At which framerates do you guys feel your ability to aim/track starts to deteriorate?
YMICrazy
Join Date: 2012-11-02 Member: 165986Members
Join Date: 2012-11-02 Member: 165986Members
Just want your subjective opinion as to what is the lowest frame rate you can go without feeling your game play suffer. In NS2 specifically. Like for me I would say anything below 50 and I feel my aim begins to suffer a bit as well as the game starting to become a bit choppy. I see other people post that they play with 20-30 framerates most of the time and I have to ask do you still find it hard to play in or did you just get use to it?
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In NS2, I typically get 40. Which is... acceptable.
edit: I can play with 60, but to play a game competitively it needs to be a minimum of 90 in fights.
Now going above this 40 'conscious moments' per second, ~66 FPS would be the next benchmark to aim for since that tends to be the high level where humans perceive motion. Again, this does *NOT* mean frame rates above this are useless. Once you pass the 66 FPS threshold the difference becomes the quality of the image. You'll see more detail in each one of your 'conscious moments' per second. This may or may not be of any benefit. If you are fighting a skulk right in front of your face, you won't have any benefit at 120 FPS over say 66 FPS in terms of motion. Yeah the image may be clearer at 120 FPS, but do you need to count the individual teeth in the skulk's mouth before you kill him?
Anyway, IMHO, the base level minimum FPS a person with a budget machine should aim for is 40 FPS. From there one can aim for a minimum ~66 FPS as a second threshold. After that it's all about personal preference. I'd say anything over 80 FPS is gravy. Yeah it'll look sharper, but it shouldn't affect a person's performance.
As someone that used to play with a CRT that did more that 60Hz, I can say - without question - that visual quality dramatically increased at 75hz and made tracking much, much easier. So, refresh rate is just as important as frames.
Most people consider a game playable with much less fps than their "ideal" framerate.
Ideally, I would obviously want the game to run at 60 fps to match my 60hz monitor, however for NS2, I consider anything about ~25 FPS playable.
Yes, it is easier for me to aim when my fps is higher in NS2, but I can still play well enough if it drops to ~25.
Pretty much this. I would LOVE to be able to play this game in 60fps but alas, my computer only runs this game at 30fps maximum and when I'm really unlucky, down to 7. Ever try shooting a moving skulk with a shotgun with 7fps? It's quite...interesting to say the least. Playable FPS to me is anything above 12.
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you do realise that our brains' 40 moments a second does not tie with exactly 40 frames per second on our monitors, right? the only way that's ever going to happen is only when you're a cyborg with a mechanical brain that renders what your eyes see like a monitor.
common refresh rate on a monitor is 60hz, and THAT ties directly (if not almost directly) to 60 FPS. lower than 60 FPS, you get missing frames, which basically means that the monitor cannot render the full 60 frames that should have been rendered in a second, making your view ingame jerk/lag.
what you're talking about is mutually exclusive to FPS, refresh rate and what your monitor can render. FPS ties to what the monitor can or cannot render within a second. it does not tie to what your eyes can or cannot perceive. higher FPS makes the game APPEAR smoother and it does help you, even if you can only "perceive 40 moments a second".
imagine this scenario:
skulk moves 0.1s out of a corner and peeps at you for 0.1s before moving 0.1s back into his original position. he's located at an extreme side of your viewing angle (think of you looking at a hallway and he's appearing at the extreme top/left/right side). your FPS is 40 and your monitor refresh rate is 60hz, this means you're possibly losing some frames of:
1) the skulk moving out of the corner to peep at you
2) the skulk peeping at you
3) the skulk moving back around the corner because he does not like what he sees.
this, in turn, might make you miss the event completely because the monitor did not render enough frames for you to notice that he's there. read: it's not because of your "x moments a second". the computer didn't even render some of the frames required for you to notice that he's there, specifically the frames where the skulk moved, so the information wasn't even there for your brain to perceive in the first place.
what you're essentially saying with your post is that FPS directly ties to our brain, which it does not. it's just the number of frames that is rendered in a second, and if you're missing some of the frames that are required by the computer (read: 60fps, common for most monitors), how much information your brain can perceive doesn't matter jack because your computer won't even be rendering enough information for you to perceive in the first place. hardware limitation is not the same as brain limitation. if anything, "my brain can perceive 999 moments a second" only makes sub-optimal frame rates more noticeable.
120 FPS helps because you're essentially making the frames of these small movements of the skulk render (logically speaking, though i don't believe it to work exactly this way) twice. it increases the chances where your "x moments a second" will notice these frames on the monitor screen, which in turn makes it easier for you to notice this very small movement of the skulk, especially when you're turning your viewing angle as well when the skulk moved.
your "x moments a second", though, explains why some people can track a competitive fade as they blink/shadow step past perfectly. they perceive more moments and thus can react appropriately without losing focus. this is, of course, provided the computer even renders enough information in the first place for them to perceive it.
EDIT: sorry. nobody can perceive 0.1ms of skulk movement even if they are superhuman. must be lack of sleep.
EDIT2: sorry. grammar mistake.
Ah yea good point. I really wanted to know the threshold at which people can perform well. With anything under that threshold being where their shooting and aiming abilities starts to deteriorate. But I really did not know how to phrase it well.
decent: 45-60
playable: 35-45
playable, but not enjoyable: 25-35
unplayable: less than 25
The problems occur late game when the frame rate starts hitting below 20, not necessarily because FPS below 20 is too low, but becuase the upper bound is still around 35, and rapid fluctuations of 20+ frames makes visual tracking extremely disorientating, and the mouse's "sensitivity" is rapidly changing from one moment to the next.
Assume that a person's "internal clock" was off with respect to the frames being rendered, and that the renders started at the midway point of the 1/40th 'moment' of consciousness. Since one frame flows into the next, it doesn't matter. If each frame was completely different (I mean two completely different images, not from the same stream) then you might have a point. They're not though. So you won't perceive a difference regardless of where a frame starts and ends vis-à-vis where a 'moment' of consciousness starts and ends.
Actually, I said no such thing. This is all about TIME, not about consciousness or frames. The commonality here is TIME. One second will always be one second. If you divide one second into 40 parts, it will be 1/40th of second.
Science disagrees with you. No one can perceive differences in movement at 120 FPS. You ramp up the hyperbole about "mechanical brains" and now you suggest the human brain can operate at levels that even astronauts can't attain?
Once you pass your personal threshold of what you can perceive in a given second, (be it 40 up, or up to 80 if you are exceptional) then additional frames will NOT allow you to perceive movement any better. They *WILL* make the image clearer, but there are diminishing returns with that too. With each additional FPS rendered, the user will benefit less and less from the information presented. The brain just doesn't operate fast enough to make use of it.
We're getting into a quantum consciousness discussion here, and frankly it's beyond the scope of the OP's original question. They discuss in this paper how a persons 'moments in time' can increase from normal in exceptional circumstances.
In this kind of circumstance, additional frames will most certainly be of benefit. However we are talking exceptional circumstances and exceptional people. The average person won't be perceiving reality at that speed.
So no, having 120 FPS won't help you perceive movements any faster than at half that speed. The *clarity* of each frame will improve, and that is a whole other issue relating to a person's visual acuity. A person with lower visual acuity may benefit from a higher frame rate, since it can help to compensate for their lower visual acuity. However, someone with high visual acuity won't see nearly as much benefit from those extra frames.
I don't know whether it's because of input lag being reduced or because of the extra frames being displayed, but regardless there is a noticeable difference regardless of what the 'science' says
As I noted above, visual acuity can be affected by higher frame rates, and if visual acuity improves then their aim may improve. The extent of that improvement will depend on the individual's personal visual acuity. A person with poor vision may notice a bigger difference than a person with good vision with respect to higher frame-rates. However, the bottom line is that there are limits to human vision and consciousness, and these limits are not subject to debate. That isn't the point though.
The point is looking at the LOWER end, not the upper end. What are the MINIMUMS a person should try for.
For the LOWER end, 40 FPS is the minimum a person should be aiming for in order to have a reasonable gaming experience. For mid-range, aim for ~66 FPS. For high end, aim for 80 FPS and higher.
If a person thinks that they have some kind of magic brain that can perceive differences in movement at 200 FPS, then by all means, more power to them if they can get their hardware to achieve that. It doesn't mean that they can actually perceive 200 FPS in reality, but if thinking that they do improves their game, hey, to each his own.
In my objective opinion though, I'd want no less than 60 fps.
i]citation needed[/i
My vision is augmented.
http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/ go test it yourself, you can change the fps of each object, you will see 120 fps more clearly than 60 fps unless you're cock eyed.
edit: and remove the motion blur, it's for video nerds and console peasants.
People argue about things they know nothing about using citations they don't understand.
Not sure whether you're making an accurate remark that nearly every study in this area ends inconclusively or just another strofix shit post.
Even if the study ended with "42", it wouldn't mean a thing because nobody hear would understand the study, and lost time I checked they don't come with a TL;DR at the end.
no no you got me wrong. my point here is that both lower and higher than 60 FPS have nothing to do with being able to perceive how many moments in a second, and thus should not be the basis for determining 40 FPS as the ideal minimum. it won't make you perceive faster/slower. your ability to perceive is still entirely up to your brain.
let's say for example you have a 60hz monitor. you need 60 FPS to provide you with a smooth flowing animation (because anything less, the monitor skips and does not output anything but the last available frame). with FPS lower than 60, your brain's ability to perceive x moments in a second wouldn't even matter because the monitor isn't displaying the information it needs to display under 60 FPS. you won't even physically see it because it's non-existent. what you will see on your monitor is what is perceived as lag/stutter/jerking in-game. this does not stop you from playing, but it limits you because you don't receive updated information on your monitor often enough.
higher than 60 FPS, provided your monitor can support it (e.g. 120hz), the computer outputs these additional frames into your monitor as well. this makes subtle movements much more noticeable and/or accurate as every additional frame is provided by updated information processed by the computer. sounds like i'm saying our brain power goes up, but no. i'll explain in a bit.
in the case of higher FPS, the computer outputs more visual information by throwing in extra frames. like you said, nobody will be able to perceive all of these additional information with their naked eyes, but because there's more information, there's a higher chance of you actually catching the extra updated information. how fast you can catch is still entirely up to your brain.
i know what you mean by diminishing returns. at some point, for example 121 FPS and above, the monitor will not output any additional helpful information that you'd otherwise miss, simply because there isn't anything else more helpful to output on your screen due to limitations in the game.
for example, you have a script that polls a file containing a number 40 times a second and you have another script that edits the file, increasing the number by 1 60 times a second. your eyes won't be able to catch all numbers from 1 to 60. there will (of course) be gaps where your eyes won't be able to perceive. now, if i have a script that edits the file, increasing the number by 0.5 120 times a second. your eyes won't be able to catch all the numbers from 1 to 60, but there is a high chance you will catch a number with .5 behind it, even if you're still polling 40 times a second. the polling rate of 40 times per second is fixed, but the information we get from polling these 40 times may be slightly different because of the higher or lower rate the information is being changed with. i hope you understand what i'm talking about here.
note that the above is a really extreme example, but i'm trying to say that with more frames, your computer outputs more information in the same second, information that you may potentially miss with a lower frame rate. i'm not saying that everybody is potentially missing things all the time with anything less than 120 FPS. these cases are usually the "at the right place, right time, right viewing angle" kind of thing. it helps, but only a little and with diminishing returns.
anyway, i'm not really sure what you mean by more frames per second making each frame clearer. as far as i know, a frame is still a frame. rendering two extra frames in the exact amount of time that you render one does not make it clearer in any way, unless the information that the two extra frames were built on has changed from the first to the second (e.g. moving skulk, changing view angle). in that case, the second frame is considered more accurate to the first, since it was built on updated information provided by the game.
so a person's ability to perceive has nothing to do with FPS directly. i'm glad you agreed with me on that point, which is why i found it weird that you even brought it up and suggested 40 FPS as the minimum. our eyes and our brain and our ability to perceive is completely separated from FPS, monitors and how they render and thus is no basis for determining that 40 FPS is the ideal minimum games or NS2 should have.
bare, bare, naked bare minimum, i have a friend who plays NS2 with 15 FPS. he misses most of his shots, but that's only because the computer couldn't keep up with the game, not his hand-eye coordination or how many moments he can perceive in a second. as long as your computer renders enough frames to not see skulks teleport more than a meter every second, i think it's good enough for "bare minimum". the ideal minimum should always be 60 FPS, even if you're capable of playing with lower FPS, to ensure that it's not something else other than your brain that's causing you to suffer in game.
120 FPS on a 60hz monitor can account for the decrease in input delay if the frames are directly tied to how fast the game updates mouse input information, making it seem more smooth than on 60 FPS. this happens even if your monitor is only capable of refreshing 60 times a second (thus 60hz).
ITT people who argue about people arguing about things using citations they think people don't understand but are afraid to explain any further in fear of more people arguing about people arguing about things using citations they think they understand when they don't.
the "lost" time i check, you don't really have anything constructive to say "hear". lol.