Whats the point of more than 36 Fps?

[Nisch]

Being an albino, I've been plagued with all sorts of vision problems, and one of them is that I register higher FPS than average. Things like LED taillights on cars and some flourescent lights really drive me bonkers. When the holidays are going on, the mall is full of things that give me an instant headache because I can see the lights flicker on and off. It's rather annoying. :cursing:

[mikekim]

quite a few people find that slower FPS settings can cause motion sickness, so the higher the better, and as for the statment that the human eye can't perceive higher than 36 frames per second.. that varies on an individual basis, as I can differentiate between 40 and 60 frames per second and so can quite a few of my friends and family.

[Gaffy]

OK, first, the eye doesn't see at 36 (or any other fixed rate) fps. It is a true constant real time update. The only limitation is the speed at which the nerves send the signal to the brain.
Motion in movies seems smooth due to 1: blurred shots (think trails following a moving object) and 2: the brain is very good at understanding what something is supposed to look like (someone walking, car driving, etc.) and adjusting what you "see" to make it look right. In games the blur effect doesn't happen due to the way models are displayed. Imagine the processing power you would need to have to generate the correct size, direction, and such of all those trails. That is why in a game, having higher fps makes it look better/smoother. Your eye is picking up all of those frames (faster than your brain can consciously process them) and blurring them into the smooth motion you see. You get the choppiness once your brain is able to process each frame completely before getting hit with the next frame. And yes, it is different for each person.

[TheBigBB]

i believe movies are made at 24fps, and cartoons at about 12-18fps, to give you an idea of what your eyes seen

higher fps will just make all the movements smoother, and softer to the eye. And as was said, fps varies alot depending on what you do. Anyone can get 60fps when staring at a textured wall in full screen, but the fps dips when flying, using spells etc

ask 5 DK to do their aoe spells in dalaran and see how much fps you get there as a benchmark.
I never found out mine, i usually need to relog when it happens

It is possible to have a computer which never drops the FPS, but that means that most of the time you wouldn't be using the system's full power. I always set my computer such that it always gets the same FPS. Right now I can do 5 windows in Dalaran on one computer with a main winow on medium settings, but I never tried jacking it up because it's not worth it to me. I don't mind low graphics settings either. The game doesn't look real to me either way.

[elsegundo]

i believe movies are made at 24fps, and cartoons at about 12-18fps, to give you an idea of what your eyes seen

higher fps will just make all the movements smoother, and softer to the eye. And as was said, fps varies alot depending on what you do. Anyone can get 60fps when staring at a textured wall in full screen, but the fps dips when flying, using spells etc

ask 5 DK to do their aoe spells in dalaran and see how much fps you get there as a benchmark.
I never found out mine, i usually need to relog when it happens

i think its 42 fps. movies go at 42 fps. if you stick a frame in it with a message once every 42 frames that has nothing to do with the movie, you can get people to buy drinks and popcorn and they'll never know what caused it.

[Tonuss]

Movies are 24 fps, I'm pretty sure about that. Some Saturday morning cartoons can run as low as 4-6 fps, depending on how cheaply they are made. Some older ones (like Looney Tunes) are probably much higher fps because originally they were created to run in movie theaters before the main attraction.

As for the rate at which your game will look best, I think the most important factor is the consistency of the frame rates, once you are over ~20 fps. If your game was rendered at a consistent and steady 24 fps, it would look very smooth to the eye, possibly just as smooth as 30 fps or even 60 fps. If you are getting 60 fps but every now and then you get a drop to 40/50 fps, I think your eye registers the changes and you notice the flicker or stutter.

None of that is scientific by the way, so I may be wrong. :P

[succulent]

I've done some video editing and video game programming, so I have some experience with this stuff. For the record:

- Traditionally motion pictures are shot at 24 fps. This will change going forward as more people shoot on HD digital rather than film.
- US Television (NTSC) is at 29.97 fps interlaced (59.94 fields per second)
- European TV (PAL) is at 25 fps (but is higher resolution per frame than NTSC)
- Hi-def TV formats are actually a bit flexible, from 23.97fps up to 60. The reasons for several of the frame rates being supported have to do with making it easy to convert input meant for older TVs, old movie sources, etc.

Many shenanigans ensue when converting between the various video playback formats. All of them rely on your brain doing a lot of the heavy lifting; what you see when you watch a movie isn't what's "really" there (and to some animals, it just looks like garbage). The responsiveness of human vision is highly variable depending on the person, the ambient light, your age, etc., but the low frame rate of movies (24 is actually quite low) has to do with the limits of technology back abut 80 years ago. 60fps movies would look noticeably more awesome. Video games should always shoot for 60fps as a minimum, WoW fails here quite often but whachagonnado.

Some fun reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_TV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_perception

Enjoy!

[BobGnarly]

Ok so I dont understand FPS. My understanding is that video is somewhere between 26-36 fps and that the eye cant determine frame speeds much beond these, so why is it important to get Fps as high as possible?

I've been looking around but cant find an answer for this.

Cheers
VMP

The answer is that the bold text is wrong. I know this floats around, but anybody can tell the difference between 24hz and 60hz.

There is a lot of history behind the choice of TV refresh rates, and I'll let you google it if you're interested. Bottom line is it has as much to do with economy and practicality as it does with what the HVS is capable of.

Also, there is a difference between motion-blur display (TV) and discrete frame rendering (WoW), which is why a 24fps TV looks good and 24fps WoW looks like crap.

[Youngceo]

It looks better?

My last setup ran at about 50-60fps tops, new one runs about 60fps average and 100+ in instances and smaller zones etc, you can tell the difference. The only ones that will tell you the human eye cant see past 30fps and all that bullshit are the ones who cant afford to so they have an excuse for themselves

[Vmpwraith]

Ah it all sounds good... Bottom line MORE is better :-)

I must admit I had always set my maxfps to 40 because of what a friend had told me when i was a kid, but now I've set them higher it is better. Funny I've played for years and never bothered with it (mostly beacuse my olf GPUs would have had a melt down). How sad my Wow has been. I've been playing blind.

thankx all