Since when became 60fps gaming a must

[64K]

This thread guy's... I remember 30 FPS was the normal but 60 now? I get it but if you don't have the internet speed or ping count then one should not even bother gaming

There is always single player.

 

[theFOoL]

There is always single player.

That... Doesn't Assist now!!!

 

[ThrashZone]

There is always single player.

Hi,
I'd never buy a game or really care for any free game that didn't have single player option.
Let the children play multi.

 

[Lei]

the human eye perceives about 29 pictures as fluent. below that it becomes a slideshow.

No, human eye can see 60 fps. the reason movies are made 29fps is that we don't typically have fast movements.
however in 29fps, if you watch a soccer player kicking a ball, you'll see some ghost effect. skiing, racing....

dogs can see 90fps, they see us in slow motion. cats see 55, rats see 39.
A cat is near sighted, that's why it is scared of us approaching normally (quickly for him)
a cat sees a rat in slow motion, a rat sees the cat fast forward.
a fly sees the world 270fps, it has bullet time effect when you're trying to catch him.

a sea turtle sees the world 15fps, everything is crazy fast perceived to its eyes.

nope, humans can see more than 29 pictures per second. critical flicker fusion frequency....

ducks see 105, the world looks too lazy to them. 65% slower than we humans see.
housefly can read the car plate without pausing the video.
elephants have low fps, because they have no predators. high fps takes a lot of energy consumed by brain.

 

[Jetster]

This thread guy's... I remember 30 FPS was the normal but 60 now? I get it but if you don't have the internet speed or ping count then one should not even bother gaming

I still run into people that game on a laptop with no dedicated graphics. Never say never

 

[theFOoL]

High fps takes a lot of energy consumed by brain.

So.... Us humans would have headaches after awhile of gaming

 

[Lei]

So.... Us humans would have headaches after awhile of gaming

doesn't matter what activity you're doing, as long as your eyes are open, you see 60fps. except when you move your eyeballs, the brain shuts down until you relocate your eyeball. it keeps the last frame until your eyeball rests.

it is called visual saccadic suppression or saccadic masking.

the mind selectively blocks visual processing during eye movements in such a way that neither the motion of the eye (and subsequent motion blur of the image) nor the gap in visual perception is noticeable to the viewer.

it's kinda like a video stabilizer. you can't see your eye movements while staring at a mirror.

 

[caroline!]

Man my eyes are melting even if I watch an old computer video with an amber monitor..

Bright green is worse, I've seen them at my local public library and even got to fix a few. The tiny amber one is still with me albeit safely chilling inside a box, I think I've abused it enough for years, but I can't throw it away, it's... cute.

Also my first phone had this tiny LCD screen with green LEDs as backlight, it was so bad... thankfully there was a setting to turn off the backlight which conveniently also extended battery life by a lot, these old LEDs required a lot of power. Was a StarTac clone except smaller and all-in-one brick design, it was dumb enough for me to unlock it to take any SIM card using the og Motorola serial cable and a few code lines.

 

[Easy Rhino]

I think since the ubiquity of high refresh rate monitors people are seeing the need for greater FPS. Personally anything above 45 FPS is fine for me. All of the anti-lag freesync stuff smooths everything out nicely.

 

[Bones]

A very good question that I wonder about myself.

I remember gaming magazines in the early 2000s used to call 25 fps "playable" and 30 fps "good". I'm still on this opinion, to be honest, with one addition: 40 fps is "excellent". I can't tell the difference above that.

I think the high refresh rate mania is just an artificial creation to sell 6900 XTs and 3090s and crappy TN panel monitors, and for Intel to be able to label their products "the best gaming CPU". Nothing more.

Edit: DOS games didn't run anywhere near 60 fps, but we still enjoyed the heck out of them. Youngsters of this day and age don't know what gaming meant back then.

If you want setup an old PSX system and play some games on it - Looks like utter crap doesn't it?
Wait a sec - I don't remember it looking THAT bad... But it does!

WTF?

Simple, it's what we've become used to seeing.
That's why what once was good is no longer "Good" and it's the same to an extent for FPS, even though there is a threshold of how much difference we can perceive with our eyes. While it is true 30FPS has a smooth look to it we've become accustomed to higher FPS rates so in a way we've become more "Sensitive" to actual FPS seen onscreen.

I still recall when I first saw things running above 30FPS, it looked great and was smoother than anything I'd ever seen before - Because it was up until that time but now the same thing would look OK but not nearly as great as it did before.

Resolutions beyond what we were used to seeing 20-25 years ago are another factor (Think PSX blocky-ness here) and matters as well. The details you could make out with ease with games played on a PSX back then are hard to make out today in comparison.

Speaking of FPS, older games could and would slow down until it becomes a pixelated mess; Back then it wasn't so bad but today.... It would look like we're playing the pixelblob game and the challenge would be to make out what's being shown on screen with bonus points if you can make out whatever the hell that is up in the corner...

It's like our brains have forgotten "How" to take a pic with a lack of fine details and fill in the gaps so it's recognizable and looks OK too.

However, the point(s) I'm getting at can be made simply enough if you'll just fire up that old PSX and play it for awhile... You'll see what I mean.
Game on.

 

[Vayra86]

Nice topic, this. Its an interesting thing, our relationship with frames per second as gamers, I feel.

My first 'real' gaming (not the silly earliest PC gaming that was devoid of color or movement) was on PAL television. That's a 50hz refresh and I don't even know what FPS the Super Nintendo produced, but it felt 'smooth'. Its not exactly true that for motion picture, the 'standard' is 29~30 FPS. For movies, perhaps. But the Soap Opera is pretty old too, with its similarly named 60 FPS effect.

So its entirely not true that we can and 'usually make do' with 30 FPS or less. I think that limit stems from the slow progress of technology going mainstream. If we look back, how many years really did we stick to 29FPS film? A decade? Three? Its nothing on the scale of video/motion picture development. The earliest motion pictures were realistically just slideshows, often literally.

There is a theory that the 'arbitrary' but common limit of 29~30 FPS comes from cinema limitations, which is at its core an economical balance: shooting film at higher FPS generated massive tapes, but didn't add enough to the experience to justify it, is my take on that.

There is also an event where Ubisoft CEO Guillemot states 30 FPS is what gamers want for their 'realistic' gaming experiences. Its the 'best way to game' according to the man. We all know it is utter bullshit. 30 FPS is a frametime that for many a game, is not just uncanny, but can kill your gameplay. When it can drop from that bottom line, it gets exponentially worse.

Assassins Creed: Unity News - Ubisoft Claims Industry Is Dropping 60FPS Standard, 30 FPS Is More Realistic

Game Debate Assassins Creed: Unity News - Assassins Creed: Unity : Ubisoft Claims Industry Is Dropping 60FPS Standard, 30 FPS Is More Realistic

www.game-debate.com

Enjoy this laugh while we're on the subject We all know where AC Unity went, by now, into the books as easily the shittiest AC ever, or among them.

And then... there is PC gaming. I remember playing Quake and UT on CRT at framerates often far above 60. The real needs for specific games haven't objectively changed: for fast games or high responsiveness, you want the lowest latency and fastest reproduction of activity on screen. This is not a new thing and E sports are built on it. Let's not forget Counterstrike either.

The gist: in ANY environment where the technology/economical reality doesn't pose a problem, the amount of FPS we desire is quite simply as high as we can get it. A technological reality can also be a desire for a certain quality level. That's where our balancing act wrt FPS versus IQ comes in.

If you want setup an old PSX system and play some games on it - Looks like utter crap doesn't it?
Wait a sec - I don't remember it looking THAT bad... But it does!

WTF?

Simple, it's what we've become used to seeing.
That's why what once was good is no longer "Good" and it's the same to an extent for FPS, even though there is a threshold of how much difference we can perceive with our eyes. While it is true 30FPS has a smooth look to it we've become accustomed to higher FPS rates so in a way we've become more "Sensitive" to actual FPS seen onscreen.

I still recall when I first saw things running above 30FPS, it looked great and was smoother than anything I'd ever seen before - Because it was up until that time but now the same thing would look OK but not nearly as great as it did before.

Resolutions beyond what we were used to seeing 20-25 years ago are another factor (Think PSX blocky-ness here) and matters as well. The details you could make out with ease with games played on a PSX back then are hard to make out today in comparison.

Speaking of FPS, older games could and would slow down until it becomes a pixelated mess; Back then it wasn't so bad but today.... It would look like we're playing the pixelblob game and the challenge would be to make out what's being shown on screen with bonus points if you can make out whatever the hell that is up in the corner...

It's like our brains have forgotten "How" to take a pic with a lack of fine details and fill in the gaps so it's recognizable and looks OK too.

However, the point(s) I'm getting at can be made simply enough if you'll just fire up that old PSX and play it for awhile... You'll see what I mean.
Game on.

Not entirely. You need a pretty good HDTV to get a similar image quality that you would have on an old TV. Quite simply because scanlines aren't pixel perfect. Basically old TVs had their own way to pass AA over anything, and it did the job well to smooth out the image. LCDs lack that, they have a pattern they map to.

 

[QuietBob]

The push for higher fps can be directly attributed to the rise of the First Person Shooter. Smooth frame rates (30+ fps) became critical to enjoy the games' fast-paced (pseudo) 3D graphics rendered in real time.

For instance, Wolfenstein 3D, a title widely credited with popularizing the genre in 1992, could run somewhat acceptably on a 286 6 MHz CPU. This processor - the slowest one supported by the game - had been around for 10.5 years at that time!

However, things changed dramatically with Doom - the genre defining classic - that released only a year later. It would not even install on a 286-class computer. And if you tried running it on the minimum required 386 12 MHz (a 7.5 year old product by then), you would only see about 14 fps on average - in lowest detail:

The fastest CPU that came out the same year - the Pentium 66 MHz - could deliver about 40 fps with max settings.

In general though I believe both reviewers and gamers pay too much attention to the average fps. This number can be easily misrepresented and is not the best depiction of how a game feels. 1% and 0.1% lows ("hitching/drops"), as well as frame time variance ("stuttering") impact the perceived comfort more profoundly and are directly related to smooth gameplay.

 

[Bones]

Not entirely. You need a pretty good HDTV to get a similar image quality that you would have on an old TV. Quite simply because scanlines aren't pixel perfect. Basically old TVs had their own way to pass AA over anything, and it did the job well to smooth out the image. LCDs lack that, they have a pattern they map to.

I have an old TV from the 90's I use with my PSX and it's like that - What used to be good now looks blobby and the details are more difficult to make out.
You are right though about HDTV's, they certainly don't render images in the same way older TV's did and it can make things even worse because of it.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Think most use hdmi still from the day so it's capped at 60 fps anyway so 60 or be damned

I just setup a second gaming and entertainment rig on z490 and use hdmi on a crappy element 4k tv so would I be surprised at 60 fps max ? Nope.
Set nv control panel at best quality and rock on

 

[80-watt Hamster]

In general though I believe both reviewers and gamers pay too much attention to the average fps. This metric can be easily misrepresented and is not the best depiction of how a game feels. 1% and 0.1% lows ("hitching/drops"), as well as frame time variance ("stuttering") impact the perceived comfort more profoundly and are directly related to smooth gameplay.

We seem to be getting there. 1% and 0.1% in particular have become a very common metric. Frametime is lagging (ha!) a bit, but I predict will receive more focus in the future. As you say, more smooth > more fast.

 

[maxx2575]

I used to play warthunder on a computer with an a4-5000 apu back in 2014, I would get small tastes of 60fps when I would look at the sky. but now 6 years later I have a new computer and a new 144hz monitor to go with it. trust me when I say there is no going back now for me as anything below 80-90 just looks like a slide-show to me. though 2k or 4k would be nice as 1080p is just not enough anymore.

 

[hat]

If you hook up a PSX to a HDTV that still has those god awful composite inputs, it'll look terrible compared to an old CRT TV with the same hookups. There are upscalers though... I have a cheap SCART to HDMI converter/upscaler that makes PS1 games look pretty decent. Not a difficult job when starting with SCART though...

 

[eidairaman1]

I don't think there ever was a "single year" changeover, just a gradual 1995-2005, DirectX 7-8 era trend that became normalized:-

- 30fps - Most 1980-1996 DOS games (Arena, Daggerfall, etc) were 20-40fps. Doom Engine (1993-1996) was capped at 35fps. Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate (1998), Planescape Torment (1999), etc), has a 30fps cap. Jagged Alliance 2 (1999) was 30fps, Diablo 2 (2000) was 25fps, etc. There were some early 2000's flash games capped at 30fps plus the Adventure Game Studios engine's 40fps cap, but for many genres like point & click adventures, it didn't impact gameplay much.

- 60fps - Quake 1-3 (1996-1999), Thief 1-2 (1997-1998), Unreal 1 (1998), Deus Ex (2000), No One Lives Forever 1-2 (2000-2002), System Shock 2 (1999), Neverwinter Nights (2002), Morrowind (2002), Serious Sam FE & SE (2001-2002), Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002), etc, and many more could all run at 60fps.

So it's really the late 90's where games changed "technically", and probably the early 2000's where the "expectation" of 60fps changed to the point where it would have been weird / felt out of place to have released games like Call of Duty (2003), Far Cry (2004), FEAR (2005), Oblivion (2006), Bioshock (2007), etc, with 30fps caps.


Not a chance in hell given my first PC was a 16MHz 286 with 1MB RAM, 256kb VRAM and 40MB HDD.

Majority of movies are still 30FPS

What matters is 1% Lows now

 

[droopyRO]

Were you able to play at 60fps gaming on your first PC.

Nope, i was using software mode. That is a sub 30 fps experience. But i didn't knew better.
I recently started playing Warhammer III, and i put all the settings on max. there are moments when it dips to sub 30 fps on the campaign map. It is noticeable, is it playable ? yes, but i did resort to lower settings and a framecap at 60 fps to smooth out the game.

 

[freeagent]

I remember when Nvidia gave the green light to mix gpus of the same type but from different manufacturers.. ohh it was great! COD at 500fps with my BFG and PNY 6600GTs on my Abit fatality with my sandy 3700, then Toledo 4400.. life was good. But advancements came quick in those days and it wasn’t long before I had to upgrade..

Now I just lock er down to 60 because that’s all my screens can do in the Hz dept.

 

[WhiteNoise]

Its never been a must for me. Maybe my eyes aren't the greatest but 30 fps and up is fine by me. I've always been one to have a good mid to high-end video card for as long as I can remember so hitting 30 to 60 has never been an issue. I can without a doubt see a difference when going below 30 fps. My goal is always 60 fps these days because it's the norm that most people aim for (if not more) and I play at 4K so I need a beefy card. Most of my games run 60 to 100+ fps but there are a handful of games that I barely hit 60. These I usually run between 40-60 fps.

I have thought about upgrading to a 144Hz monitor just to try it out but I'm not sure these eyes would notice.

 

[Flogger23m]

I can easily see the difference between 60 and 120. 60 looks like a slide show. It is irritating to play a game with that low of a frame rate. 60 is my minimum for an SP game, but I try for 80-90.

For online shooters you need 90 as a minimum. Ideally 120.

I think our standards increased over time. First it was getting a smooth 30, then 60, and now higher. Just like we no longer like to play at 1920x1080, unless you're chasing frame rates. And no one plays at resolutions below that.

 

[freeagent]

I pwn no0bz even with 60, it’s all a state of mind

 

[Psychoholic]

I always thought 60fps was really smooth until I got my first 144hz monitor (Asus PG278Q) Around 2015. Once i went 144hz, i never could go back, even just moving things around on the desktop i can see the difference.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

Well I played a lot of games in the early days with 30 FPS or less the thing is that 30 FPS could be just fine if you have constant 30 FPS but when you have those frames that suddenly spikes down bellow 20 FPS or even in single digits then gaming really becomes ugly fast.....Now these days when I can I am aiming to game on higher resolution(4k/1440p) and 60Hz/60FPS.......