60fps (and 1080p to some extent) limit GT5

[JBturbo]

Hi there,

Having experienced loads of the graphical 'nuances' that GT5 has to offer, it absolutely stuns me that designers continue to adhere to 60fps. It is completely unnecessary and for all intents and purposes completely pointless in a game such as GT5.

I'm not going to mention how many FPS the human eye can see, but I will mention the importance of how many it can see without experiencing artifacts. 30fps is more than enough for a game such as GT5. The fact that you are in motion with varied graphical displays most of the time renders 60fps completely stupid and pointless. Your eyes cannot process that much complex information and movement.

GT5 is working twice as hard as it needs to. The processing power would much more wisely have been spent ramping up the anti-aliasing and fidelity of the shadow simulation - which is the worst I have ever seen in a current gen game.

The only implication is that if you have a lower frame-rate then you need it to be stable, which would be piss-easy given GT5 runs at 60.

I also think that 1080p is completely unneccessary. 720p is sufficient, even given the modelling and texture quality of the cars. Unless you play it on a 70 inch display and sit 20cm from the screen you'd never notice the difference in game.

It's a real shame. Love the game but it's an exercise in futility.

 

[cairnz]

~60fps means ~30fps in 3d in the way it's done. read here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-gran-turismo-5-tech-analysis?page=3

shame you're bothered by the shadows - as it's easy to ignore, and can probably be fixed in a software update somewhere down the road

 

[Mugenjin]

I think it's awesome that they wanted to uphold a steady, high FPS since the human eye can clearly distinguish between 30/60fps. It makes the game so much more fluid which is essential to a racing game.

Anyway don't even bother bringing in the argument that the human eye supposidly cannot distinguish anymore than ~24+ FPS, which in the case of referring to monitors/screens is blatantly wrong.
Go google it if you don't believe me.

 

[HN7]

If you think 30fps is ok for a racing game, go try F1 2010 and see how horrible it is at high speed. I am glad 60fps is their priority, make the motion so much more fluid. Although I think they should stay at 720P so other things like shadow can be render better.

 

[philxthomas]

GT5 is working twice as hard as it needs to. The processing power would much more wisely have been spent ramping up the anti-aliasing and fidelity of the shadow simulation - which is the worst I have ever seen in a current gen game.

could not agree more. did they actually see the shadows before releasing the game?

whats that filthy mark on the dashboar-oh right, "shadows"

 

[drivatar]

My point of view:

Lower resolution, lower detail but never give 60fps up. It's one of the most important elements of such a racing game. Sadly, GT5 fails at keeping solid 60fps .

 

[JBturbo]

I think it's awesome that they wanted to uphold a steady, high FPS since the human eye can clearly distinguish between 30/60fps. It makes the game so much more fluid which is essential to a racing game.

Anyway don't even bother bringing in the argument that the human eye supposidly cannot distinguish anymore than ~24+ FPS, which in the case of referring to monitors/screens is blatantly wrong.
Go google it if you don't believe me.

...which is why I explicitly state that I'm not going to talk about how many FPS the eye can process....

That said, you don't need 60fps for gameplay to remain completely and utterly smooth, you just need good motion depiction by using motion blur. If this was applied more efficiently you could run GT5 at 60fps as it is now, and at 24fps with good motion blur, and the 24fps would look just as smooth.

HN7 you misunderstand what the eye sees at speed. I've not played F1 2010 but if it stutters at high speed that's either;

1) Poor implementation of motion blur
2) Frame rate variance

 

[Mugenjin]

Motion Blur is not without disadvantages though. That's why I prefer high FPS and the odd shadows don't bother me that much.

 

[TK42OnE]

I agree with the op. It's a nice bullet point for the back of the box, but very other game I have looks fine at 720p and 30fps.

 

[PirateThom]

60fps is very important for racing games, it gives that fluidity and the sense of speed.

While 30fps is OK for other genres, 60fps is a MINIMUM for racing games.

 

[JBturbo]

Motion Blur is not without disadvantages though. That's why I prefer high FPS and the odd shadows don't bother me that much.

Motion blur is what our brains induce though, when trying to process information at high speed. It's what happens when you look out of your side window whilst going at 30mph and everything blurs (not talking to you specifically here Mugen, I'm sure you know what it is).

It is disadvantageous when it is at GTA4 levels, when you go quickly and the background streams into one big mess.

The problem with 60fps is that in games like GT5 it's completely unnecessary. The reason being that whilst the human eye (with difficulty, not all can) can observe a single frame at 60fps, in motion it simply cannot.

Thus, when GT5 displays at 60fps, your eye brain can't process the motion and fills in the gaps, creating motion blur.

Since this is the case, why on earth not just have the game at 30fps and already have a small level of motion blur (we're talking blurring 2 pixels into one!?) and essentially save your brain the hassle.

You see exactly the same thing, just one takes half as much processing power. It's just as smooth.

 

[FT-1]

As a driving instructor would say, keep your eyes on the road! Don't get distracted by the shadows on the dashboard.

I like playing racing games at 60fps. It seems alot smoother and physics (for simulations only) seem more realistic at a higher frame rate.

 

[petalpusher6]

60 fps is targeted to get the best feedback of the physic engine, not to enjoy a higher framerate, it's not an eye candy at all, it's a prequisite for a sim.
Motion blur would be an heresy for an obvious reason : visibility. Driving is mostly an exercise of vision (focusing at different range quickly)
GT5 has no doubt the best filtering, especially on the ground, amongst other racing game on console. I think that was Yamauchi first priority, he made a trade off in resolution for AA though.

 

[Corrigan]

shame you're bothered by the shadows - as it's easy to ignore

Nope.

and can probably be fixed in a software update somewhere down the road

Nope.

 

[JBturbo]

60 fps is targeted to get the best feedback of the physic engine, not to enjoy a higher framerate, it's not an eye candy at all, it's a prequisite for a sim.
Motion blur would be an heresy for an obvious reason : visibility. Driving is mostly an exercise of vision (focusing at different range quickly)

But this is not true.

For a start, physics engine calculations don't work on an FPS basis. If they did, then 30 calculations PER SECOND is vastly more than enough.

As for motion blur and visibility, there's this huge misunderstanding that higher FPS's are better!

Get in your car and go for a drive at 15mph. Fix your eyes at a spot out of your side window. Even at 15mph it will be incredibly blurred. This is in real life! With an unlimited FPS! At 15mph and infinite FPS your eyes will still blur. They just can't process that information.

So why is it that people go - 'oh but when you're travelling at 200mph you need 60fps for it to be smooth.' What? That makes no sense.

It wouldn't matter if GT5 had 10,000,000 fps. Your eyes still have to blur at any significant motion.

Essentially the developers had this choice;

1. Have 60fps and have the players brain blur as required
2. Have 30fps, and implement a 2 pixel (think about how big that is) motion blur instead.

 

[icefox1983]

man... this is a racing sim game. think about it. when traveling at 220km/hr, namely 60meters/second, a 60fps means brake point accuracy of 1 meter, and 30fps means brake point accuracy of 2 meters. no serious sim racer can tolerate braking to happen 2 meters away from what he/she'd like to.

from visual point of view, 30fps is good enough. but GT5 is for racing, not viewing. that's why in game 60fps is the goal, while when playing back 30fps is acceptable (you can tell the game's playing back at 30fps during many large angle shots).

 

[JBturbo]

man... this is a racing sim game. think about it. when traveling at 220km/hr, namely 60meters/second, a 60fps means brake point accuracy of 1 meter, and 30fps means brake point accuracy of 2 meters. no serious sim racer can tolerate braking to happen 2 meters away from what he/she'd like to.

from visual point of view, 30fps is good enough. but GT5 is for racing, not viewing. that's why in game 60fps is the goal, while when playing back 30fps is acceptable (you can tell the game's playing back at 30fps during many large angle shots).

No

It doesn't mean that the brake point accuracy is any less whatsoever. That's just complete gibberish. As long as you don't have actual jitters the accuracy is exactly the same.

 

[mr_VOLCANO]

I must be superman then, because i have no problem seeing the difference in frame rate on games like gt5 vs shift, cod vs bad company.. 60 fps is miles better in shooter games and racing games imo.

 

[snicker3s]

Since this is the case, why on earth not just have the game at 30fps and already have a small level of motion blur (we're talking blurring 2 pixels into one!?) and essentially save your brain the hassle.

You see exactly the same thing, just one takes half as much processing power. It's just as smooth.

My thoughts on this (correct me if im wrong )
Computing blur takes resources.
Computing realistic takes even more resources. So some of the processing profit is already lost.
With this realistic blur it might look as good as 60 fps(which I doubt), but it wont be as reactive.

-> it takes 1/30th of a second before you get feedback from your steering inputs, at 60 fps you get this twice as fast, and for racing games this seems very important.

 

[icefox1983]

No

It doesn't mean that the brake point accuracy is any less whatsoever. That's just complete gibberish. As long as you don't have actual jitters the accuracy is exactly the same.

r u sure? I know the way games are rendered means a 1-3 frames delay (called buffer), and you can do the rest of the math.

 

[icefox1983]

I must be superman then, because i have no problem seeing the difference in frame rate on games like gt5 vs shift, cod vs bad company.. 60 fps is miles better in shooter games and racing games imo.

you are absolutely right, I feel obvious input delay at high speed with Shift

 

[ddl8]

Hi there,

Having experienced loads of the graphical 'nuances' that GT5 has to offer, it absolutely stuns me that designers continue to adhere to 60fps. It is completely unnecessary and for all intents and purposes completely pointless in a game such as GT5.

I'm not going to mention how many FPS the human eye can see, but I will mention the importance of how many it can see without experiencing artifacts. 30fps is more than enough for a game such as GT5. The fact that you are in motion with varied graphical displays most of the time renders 60fps completely stupid and pointless. Your eyes cannot process that much complex information and movement.

GT5 is working twice as hard as it needs to. The processing power would much more wisely have been spent ramping up the anti-aliasing and fidelity of the shadow simulation - which is the worst I have ever seen in a current gen game.

The only implication is that if you have a lower frame-rate then you need it to be stable, which would be piss-easy given GT5 runs at 60.

I also think that 1080p is completely unneccessary. 720p is sufficient, even given the modelling and texture quality of the cars. Unless you play it on a 70 inch display and sit 20cm from the screen you'd never notice the difference in game.

It's a real shame. Love the game but it's an exercise in futility.

Man I disagree with you!!! I notice right away when the game runs at 30 fps, its like a slideshow for me, however I must admit that there is a bunch of people who wont differenciate 10fps from 60fps.

60 fps become even more important when there is action on the screen - llike smoke, rain, other cars, sparks etc etc etc.

 

[JBturbo]

r u sure? I know the way games are rendered means a 1-3 frames delay (called buffer), and you can do the rest of the math.

Just think about it, if the visuals are perfectly smooth, then why does it matter how many FPS you have?

 

[mumixam]

I suggest giving this link a read as it may help clarify why some people want higher fps.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

 

[icefox1983]

Just think about it, if the visuals are perfectly smooth, then why does it matter how many FPS you have?

very simple, because when you brake the car it matters when the car starts to slow down!! that happens when the car is rendered on your TV, and that is a 2+ meters (6+ feet) delay with 30 fps, which is unacceptable!

I said already, from a visual point of view, 30fps is not bad, and in fact GT5 in replay often drops to 30fps, but when actually playing the game 30fps means unacceptable delay in control, even the visauls are pefectly smooth.

 

[ddl8]

deleted

 

[blaaah]

1080p is essential in my view. So is very smooth FPS. What they should cut down on is detail/texture/objects. Graphical options should be included with all games which can allow the user to reduce the graphical load.

 

[JBturbo]

My thoughts on this (correct me if im wrong )
Computing blur takes resources.
Computing realistic takes even more resources. So some of the processing profit is already lost.
With this realistic blur it might look as good as 60 fps(which I doubt), but it wont be as reactive.

-> it takes 1/30th of a second before you get feedback from your steering inputs, at 60 fps you get this twice as fast, and for racing games this seems very important.

1/30th of a second is 33.3 milliseconds.
1/60th of a second is 16.6 milliseconds.

The difference is 16.7 milliseconds.

The average reaction time is 215 milliseconds 👍

'Computing' realistic blur barely takes any resources at all. It just joins a few pixels together (at a fidelity you wouldn't be able to identify even in a still).

 

[petalpusher6]

But this is not true.

For a start, physics engine calculations don't work on an FPS basis. If they did, then 30 calculations PER SECOND is vastly more than enough.

As for motion blur and visibility, there's this huge misunderstanding that higher FPS's are better!

Get in your car and go for a drive at 15mph. Fix your eyes at a spot out of your side window. Even at 15mph it will be incredibly blurred. This is in real life! With an unlimited FPS! At 15mph and infinite FPS your eyes will still blur. They just can't process that information.

Physics engine are mesured in hertz wich is 1 divide by the number of cycle of calculation, if your physic engine works at 200hz it means you can get a new information every 0.005 second. You want the higher possible framerate to enable the player to get the most of these informations, a feedback to what he is doing and eventually correct it. This is what defines the driving gameplay itself in a racing game. So yes it's kinda important..

As for looking on the right hand side in the window at 15mph, yea, but it's not racing..and you can do that in GT5 it will gets blurry itself, mostly because your display won't be able to follow the pace. No racing sim have motion blur, again it's an heresy, not Forza, not iracing, etc..

That's the basic for building a sim (that and framerate).

 

[JBturbo]

very simple, because when you brake the car it matters when the car starts to slow down!! that happens when the car is rendered on your TV, and that is a 2+ meters (6+ feet) delay with 30 fps, which is unacceptable!

I said already, from a visual point of view, 30fps is not bad, and in fact GT5 in replay often drops to 30fps, but when actually playing the game 30fps means unacceptable delay in control, even the visauls are pefectly smooth.

Just think about what you're saying. It's complete and utter nonsense.

See my last post as well.