Acceptable Frame Rate

[EAP3D]

(poll) What is the minimum acceptable framerate for playing racer , in your opinion (or other driving sims/arcades)?

Similar to the "What is your GPU?" thread, these results will help me (and others?) determine how detailed of models to offer when creating scratch made cars or tracks.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Welp, I had to play Harvest Moon 64 on a K6-2 450 mhz in earlier 2001, until I got my Athlon 900 mhz, which was in June, 2001.

I was lucky to get 15 FPS with the K6-2 450 mhz. And because the audio is supposed to sync with the video, a slow down of less than about 20 FPS would definitely cause audio stuttering.

I had to use a bigger audio buffer with Nemu 0.7a, at the time, back in 2001. But would still be at least minor audio stuttering. Me remembering that makes me look like an old fart, lol.

With Nintendo 64 emulation, the processor often mattered more than the video card, even though it requires hardware 3D accelerated video, with at least a GeForce, TNT2 or equivalent for it to work reasonably.

The Rare games are known for making me get a processor upgrade. Even though Conker's Bad Fur Day and Banjo Kazooie were OK with a 900 mhz processor.

 

[MitchVL]

Well i just found out why shadowmapping is slow, it's not the seperate rendering of the shadow maps, but the pixel shaders that add the shadowmap that eat away the frames
Result... sit down for this ... framerate, went from 20 to 60.
Obviously this on MY setup with a 9800GT, this is not guaranteed on all setups (although i'm pretty sure it will run faster on older cards now)

Pixel shaders are WAY too slow at this moment, gDebugger told me that vertex shaders take up 3 ms of time and pixel shaders 40 ms (even after optimisation), so there is deffinitely some room for optimisation.

 

[EAP3D]

I just made this, hopefully it helps to explain some things:

http://eapdesign.vndv.com/fps/

 

[Mr Whippy]

You can see the difference between 50 > 100fps...

100fps would be nice, but I'm happy enough with 60+ really...

 

[luthobu]

I just made this, hopefully it helps to explain some things:

How strange. Best view at 60fps.. noted. Thanks for the test.

 

[EAP3D]

How strange. Best view at 60fps.. noted. Thanks for the test.

Yeah, because you probably have a 60hz monitor.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Hehe, it was best here at 100hz.

Higher fps is always better, but as a lower cut-off 50fps is as low as I'd want to go for smooth response etc. 50fps ~ 20ms lag, which is a nice online gaming ping... if it goes over about 40ms it is quite noticeable in an FPS, which is 25fps...

I aim to not go under 60fps, and will tweak my gfx settings so I almost always have over 60fps.

Dave

 

[Some1]

One thing I absolutely hate is frame tearing - happens when the FPS is higher than the monitor refresh rate. That's why I usually play with vsync on.
Without vsync, yes, the motions look smoother at high fps but tearing becomes too apparent when moving or turning fast.
I think with "true motion blur" which isn't really achievable yet on current hardware, things would look very smooth even in 30 fps.

 

[Stereo]

I think with "true motion blur" which isn't really achievable yet on current hardware, things would look very smooth even in 30 fps.

As frame rates rise motion blur shouldn't be necessary anymore, same with improved contrast rates on monitors displacing bloom. They're faking things that come as a natural consequence of our eyes.


If you do have extra frames the monitor can't display, you might as well do motion blur the "natural" way (expose each displayed frame as the sum of a bunch of frames), but it would be better to have a higher quality screen that can actually display the better framerate. Our eyes don't really work in a "framerate", they just expose continuously.



A movie mode which simulates a camera accurately would be an interesting addition to Racer (and in that case, 24 or 30 fps would be appropriate). But as a simulator, higher framerate means better feedback. It's a lot easier for me to post fast laps when I'm getting 60 fps than when I'm getting 30 or even 40-45.

 

[Some1]

A movie mode which simulates a camera accurately would be an interesting addition to Racer (and in that case, 24 or 30 fps would be appropriate). But as a simulator, higher framerate means better feedback. It's a lot easier for me to post fast laps when I'm getting 60 fps than when I'm getting 30 or even 40-45.

I guess it comes down to personal preference - I prefer movie like 24-30 fps with motion blur.
Still, the human eye also has something that can be called "motion blur". Look at the roadside when traveling 90km/h and you see that everything becomes a little blurry as it passes by.

Anyway, I still think that there is a point at which it becomes almost impossible to notice the feedback difference after 100fps?

In racer, we should have two types of views - human eye view (from cockpit for example) that would simulate what a person sees and camera view, that would simulate, what a camera sees...

 

[luthobu]

Yeah, because you probably have a 60hz monitor.

Correct. At the time I did. It has been replaced with a larger DELL which runs
1280x1024 32bpp @75Mhz. Better for sure. I'll try the test again later and see
if it makes a difference.

 

[n'is]

30-40 is always better