually 15 fps.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"