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Framerates Matter
An anonymous reader writes "As more and more games move away from 60fps, the myth of the human eye only being able to detect 30fps keeps popping up. What's more, most people don't seem to realize the numerous advantages of a high framerate, and there's plenty of those."
HOWEVER
The human mind is evolutionary designed to make instant assumptions. Cat in mid air facing us = DANGER. No "Is it dead and being thrown at us?" No "Is it a picture?" As such, video games can quite easily take advantage of this evolutionary assumptions and trick the MIND, if not the brain. into thinking something is real.
So while a higher frame rate will increase the quality of the game, it is not essential. It's like getting gold plated controls on your car's dashboard. Yes it is a real increase in quality, but most people would rather spend the money on a GPS device, real leather, plug-in-hybrid engines before you get around to putting gold in the car.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Hmm... I don't accept that premise, either on the PC (where midrange graphics cards can easily pull 60fps with any game on the market now) or on the consoles (where framerates are only going up as PS3 and 360 development matures).
I think that this article (or at least the summary) is a bit of a strawman. Most of the gamers I know recognize that good framerates are important.
It's way, way way more than that.
The old HL engine -- at least in Natural Selection, but most likely any game on that engine -- your framerate didn't just effect your gravity (which made it so that at certain framerates you could literally jump further, which meant BHopping was sicker)..
it also changed the DPS of weapons. Yep. Weapon firing rate was tied to FPS in a very very odd way. Some dudes did too much testing. Insane.
And you can, visually, tell a difference between 100fps and 50fps and 25fps. Very easily. Takes a few minutes of playing, but there's a clear difference and anybody saying otherwise eats paint chips.
Graphics don't make games good. Graphics can cripple good games. Graphics never make bad games good.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Everyone says a "framerate" (i.e., sample frequency) of 44.1kHz is all that is needed. Yet many people hear better imaging, depth and transparency at higher sample rates.
I've worked with the Doom source code recently, and can confirm that there was no motion blur at all. In fact, blur of any kind couldn't really be implemented, because Doom's graphics were 8-bit indexed colour.
Also, there were no engine changes at all between Doom 1 and 2.
Perhaps the GP is referring to the bobbing effect that occurs when the Doom guy runs. That moves the camera nearer to and away from the ground, changing the appearance of the texture.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
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 think it's more likely born of the notion that film gives a completely convincing illusion of motion that is not greatly improved by higher frame rates, because the process by which it is created automatically includes motion blur because it's recording continuous data, just broken up into 24 fps. Computer games display discreet moments in time, not many moments blurred together into one picture. That's why film looks smoother than computer games with 3 times the framerate.
Nevertheless, the illusion of continuous movement is apparent at much lower framerates than even film, even in a computer game. Quake's models were animated at 10 fps, and they gave a convincing illusion of movement, and you can probably make due with a lot less since the brain fills in so much. But it's not a completely convincing illusion, and neither is 30, 60, or even 100 when using static instants in time.
But the basic myth comes from the fact that film is so convincing and thus you don't "need" more... as long as each frame is a blurred representation of the full period of time it is displayed for.
The enemies of Democracy are
Because the framerate is high.
There, i've taken it full circle.
mod me funny
But why? Motion blur is overrated. Sure put it in scenes where it is "important to the story/gameplay", but to use it whenever there is fast motion is stupid.
:).
Why? Because people aren't staring at the same spot on the screen all the time. And nowadays screens are getting bigger.
Say in real life, you're in a room where there are two moving objects that are moving around at fast but eye-trackable speeds in different directions.
If you are staring at sommething else, both objects are blurry.
But if you start to look at one, that particular object becomes _sharp_, the other object becomes blurry.
You look at the other, it becomes sharp and the other becomes blurry.
When a game or movie blurs moving stuff, it just makes stuff you are looking at look out of focus even if they are moving at speeds which your eye can track. You can't focus on it even if in real life you could!
With motion blur, I often experience eye strain when I try to track moving objects/backgrounds that have been blurred.
Then there are the artificial "out of focus" shots in static scenes. These effects should also be restricted to scenes where it is important to the story that only a few items are in focus.
In Avatar (2D), my eyes were often trying to focus on blurry images and it wasn't pleasant - initially I was wondering what was wrong with my eyes - felt like I had difficulty focusing on stuff.
When I watched it in 3D, I realized that a lot of stuff was actually blurry and it wasn't my eyes. In some fairly static scenes the focal range was low - only a few objects were in focus. Then in some scenes the moving objects were blurry. Whereas in other scenes most stuff was in focus. In Avatar 3D it was easier to figure out where I "should" be looking and avoid the eyestrain bits
If you ask me I prefer as much of each frame to be sharp and in focus as possible, then let the limitations of my eyes blur it.
Artificial blurring (motion or defocus) is like listening to artificially degraded music/audio. While there are some cases that call for it (distance effect) it's just silly if you use it a lot.