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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."
Oh, come ON now...
F-Zero X ran at 60 frames a second and it looked utterly, silky smooth because it was already past the zone the human eye can distinguish. How is 120 fps going to be better if you can't even distinguish it? Is this going to be a visual version of people claiming vinyl sounds better than CD? Someone tell me, I really want to know.
Second point. It may be able to run at 120 fps, but you can bet that scenes will look better at 60.
Kutaragi: "... and it will able to fly!"
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Who would have thought that the PS3 or any computer for that matter would be capable of refreshing _ANYTHING_ 120 times per second? Oh wait, the PS2 could, given its astounding fill rate and 70+ million polygon per second capacity. Well, I suppose that any computer with a sufficiently fast RAMDAC (circa 1994) could update a scene that quickly. Shucks, since no perspective is provided on the scene complexity, there is no doubt that a Matrox Mystique 220 could draw a single polygon at 120 FPS.
Kutaragi will always promise the Nile. It is his job. In this case, he offered absolutely nothing.
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
*During the "Loading..." screen.
I hear that it will be capable of doing CGI like in "Toy Story", in real time.
Robert
PS. What I do mean, is that I prefer to wait for actual product. And I've heard a lot of wild and unfounded promises from some marketing departments. Just the other day I've read that Sony announced the victory of Blu-Ray format. Before even manufacturing the first commercial disk...
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
When do the 120 FPS human eyes come out?
These organic 60 FPS OEM eyes suck ass, and they are getting worse.
Of course the PS3 can do 120fps, any console can if it can output the signal (say, VGA on X360/DC). No games will ever run at 120fps, they will target 60fps, or 30fps, and they will base all their performance decisions around that number. Why do hardly any xbox games support 720p? Because it takes way more fill rate to draw that huge framebuffer, and they'd rather use those pixels to make the game look better on the majority of user's displays.
Why do I get the feeling that Sony wants to bring the 'fun' of configuring PC games to their console. I can just see it now, do you want to run fast at 480p, or more slowly at 1080i? How about some antialiasing to slow it down a bit more? I even seem to remember them saying something to that effect back around E3. What is the point of a fixed gaming platform if it's going to turn into that mess?
While we are on the topic however, I'd like to address a bugbear of mine - game magazines that crow constantly about the vaunted 60 FPS. I find this to be a little disingenuous.
Televisions run at 30 frames per second, interlaced. That's the only speed available (for NTSC; 25 FPS for PAL, not sure about SECAM).
Are these game reviews just being coy, in using 'little f' fps to talk about fields per second, which are really half-frames? Or do they just not know?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I agree - this is completely silly.
But your CD / Vinyl metaphor is actually more appropriate when you talk about the 60 FPS thing - 60 FPS is beyond what is perceptible yet you admit it looked silky smooth. Sampling above 16-bit / 44khz is beyond what is perceptible to the average listener, (not really, but was the best compromise back then); vinyl sounds silky smooth.
That said, arguing this on Slashdot is pointless; Slashdot readers seem to have this wierd thing against analog audio. I can only assume that they either have average listening skills or have just never bothered to actually do a double-blind listening test to support their own vitriol.
If you are running a game at only 60 fps on a display of 60Hz, you might not get anywhere near that frame rate. Since the image is generally only updated during vertical retrace (the longest moment when a scanline is not actively being drawn), you effectively have a window into which you have to fit your image. If you miss that window, the same frame is going to get drawn on the display again. Of course, TV signal is different from SVGA signal, and should be a continuous stream including the big black bar where the vertical retrace is supposed to happen (but you can see it when your vsync is off). But that just pushes the timing issue back to a chip inside the playstation, it doesn't eliminate it.
So, anyway, if you're running an -average- of 60 fps but you're actually running 59 fps alternating with 61 fps at -just- the right rate, you can manage to miss the window every other frame with just a very little bit of jitter for a worst-case scenario of 30 fps viewable even though you're rendering 60 fps avg internally. (Most of the time, of course, you won't have a worst case scenario, but OTOH, if you're that close to the line you're likely to have bad synchronization scenarios causing significant frame loss from time time.) At 120 fps rendered, you'd have to have a single frame take double the average time to cause a miss, a much less likely case. In most cases, you'll have two new frames ready to go in time for your deadline.
OTOH, they -do- have effective control of every video buffer, unlike the SVGA case where the deadline lives in the monitor. So in the computer case excessive frame-rate may be the only way to get your viewed frames to match the monitor's refresh speed, but there should be a cleverer solution in the console+tv case.
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Ken Katuragi: You and your primitive system with its 60 FPS.
Shigeru Miyamoto: What about it?
Ken Katuragi: Oh, nothing, it's cute. Our system operates at 120...
[pause]
Kaz Hirai: Thousand.
Ken Katuragi: Yes, 120 thousand FPS.
Kaz Hirai: Don't question it.
Shigeru Miyamoto: Oh, yeah? Well, the human eye can only process 60 FPS.
Ken Katuragi: Well, that sounds like a personal problem.
Although unfortunately [current TV sets] don't support a 100Hz signal.
Yet. Mr. Kutaragi mentioned this. It's likely that Sony TVs sold in Europe will be the first to accept a 100 Hz component signal, and PS3 games that support 100 Hz will carry a logo like "Tru-100" (I picked a name).
Your mission: Spread this "Tru-100" rumor to all the tech sites.
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
In general, 60 Hz with motion blur looks better than 60 Hz without motion blur. Even 24 Hz in live-action movies can be made to look good because it has motion blur. The point of Sony's announcement is that if graphics hardware can render the scene at a rock-solid 120 Hz, then it can render a scene twice, with all objects shifted slightly, and then use the PlayStation 3 GPU's counterpart to OpenGL accumulation buffers to combine the scenes, giving motion blur.
Are you one of those people who thinks humans can't see more than 24 bit color? Display a smooth 24 bit color gradient on a good monitor (ie. a high end CRT, not a television or LCD), and look at all the steps. We need at least 30 bit color. A pity only Matrox realized that and all the other graphics card manufacturers ignore it.
Thank you Ken! Im glad the PS3 will be capable of running in 120 fps ... in a newer tv set capable of handling that framerate (or a monitor) what you failed at mentioning was that just about any console (dreamcast, nintendo 64, xbox, xbox 360, etc) is capable of doing the same. the reason why they dont do that already is because tv's cant handle it. Im sure as soon as other developers realize this they will probably use it too. (revolution, ps3, xbox 360) thanks for the tip.
Not that it helps on anything. since in order to get that speed, you would have to waste twice as many valuable ticks, that could be used for better eye candy, loading, precaching or AI but hey! it runs at 120fps!
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
Just to add some detail about why this is stupid...
Douglas Trumbull, who worked on "2001", "Silent Running" and so on, went off and did a ton of basic research on what it would take to get moving pictures so realistic that a viewer couldn't distinguish them from reality.
The results showed that there was no measurable improvement in objective physiological response beyond 72 fps. Furthermore, subjectively people didn't see any improvement beyond around 60 fps.
Sadly, the Showscan company entered liquidation in 2002. Digital killed the chances of 60fps 70mm movies taking off.
But it's a safe bet we won't see 120 fps TVs any time soon.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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.
There is a difference between the persistance of vision and perceiving different quality. The 30fps claim is from the early days of cinema and means that at 30fps a series of single frames will appear to be continuous to the eye. This is not an upper bound, but a lower bound. Try watching a film where the the director pans the camera the wrong way through a crowed scene. It becomes very choppy because you need more than 30fps to do that properly, or fast action sports on tv, or video games...
That's why you can differentiate between 30fps and 60fps. I've not seen any specific research on what the upper bounds are. I think from annecdotal 'evidence' that they vary from person to person. My girlfriend is doing her PhD in pscyhophysical experiments to verify how we perceive rendered graphics but she said that she wasn't aware of any research to determine upper bounds.
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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.