60fps cap for 2.0?

[Elexia]

Shouldn't be an FPS cap period for a PC game and this is one thing that has bugged me since XI so I hope this new engine isn't restricted and each individual is allowed to run XIV how they would like.

I don't want to get into the argument of lalala you won't notice any difference above 60fps, well for those of you that were lucky enough to experience XIV in the beta at 120fps I noticed a significant improvement.

You do realize developers don't make a FPS cap just to fuck with you, right?

[Molly_Millions]

Shouldn't be an FPS cap period for a PC game and this is one thing that has bugged me since XI so I hope this new engine isn't restricted and each individual is allowed to run XIV how they would like.

I don't want to get into the argument of lalala you won't notice any difference above 60fps, well for those of you that were lucky enough to experience XIV in the beta at 120fps I noticed a significant improvement.

and do you realize how many people complained about optimization during the beta, right? Yet other complaining about how they could fry an egg on their video card? limiting frame-rates is part of optimization.

[Onisake]

just to keep the arguments to a minimum:

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frame...humans_see.htm

I see it more as a discussion than an argument. we have different preferences on what we like and look for.

but this puts my opinion in better words than i did. and explains it better. Thanks for the link.

and do you realize how many people complained about optimization during the beta, right? Yet other complaining about how they could fry an egg on their video card? limiting frame-rates is part of optimization.

I agree with this. desperately need optimization SE. I have dual 580s and i shouldn't have a problem rendering the game at all, but i need to tone things down so my GPUs dont' go crazy. FFXI was limited because of PS2s specs. which was a bummer but it kept the game running smooth.

[Molly_Millions]

I see it more as a discussion than an argument. we have different preferences on what we like and look for.

but this puts my opinion in better words than i did. and explains it better. Thanks for the link.

Yeah, it goes into much more detail than what I was hoping to find actually. In short, FPS = digital; eyeball = analog. 24 fps is plenty with motion blur, 100 or more could needed without if you want the game to be viewed 'reality smooth'. But there are other factors as well, you may need a better mouse for example.

[Mirage]

oops. mis-read that. either way you dont' really notice a difference between 30FPS and 60FPS. saying 30FPS isn't smooth is the same as saying 60FPS isn't smooth. if it doesn't appear smooth it's either 1) not displaying at 30FPS and you're getting lag in your rendering 2)you're on the far end of the visual spectrum and capable of viewing things at greater than 30FPS


I've seen movies in 60FPS. i've seen the same movie, on the same projector at 30FPS and not noticed a difference. 60FPS projectors typically have better color capabilities and far higher resolution. this improves quality FAR more than FPS. Also keep in mind these movies are recorded at 25-30 FPS. displaying them at 60FPS doesn't improve anything, you're just seeing more 'blur'. but what really sets it apart is the resolution. not the FPS.

the human eye can differentiate up to 15 images per second. most people are below this. this doesnt' mean we are caped at 15 FPS. it's just anything above that our brain won't process. it's too much information.

so yes, technically speaking the eye is capable of seeing more than that. but the brain can't keep up. it's like playing sounds above/below the spectrum our brain can process. our ears pick it up, but it's junk data to our brain so it just throws it out

I've cut out the parts that I don't have a direct disagreement with. It was not to make your post seem less coherent.


You are however missing the point here. I'm not talking about videos that are recorded in 24 (or 30) FPS then "upscaled" to 60 fps, I'm talking about videos that are actually recorded at 60 fps and been at 60 fps all the way from the camera to your display. This is what looks really good.

The amount of "frames" you can process is not something that is limited by your eyes. This is dependent on the type of data you need to process as well as how good you are at processing visual data. This is a skill that can, to a certain extent, be trained. The most prime example is a Formula 1 driver, who typically can process many times more visual information per second than most people can. If you fed 15 frames per second to a F1 driver, I can assure you that this driver will be missing a *ton* of information that his (or her) brain was accustomed to having available for processing before.

Because eyes do not work in clean, separate frames, those faint visual changes that an extremely quick movement would give you can also be processed as visual data in your brain. These faint registrations that would not normally qualify as a "whole frame" can give you enough information for your brain to decide if further investigation of the object is worth doing. The eye can then "lock on" to the object for just enough time to properly identify it.

If this rapidly moving object was recorded with a 24fps camera, the entire object's movement would be just a blurred mess, and no amount of movement tracking done by your eyes would be able to stabilize it and get a clear image of what you're looking at. If it was captured with let's say something really crazy like 200 fps and displayed to you at that framerate, the same object would still have been a blurry mess as it was moving around, but your eyes could lock on to it and give you a clear image just like you would be able to do in real life, while everything that wasn't moving would become a blurry mess instead.

Your eyes do this all the time in real life. They stabilize everything that moves that you want to detect more accurately. Your eyes can't do this if you're watching a low-fps recording of the real world, where motion blur distorts the image data permanently.

Playing action games at high framerates lets you do the same thing. Of course, it is not as important to the actual gameplay of FF14, because it's relatively slow paced and inhibited by latency, but you can still notice a much smoother experience if you move the camera around fast, and if another character runs past you really close to your camera. At a low framerate, an object moving past you close to the camera would be harder for the eyes to track if the entire run-by was just a total of 10 frames(1
/3rd of a second at 30fps), rather than 40 (1/3 of a second at 120fps). The eyes (or rather, your brain) would have had a lot more information to detect speed and direction with, and therefore be able to more easily lock your eyes on to the moving object to stabilize it.

-edit-
changed values in examples to reflect more practical situations.


Also, don't worry. I know exactly which specifications to look for when I buy my visual equipment. As you might have noticed, I have a more than average interest in how these things work .

[Onisake]

I've cut out the parts that I don't have a direct disagreement with. It was not to make your post seem less coherent.


You are however missing the point here. I'm not talking about videos that are recorded in 24 (or 30) FPS then "upscaled" to 60 fps, I'm talking about videos that are actually recorded at 60 fps and been at 60 fps all the way from the camera to your display. This is what looks really good.

The amount of "frames" you can process is not something that is limited by your eyes. This is dependent on the type of data you need to process as well as how good you are at processing visual data. This is a skill that can, to a certain extent, be trained. The most prime example is a Formula 1 driver, who typically can process many times more visual information per second than most people can. If you fed 15 frames per second to a F1 driver, I can assure you that this driver will be missing a *ton* of information that his (or her) brain was accustomed to having available for processing before.

Because eyes do not work in clean, separate frames, those faint visual changes that an extremely quick movement would give you can also be processed as visual data in your brain. These faint registrations that would not normally qualify as a "whole frame" can give you enough information for your brain to decide if further investigation of the object is worth doing. The eye can then "lock on" to the object for just enough time to properly identify it.

If this rapidly moving object was recorded with a 24fps camera, the entire object's movement would be just a blurred mess, and no amount of movement tracking done by your eyes would be able to stabilize it and get a clear image of what you're looking at. If it was captured with let's say something really crazy like 200 fps and displayed to you at that framerate, the same object would still have been a blurry mess as it was moving around, but your eyes could lock on to it and give you a clear image just like you would be able to do in real life, while everything that wasn't moving would become a blurry mess instead.

Your eyes do this all the time in real life. They stabilize everything that moves that you want to detect more accurately. Your eyes can't do this if you're watching a low-fps recording of the real world, where motion blur distorts the image data permanently.

Playing action games at high framerates lets you do the same thing. Of course, it is not as important to the actual gameplay of FF14, because it's relatively slow paced and inhibited by latency, but you can still notice a much smoother experience if you move the camera around fast, and if another character runs past you really close to your camera. At a low framerate, an object moving past you close to the camera would be harder for the eyes to track if the entire run-by was just a total of 10 frames(1
/3rd of a second at 30fps), rather than 40 (1/3 of a second at 120fps). The eyes (or rather, your brain) would have had a lot more information to detect speed and direction with, and therefore be able to more easily lock your eyes on to the moving object to stabilize it.

-edit-
changed values in examples to reflect more practical situations.


Also, don't worry. I know exactly which specifications to look for when I buy my visual equipment. As you might have noticed, I have a more than average interest in how these things work .

I see where you are coming from now.

using a high FPS camera to record is acompletely different scenario. and in my experience this is only done so you can slow a fast moving object down. (IE: record at 200FPS so you can slow it down to see detail of movement.)

for commercial purposes high FPS cameras are a waste. recording an IMAX movie at 60FPS would be a monumental waste of resources. most cameras are in the 25-30 FPS range.

for pro-gaming especially in First person shooters i undersatnd the need for high FPS. but for most people this is not needed. we can't take advantage of it. our brains can't process that fast to make flash decisions.

our brains are also capable of filling in gaps. much like we can read a sentence even if all the letters aren't exactly in the right place. like many people have said latency in games like this are more important than FPS.

Of course I also understand the argument that many of us want our games to look really good. and FFXIV looks really good, so seeing frames drop can be... disappointing.

things in FFXIV aren't really moving fast enough i think for 60+ frames to be needed. i don't' think much above 30 is needed when looking at the entire population, especially seeing as there are a lot of people who's PCs aren't capable of this. it's better to optimize to a lower framerate and make the game more enjoyable to a wider audience.

[Mirage]

Actually, a few movie directors really want to film using a higher framerate than what they are working with now. The Hobbit is actually filmed in 48fps, which I guess is in order to be able to re-use existing 3D cinema equipment, making it much cheaper than having to replace everything with equipment able to do for example 50 or 60 fps.

Using 48FPS, you can effectively just put the video directly into existing 3D projectors, because 24FPS 3D movies are in fact 48FPS as far as the projector is concerned. You just have to show the same "angle" for both eyes, and then we can just take off our 3D glasses and view the movie in 48FPS with no playback equipment change needed, except perhaps a firmware update.

At the same time, the 48fps recording can just be down-sampled to 24FPS in postprocessing in order to create a video compatible for non-3D cinemas.

I'm really looking forwards to it.

Traditionally, movies have been kept at 24fps because they were shot with actual film, and increasing the framerate would mean double the cost from film alone, as well as doubling the weight and physical size of all the film they had to move around. In the old days, film was really fucking expensive, so this was a big no-no. As time moved on, film became cheaper, but it had sort of become tradition, and that "cinema feel" is kind of tied to the use of film and 24fps.

Now, however, if you shoot the movies with digital cameras instead of film based ones, transitioning from 24fps to something else isn't nearly as problematic on the recording side of things. Moving the recorded videos around afterwards isn't nearly as much trouble either, because digital storage is relatively cheap and takes a lot less space. Not to mention, it's reusable.



Anyway back to game stuff.

I'll agree with you that more than 60fps isn't really needed, but the way I see it, there's no reason to hard-cap the framerate at 60. Hard-capped framerates are typically something you see in console games, and is really uncommon in PC games. Unless something is really screwy in their new engine, I don't see a reason to enforce a cap of 60fps, when just about every other PC game can run at as many fps your PC can possibly handle and still make the animations play back at the right speed.

When I hear Yoshida talk about the game being optimized for 30fps, I'm more inclined to take that as this is the target fps that you should be able to get with most computers in decently crowded areas, not that the game won't render things efficiently at a higher framerate than that. I'll take another example, just cause I love examples.

I currently use settings that makes my game run at 45-60 FPS for 90% of the areas in the game. In uldah i dip down into the 30s as a result of being CPU limited when there is a ton of characters on screen. However, with the same settings, if I go to Turning Leaf (hatehateHATE!), i will drop down to 10-25 fps if there is more than one treant on screen at the same time. At worst, i've been down to 7. This is with the same settings that give me 45-60 FPS for almost the entire rest of the game. So, what I would call this is a game that is not properly optimized for running at 30fps. This is on a GTX460 1GB.

Now we can try imagining how it would be on a PS3 which will not be running at more than 30fps for most areas. With the current huge gap in graphics requirement from one area to another, they would be getting something like 5 fps in Turning Leaf. Optimizing the game for 30FPS to me just sounds like they're making sure that no zones lead to a framerate below 30fps, when your settings let you achieve 30FPS most other places. Of course, you will have variations in framerate based on area and player count, but you should try avoiding situations where one area drops your framerate to one 5th of what you normally have. You shouldn't need to reduce graphics settings for one single area, especially when you're even solo in that area.

[Syris]

Well, I figured this would happen. Regardless I still find the discussion very interesting. I have learned a lot from many of the posters here! :-)

As an owner of a true 120hz monitor (benq xl2420t) I have noticed the difference. 30fps vs 60fps vs 60+fps is not comparable in any gaming environment. I'm not talking about watching TV, or going to the movies. I see (or should I say feel?) a huge difference in fluidity when gaming. For those saying its senseless to run an mmorpg above 30 or 60fps I would have to disagree as well. My experience with mmorpg's has always been (with my older 60hz monitor) the closer to 60fps the better for both PVE and PVP. Any game that my computer can achieve 60+ fps makes this monitor worth every penny.

My OP was simply to instigate whether SE would be considering giving players the "uncapped option," be it for future proofing or for anyone who can currently run the game at 60 fps constant in various areas. My logic was simply that the new engine would be booth beautiful and well optimized enabling a variety of rigs to run this game with smooth frames. The more options the better.

[Ashenspire]

60fps is all you need.

Trying to push the game to 60fps+ would be a waste of time, when it would be better served to increase the quality of the motion blur effect.

[Antipika]

*rolls eyes*

you do realize 'real time' cameras record at 25-30 FPS right? an IMAX camera records at 24 FPS.

saying 60FPS is not smooth is ridiculous. if it appears as not smooth, then it's not displaying at 60FPS. the upper limit of the human eye is around 35FPS. there is no reason to go over 30 for most people.

--------

All right so first I get to reply to someone involving network latency with Framerate, and now a video game gets compared to a movie. What's next?

"upper limit of human eyes" + "fps" = complete non sense. You can't measure that up in "fps".

As Mirage I was saying 30fps isn't smooth, 60fps is ok.

either way you dont' really notice a difference between 30FPS and 60FPS.

Sorry, go see a doctor. You are a lost cause if you are unable to notice the difference between 30fps and 60fps. And I am actually serious when saying that. Record a gameplay footage (could it be XIV or most of games) at 30fps, then at 60fps. Do an ABX test. If you fail to identify which is which, you have issues.

Edit:
Below are two links to two videos (sorry it's not XIV, couldn't be bothered to launch XIV now, fraps and encode twice, so I just re-used something I already had).

Both videos are coming from the very same source. The same video codec, bitrate, resolution etc. are used. (x264) Filesize are roughly the same (62MB) One video is @30fps. Another is @60fps. Try to guess which is which. Off course you can easily "cheat" and check the file details within Windows or with your media player and you will see which file 30fps and which is 60fps.

Go and tell me you can't notice a difference now. While on MMORPG, it's less of an issue to have 30fps instead of 60fps, you can still notice the difference. In certain type of games, 30fps is just... horrible. (shmup...)

Video 1
Video 2