Slow machine and terrible ping... ARGH!

[torus]

I find it quite amusing how people fret over any change of fps over 30. Seriously, I dont think that humans can even observe anything over 30 fps— maybe a change between 30-50 is noticable, but I know I couldnt recognize anything above that.

Some games 20 is playable, even 15 (the average for most anime btw), IMHO.

This game ran at 6 fps lol:

3d Monster Maze

[Bnonn]

You're sort of right. Anything over 60 fps is fairly moot; very few people can tell the difference. But the difference between 60 and 30 is quite noticeable (dependent on game). I don't really worry about fps except out of habit—gotta hit that 43/60/75/120 maxfps consistently so as to get the best airspeed! Oh wait...

[esteel]

I really disagree. You might not really notice fps in the way of 'thats still a fluent animation or not' as the human eye is easily fooled by movement (even easier in the case of tv with its bad picture and motion blur). You are right with animation speeds but the eye can notice changes at much higher rates then 30fps. Take some animation and insert one frame that looks totaly different, you will at least notice it even with much higher speeds.

Also consider aiming: Someone shooting at you from behind, now you do a flick turn in half a second. Lets consider you have 30 fps and also that you turn in half a second (imo thats long for flick turn) that means that you will get 15 frames (half of 30) and thus your view will 'skip along' at 12° steps. You will notice those steps and it will not feel good. 30fps already feel very bad if you try to aim for things 'on your screen' aka within then 45° to your left/right.

The 66fps quake4 currently has hard coded are on the lower end of what i think are required fps for a fast online shooter. Personally i'd rather go for 80 to 'feel' good.

[Bnonn]

Well said. My suggestion of 60 fps is, as you point out, on the low side when it comes to smooth, fast motion on a high-refresh-rate display.

[tZork]

off topic but..
Dont forget framerate drops. This is the # 1 reason i try to keep my fps arround 100. considers you generally have 30 fps and are fine with it. suddenly things heat up, losts on players and fx in view and your fps drop by 15-20. IF you normaly have around 30 that leaves you with 10-15 fps. Add a fast turn on that.. no fun. Generaly ppl are also sensetive to changes in framerate, so limit you framerate to a reasonable number. (screen refresh + "some" seems a good idea for most rigs)

[tChr]

Without motion blurring, humans have no problem defecting framing at very high speeds. changes from black to white to black can be registered faster than 1/200 of a second, ie.. you'd see it even at 200 FPS. Test pilots can often even identify pitures in the white frame, and register changes faster than 1/1000 of a secondIt depends very much on the material you are observing. white-black-white changes must be very slow for you to see them for instance.

To achieve real smoothness in non motion-blurred data (as most games is) you need to get close to at least 100 FPS for most people.