Does 60 FPS really matter?

[Nintegageo | 582]

I get that it's cool but I am playing Gotham Knights (PS5) and I just keep seeing nerds raging that the frame rate isn't 60. The game is good, it is obvious the team worked hard, and yet I just see complaining. Heck, I don't even notice the drops and wonder whether others do without a frame rate tracker.

So yes, just curious other people's thoughts.

[Gloves | 11,779]

Yep, it matters.

[Brickman | 3,986]

8 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Yep, it matters.

Agreed. Lock up the thread, discussion over!

I can definitely notice a 30 FPS vs a 60 FPS game. I don't know this game in particular, but if it's dropping like 3 or 4 frames I doubt anyone is really noticing but if it's dropping 10+ it would be noticeable imo.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,531]

Across all of my thousands of games, I couldn't tell you the FPS for any of them.

[cj_robot | 542]

Personally, I'm on the side of not caring. Obviously, the higher the better, but it's absolutely not a deal breaker for me, unless it was so bonkers low that it became unplayable. I grew up playing N64 games for goodness sakes.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,531]

Maybe I'm just blind, but anyone getting their panties in a twist over that obviously doesn't have more important shit in life to worry about 

[Brickman | 3,986]

15 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Maybe I'm just blind, but anyone getting their panties in a twist over that obviously doesn't have more important shit in life to worry about 

I find 30 vs 60 is most noticeable when in combat or running around. In video clips it just feels slightly smoother but nothing huge.

I personally couldn't care if a game is locked at 30 FPS or 60 FPS, just as long as it's locked and not going up and down all game.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

I grew up with the NES and I've never given a shit about frame rates in my entire life.  Maybe on FMV shit on 3DO it would matter when it's chugging along at like 8 frames per second?!?!  But man, in the comparison video posted above, I seriously can't even tell the difference.  I guess it's a good thing I'm not a modern gamer, or everyone would be calling me batshit blind...

[Reed Rothchild | 9,531]

5 minutes ago, Brickman said:

I find 30 vs 60 is most noticeable when in combat or running around. In video clips it just feels slightly smoother but nothing huge.

I personally couldn't care if a game is locked at 30 FPS or 60 FPS, just as long as it's locked and not going up and down all game.

In the sense that a framerate drop from 60 to 45 would be less noticeable than a drop from 30 to 15, that makes total sense.  But if it's locked at 30 or 60, it seems like a negligible difference.

Like, I just finished Returnal, and there was no real slowdown, but I couldn't tell you if it was 30, 60, or 120 FPS to save my life.

[Brickman | 3,986]

9 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Like, I just finished Returnal, and there was no real slowdown, but I couldn't tell you if it was 30, 60, or 120 FPS to save my life.

4K 60FPS according to google 

 

[Tanooki | 4,933]

Not in the slightest, going into FPS battles is arguing with arrogance and hubris.

The point at which a frame rate really can screw you, the farther away from a steady 30.  That's where you get into things shuffling, chugging, feeling if not also visually stopping and starting as you move and especially in a 3D space.

I'd take a locked firm 30fps any day over something making a sorry attempt at a 60fps level, often you'll end up where anything gets more intense on a console it'll drop into the high 30s into mid40s and it gets weird, throws your timing off.  Even worse when it's not so much when it screws with the frame rate, but frame time, disasters happen.  It's almost worth more arguing if you say a game does this, does it really?  It'll be smoother if it's a locked X, vs a yo-yo ride between various levels.

[Lynda Monica | 350]

I think it's perfectly reasonable to get upset over frame rate drops in games. Games are interactive experiences where you push buttons to make things happen. Games are supposed to be fun because they're exciting with a lot going on at once, and the graphics are mainly just there to bring the program to life. If you've made your graphics so fancy that they interfere with the program, then that's a glaring issue that shouldn't be forgiven.

As for the people who whine over a locked 30 FPS, they've got a real rod up their rears if you ask me. If people are going to complain about a buttery smooth 30 FPS, then they've clearly never played Breath of the Wild or Mighty No. 9 on Wii U before. If a modern game is released at a steady 30 FPS, just be thankful they didn't release the version that tried and failed to stay at 60.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Lynda Monica

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

Pong ran at 60fps. For a game 50 years later to run at 30 is an embarrassment to technology. 

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

It depends on the game. For fighting games or first-person shooters, 60 fps is a must for a smooth, responsive experience. I'd also say it's highly preferable for other genres with more intense gameplay (racing, action, etc). That being said, all of these games are perfectly playable at 30 fps; I just think the experience is much more enjoyable at 60 fps. Gotham Knights seems like the type of game that would be fine at 30, but definitely better at 60.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

9 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

In the sense that a framerate drop from 60 to 45 would be less noticeable than a drop from 30 to 15, that makes total sense.  But if it's locked at 30 or 60, it seems like a negligible difference.

Like, I just finished Returnal, and there was no real slowdown, but I couldn't tell you if it was 30, 60, or 120 FPS to save my life.

8 hours ago, Brickman said:

4K 60FPS according to google 

 

Returnal would be a much worse experience at 30 fps, in my opinion. That type of game really benefits from smoother action and quicker response time.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

I'm in the "it doesn't really matter" boat.  Having a higher FPS is better, as virtually every modern game will experience some level of frame drop at some point while it's being played, and the higher you're starting out with, the less noticeable that's going to be.  That being said, as long as a game can maintain a minimum of 30fps (as in, if/when any drops occur, the framerate never dips below 30fps), the vast majority of gamers, as well as the general public, would never really notice the difference unless they were specifically looking for it.

While this may not be universal, personally, the people that I've met and known who are absolute framerate queens (pitching a fit when something isn't at 60fps, can't go 60fps, or higher, etc.) tend to be people who started gaming on pretty close to current hardware, and thus never knew anything different.  Folks who started out playing 3D games when 10-15fps was pretty generous (even if we weren't thrilled with it even then) tend to be far more forgiving and understanding of how difficult it can be for developers to guarantee a constant FPS while delivering a great/amazing looking experience.

[phart010 | 1,707]

At 30 it needs to be locked at 30.

If it’s goes up and down it needs to be 40-60 range

[RH | 4,903]

Yes it can  matter and it does with Gotham Knights, though everyone is different in what they see.

A large part of the problem is the lack of motion blur.  At these high resolutions (1440 to 4k), when there is no motion blur (and there isn't with Gotham) then many of us can see the stuttering in areas where there it high-contrast motion.  This isn't "getting your panties in a wad" over nothing.  This actually hurts my eyes after a short while and I wish it didn't.

Also, to compare to gaming on a CRT at 30 FPS isn't apples to apples, at least on TVs rather than the better PC monitors at the end of the CRT era.  Phosphor bloom helped a lot with diminishing the effect the jaggedness of lower frame rates, while traditional cameras could show video with motion blur, which modern games have to bake into the render pipeline.  Gotham Knights chose to not add motion blur (from what I've heard) and that's probably the real issue.

People like to throw out a semi-false claim that "our eyes can't distinguish any difference above 30FPS" but that's simply not true because our eyes don't work like TVs and monitors with refresh rates.  Our eyes are capable of picking up the smallest amounts of light and change.  When our eyes take in a tremendous amount of light, our brains piece the image back together.  However, if you took a video and ran it at 10 FPS, you might not see a difference if the shift in light between each frame is barely imperceptible.  Imagine a video of something like a slow fading gradient shift of just one color from light to dark.  We may not notice a low frame rate because the change is insignificant.  However, show someone a black screen and then flash a white screen at them at a rate of something like a ridiculous 10,000FPS.  We'd see that single frame because regardless of how fast the LEDs (or whatever) are turned on on the screen, if they emit photons, we see it.  Does that mean we can see at 10,000FPS well... yes and no.  Context matters!

30 vs 60 FPS is a tough debate and it seems to be different for everyone.  Some of us are a bit more sensitive to the change than others.   For us, seeing a 30 FPS game (without motion blur) may be like others seeing a 20 FPS screen, and maybe even a 15 FPS screen for the "lucky" few with poorer vision.  But for those of us who see the jaggedy "pop" of each frame, it can actually start to hurt and strain the eyes.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,531]

So in what I posted above, the video on the left hurts your eyes, but the video on the right is fine?

Aren't your favorite games all on PS1?  Shouldn't that make the console almost completely unplayable for you?

[Reed Rothchild | 9,531]

My takeaway here is that I need to prioritize playing my copy of Arkham Knight.  City and Asylum are great.  Seems the bigger problem with Gotham is that without Rocksteady being involved many other pieces took a hit.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,531]

...and I just googled it, and Arkham Knight for PS4 is locked at 30 FPS.

[TDIRunner | 2,740]

 

 

[Lynda Monica | 350]

I do like to point to F-Zero X when it comes to the debate of 30 vs 60, as the developers of the series recognized that speed is what makes F-Zero special. In order to maintain the series' speed, they sacrificed the visuals to make sure the game runs at 60 FPS. Funnily enough, the game looks incredible due to achieving 60 FPS on an N64.

Yet at the same time Sonic Colors on the Wii runs at a steady 30 FPS, and is also a series all about speed. However the game is so fun and the action itself is so speedy that it doesn't really make much of an impact on gameplay to be at 30. 60 FPS is always nice, but it's not a necessity even for games that focus on speed. What Sonic Colors loses in 60 FPS it gains in being ones of the most visually stunning Wii games.

In the end I really don't care if a game is 60 or 30 FPS, so long as the frame rate doesn't drop.

[Sumez | 2,952]

I don't think you can use video comparisons for much. Most films are 25 or 30 fps and look just fine.

Where the 30 to 60 fps distinction is important is when it comes to reactive gameplay - the difference is huge and anyone claiming they can't tell must be really good at lying to themselves.

 

That's not saying 30fps isn't fine in a lot of games, and I've put up with less as well. In really slow moving games, and in turn based ones obviously, it hardly makes a difference. Also in 3D games where the camera is mostly fixed on a somewhat distant character (such as the Mario games), the framerate definitely isn't damning either. But in a 2D game where the only way a camera can move is completely laterally, a low framerate will stick out a lot, especially in a fast game like, say, Sonic.

But no one could possibly argue that 60fps still isn't a sizeable improvement in most of those cases. More than 60 might be better too, but the returns diminish very fast beyond that.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Sumez

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

Honest question: does it matter what monitor or TV you're using if it hold steady at 30? Like will a low end screen even be able to properly represent 90-120 fps?