60. I feel a better question would have been, "would you prefer a more detailed game running at 30 FPS or a less detailed game running at 60?" In which case I would still go with 60. On the PC at least, I'll gladly make some graphical sacrifices to get a game running at 60 FPS at my monitor's native resolution, 1900 x 1200.
But I will gladly take a 30 FPS game over a 60 FPS game if the latter keeps stuttering on me.
Console games shoot for 30 fps so they can have more eye candy. Obviously if all things were equal and we were only talking about frame rate, 60 fps is preferable. Once you experience the fluidity you won't ever be the same.
I don't even know what you're trying to say here. If you're suggesting trading frames for graphical quality then that at least makes sense. If you're suggesting that, everything else being equal, you'd still rather have 30fps than 60fps then no, you are wrong.
I will take 60 over 30 any day obviously, but if it can hold a steady 30 or 40 FPS then I can live with it. What matters is consistency. Nothing is more annoying then having a game dip in framerate multiple times during a play session.
People who think that 30 FPS are enough are crazy. I had to stop playing Xenoblade Chronicles, because the motion blur caused by the low FPS was hurting my eyes...
I can only tell when it drops to about 20 or less. I cant tell if its above 30 though. As long as the game runs, and isn't stuttering/lagging out button response, I don't care.
I'd like to honestly know why a game looks better/more atmospheric at 30 rather than 60 fps. If the line were held however, that is a locked on 30 FPS, does that substantially affect gameplay? I myself was always under the notion it is at 40 fps where most ppl.'s eyes can't notice, and thought it wise to be at 60 fps simply because it allows for cushion, what my dad used to lecture me as overshooting a mark to assure holding it.
But I do not understand this atmospheric/detail thing at 30 fps, and would like to.. the mechanics of it.
I won't lie on the console side of things (since imo this is a thing that matters more here than on PC) if a game is super fast paced and has a lot of action I actually prefer the hit to visuals for 60 FPS, but any sort of narrative game or visually spectacular game if they have to bump it down to 30 to make it look better I want them to take that route. So really it's a game by game basis for me.
Almost all movies and TV shows are at 24-30 FPS even HD and they look fine to me. As stated by some, stability is more important to me than FPS but as also stated by some 60 fps is less likely to be noticed when it does lose stability because you have more room for error.
60fps is so damned crisp, and makes the controls seem so damned responsive. You must be pretty crazy to want less frames per second (like that Jimmy Fallon commercial, "who doesn't want more cash?")
This is something that I've always wondered. I tend to prefer 30fps. I think developers always get shadows, lighting and just better detail with a game running at 30fps. It's part of the reason film (as in movies) runs at 24fps as opposed to 60fps which a lot of home movies tend to look like.
You know, the ONLY reason film can run at 24FPS is because the shutter opens twice on each frame. This tricks your brain into thinking it's seeing twice the framerate (48FPS). So there's that.
It really depends on the game. For example, Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time is absolutely beautiful and fluid at 60fps, while Resistance 3, another Insomniac game, is afforded a lot more horsepower for lighting and particle effects--a good fit for its focus on atmosphere--by only running 30fps. I feel this is the best fit for both of these titles.
Of course, with unlimited graphics processing potential, higher fps is always better.
Fighter Pilots can distinguish the make of an enemy aircraft flashed in silhouette for 1/250th of a second, so under certain circumstances 250FPS can be perceived.
However, your eyes do not work in 'frames per second'. Ever looked at a cars tire rim while it was moving forward and it looks like the wheel is spinning backward? Your brain uses all kinds of tricks, and your eyesight isn't nearly as good as you think it is. Most of what you think you 'see' is actually your brain filling in the gaps. We have a very, very narrow field of focus, and everything outside of that is a blurry mess. Your brain just does a good job of remembering what's around your field of focus and fills it in.
Here's a good example of how your brain fills stuff in. Each one of your eyes has a blind spot where it sees NOTHING. Do you notice it? Of course not. But you can prove it to yourself, so let's do that.
Close or cover your left eye and put your face close to the monitor. Look at the + in the picture below, and start slowly backing away. You'll eventually see the circle disappear completely! But there's not a 'hole' in your vision because your brain fills it in with whatever is around it:
And if you can't tell the difference something's wrong with your brain or your eyes. That's just fact, you should be able to easily tell the difference, because it's massive.
I don't mind 30fps too much as long as it's never dipping below, and stays constant. But things like Reach where there were drops all over the place, sometimes to like 15 fps, it drives me nuts. My PC is pretty shitty at the moment and I can typically run at 45-60 but when a game drops below that or hitches a lot, its hard to handle. Metal Gear Solid 4 is a great example of a game I've played recently that reminded me how much I love high framerates.
I'd rather have a game that looks like Rage and runs like Rage than MGS4. Gears 3 is a good middle ground, which seems to be always over 30 during gameplay, and was nice and smooth. That said, whenever developers release 60FPS trailers (BF3, Alice, MK9) it always blows me away and reminds me what's so fantastic. That Trine 2 Quicklook in 60FPS was amazing too.
60, easily. When you start getting down to 20 and below, it kills the game for me. The only time I think it's acceptable is if it's a sandbox game, and there's so much going on that you can understand why the framerate wouldn't be great.
Fighter Pilots can distinguish the make of an enemy aircraft flashed in silhouette for 1/250th of a second, so under certain circumstances 250FPS can be perceived.
However, your eyes do not work in 'frames per second'. Ever looked at a cars tire rim while it was moving forward and it looks like the wheel is spinning backward? Your brain uses all kinds of tricks, and your eyesight isn't nearly as good as you think it is. Most of what you think you 'see' is actually your brain filling in the gaps. We have a very, very narrow field of focus, and everything outside of that is a blurry mess. Your brain just does a good job of remembering what's around your field of focus and fills it in.
Here's a good example of how your brain fills stuff in. Each one of your eyes has a blind spot where it sees NOTHING. Do you notice it? Of course not. But you can prove it to yourself, so let's do that.
Close or cover your left eye and put your face close to the monitor. Look at the + in the picture below, and start slowly backing away. You'll eventually see the circle disappear completely! But there's not a 'hole' in your vision because your brain fills it in with whatever is around it:
Thats pretty incredible! I've always known about the "blind spot" but never knew there was a way to actually "test" it. I've also heard that your eyes see everything upside down and your brain actually flips the image. The human body is fucking amazing.
Thats pretty incredible! I've always known about the "blind spot" but never knew there was a way to actually "test" it. I've also heard that your eyes see everything upside down and your brain actually flips the image. The human body is fucking amazing.
That's correct, the image of what you're seeing is upside-down on your retina.
There are many fun things you can do to fool your eyes and brain; optical illusions are an example of this. Most relevant to the discussion of FPS, however, is persistence...i.e. afterimage. If you printed your screenshots on tidy little picture cards and put them in a flipbook and flipped them at 30 per second, it would stutter badly. Reason being it's not backlit, and therefore there is less persistence.
Also, viewing 30FPS on a game in a dark room will look smoother than viewing a 30FPS game in a bright room for the same reason.
Why in the name of fucking GOD would you want lower FPS?
This. If you can't tell the different between 30fps and 60fps you need to play more games at 60. You will be shocked how different (and better if you ask me) it is.
This. Playing a game at 30 FPS can be immensely jarring once your eyes get acclimated to 60. The drops become a lot more noticeable and much harder to ignore.
Would you like a kiss from an attractive woman or a kick in the nuts from Bluto?
What you're surely really asking is whether you are willing to sacrifice performance for visual fidelity, in some circumstances. Of course, there are plenty of situations where most of us would do that. For example, 30fps with more graphical detail and complexity is just fine with an MMO or an RPG. 60fps with less fidelity (think how damn smooth COD games look) is a fantastic and important compromise with a racing, fighting, or multiplayer shooter. I'm pretty sure we all reached this consensus like fifteen or twenty years ago. And on PC (well, until LCDs), we used to consider 60fps the minimal acceptable frame rate (though we often had no true logical reason for it).
It's funny. I almost always prefer 60 fps. Never had an instance where I thought 30 was better until I played Arkham City. For some reason that game just looked better at 30. And with the DX11 effects turned on that's right around what my framerate is. I tried it with them turned off where my framerate was in the high 40's and low 50's and I just didn't like how it looked. It's really the first time that ever happened to me. I always prefer playing games on PC due to higher framerates but this game alone didn't work like that for me.
I don't care. If a game is at 30, fine. If it's 60, fine
The thing I don't get is when they talk about fps in racing games. I only notice the fps on non static objects in games. The back of a car doesn't look a whole lot different if you double the frame count, and everything is is whizzing by to fast for it to even matter
About that. Playing DiRT 3 as opposed to Forza 4 is like night and day. Forza looks incredibly smooth, and gives you an even greater sense of speed. DiRT 3 is good with speed, but it's still a pretty big difference.
I don't care. If a game is at 30, fine. If it's 60, fine
The thing I don't get is when they talk about fps in racing games. I only notice the fps on non static objects in games. The back of a car doesn't look a whole lot different if you double the frame count, and everything is is whizzing by to fast for it to even matter
About that. Playing DiRT 3 as opposed to Forza 4 is like night and day. Forza looks incredibly smooth, and gives you an even greater sense of speed. DiRT 3 is good with speed, but it's still a pretty big difference.
I remember some complaints on the Bombcast about NFS: Hot Pursuit only being 30 fps. The sense of speed in that game is insane. I can't imagine what doubling the frame rate could have possibly done for that game (and yes, I'm fully aware that was NFS does is drastically different than what Forza or Dirt are aiming for)
And for the love of God, I've seen both. It's splitting hairs as far as I'm concerned; I'm far more interested in the game part of the video game than the technical aspects of them.
What I don't get is this line from the OP:
It's part of the reason film (as in movies) runs at 24fps as opposed to 60fps which a lot of home movies tend to look like.
Just... no. Movies still run at 24FPS because it's cheaper to make them that way. A number of famous movie directors, Peter Jackson and James Cameron among them, are filming future movies at 48 because it's better. It looks more natural and fluid.
Note that the movie thing is also splitting hairs, but the reasons behind them are different. Games on consoles run at 30 because that frees up a large number of resources; movies run at 24 because that's cheap.
movies at 24 doesnt look bad because there's motion blur.
Why in the name of fucking GOD would you want lower FPS?
This. If you can't tell the different between 30fps and 60fps you need to play more games at 60. You will be shocked how different (and better if you ask me) it is.
And perhaps see a neurologist about the problem...
Of course I prefer 60 frames over 30, if there was no difference in graphical fidelity who on earth wouldn't.
I am shocked that people can't notice the difference between 60 and 30. Maybe it's because they don't play a lot of games at solid 60 fps? It's hugely different.
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