How many FPS can you actually see?

[sieze2]

Zero

We Humans don't see in Frame per second unless we have Robot Camera eyes.

When playing games at high FPS it's more about feel and motion flow so 60fps vs 120fps feels and looks more smooth.

exactly

 

[shankly1985]

A good away to compare the Refresh rate flicker.. Remember when you was a Kid, did you ever draw a cartoon on paper, each image abit different and then flick them so fast it made a motion?

The faster you did it the smoother it looked well 60hz vs 120hz

If you get me

 

[ubersonic]

It's not something that can be answered conclusively because of a number of effecting variables, there's a very good explanation here: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

 

[Orangey]

Sports broadcasting is a good example... to get a good slow-mo on something that happened in an instant, 1/10 of a second, you need to have faster cameras sending more frames to the control room per second.

Games like Civ you won't notice much difference, but competitive FPS you will see benefits all the way up to 120fps and beyond. You're constantly making quick mouselooks everywhere, evaluating the situation, packing more info into each second gives you an advantage.

 

[Gregster]

They ran a test on combat pilots where they had an image of something different on a 320 fps video. Most of the pilots picked out what the image was, so it is conceivably possible for the human eyes to see more than 320 fps.

My memory is bad, so I will dig out the info.

Edit: Didn't take long

The USAF, in testing their pilots for visual response time, used a simple test to see if the pilots could distinguish small changes in light. In their experiment a picture of an aircraft was flashed on a screen in a dark room at 1/220th of a second. Pilots were consistently able to "see" the afterimage as well as identify the aircraft. This simple and specific situation not only proves the ability to percieve 1 image within 1/220 of a second, but the ability to interpret higher FPS.

http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html

It was 220 not 320.

 

[shankly1985]

Sports broadcasting is a good example... to get a good slow-mo on something that happened in an instant, 1/10 of a second, you need to have faster cameras sending more frames to the control room per second.

Games like Civ you won't notice much difference, but competitive FPS you will see benefits all the way up to 120fps and beyond. You're constantly making quick mouselooks everywhere, evaluating the situation, packing more info into each second gives you an advantage.

Its also very different how TV showing vs Games display a Frame.. You get a understanding of this if you capture a screenshot. On a Game you cap a full frame but on a film you dont and its why they look blurry.

 

[Zefan]

That's fine for a passive medium like film - but a game environment reacts to your virtual movements, and your brain is a lot more sensitive when trying to perceive direct motion as a consequence of your actions.

It's not only that. A lot of games have little to no motion blur. If they did, 24fps would look just fine.

:edit: To above, you do capture a full frame... it's just blurred due to the nature of the original capture of those moving objects.

 

[johny dolan]

I play iracing and if I lock the fps to 60 can feel the lag with the wheel 80 fps much better but 100 plus the car feels more alive and responsive so I locked the fps to 125.

 

[andybird123]

in tests with fighter pilots, they found typically that they could discern and identify the silhouette of an aircraft shown for a single frame at speeds equivalent to 220fps (4.5ms)

 

[imginy]

You clearly haven't played BF4!!

Is bf4 bad at high fps?

I been playing it a lot but I play at 60hz

 

[jvc9000]

It's not only that. A lot of games have little to no motion blur. If they did, 24fps would look just fine.

:edit: To above, you do capture a full frame... it's just blurred due to the nature of the original capture of those moving objects.

That's a gross misconception. You base it on the fact that movies look "just fine" at 24fps. When in reality there's a HUGE difference between 24 and 60 fps even in movies. 24 fps in movies is used for artistic reasons, because they want your brain to register it like a story being told not like live action. Try watching a 60fps version of a movie then a 24 fps one see how much more smoother and how much more detail you can see, that not necessarily being a good thing.

 

[~>Dg<~]

and so it begins....

 

[flopper]

seeing hobbit in HFR3D 48fps its just so much better than what I seen as far.
saw thor the dark world and its just not the same quality.

 

[Zefan]

So a 60FPS movie captures more detail than a 24fps one? My word, you might be on to something there, the shock, the horror!!!

A 60fps movie will contain less than half the naturally occurring motion blur, therefore it's obvious that there will be more detail. This entire thread is not about the level of detail that you can capture by increasing the FPS that movies are captured at, it's to do with where the line is drawn in terms of how high FPS have to be (specifically in games) for there to be no perceivable improvement by further increase.

When I say a movie looks "just fine" at 24fps I'm referring to the smoothness of the video in terms of perceived FPS. Motion blur increases smoothness at the cost of detail, it ain't rocket science

 

[teppic]

It's very different comparing a blank shot with an instant image appearing for a fraction of a second, as the difference is very large. We can perceive a dramatic change, e.g. a light switching on and off, at a much higher frequency than an image slightly changing from what it was before, as is the case with video or games.

We're so used to 24fps that it doesn't look jerky, but of course it is - and obviously it's never displayed at 24Hz, or it'd be unwatchable.

 

[Zefan]

We're so used to 24fps that it doesn't look jerky, but of course it is - and obviously it's never displayed at 24Hz, or it'd be unwatchable.

It would be very watchable!

:edit: Well it would flicker very badly... but it'd still be "smooth" due to blur.

 

[Havana_UK]

There have been a number of studies conducted into perceptible flicker with digital lighting technologies that suggest that humans can detect flicker even at up to 500Hz, however what the study also discovered was that the amplitude of the flicker and rate of change had a significant impact on what was detectable and what wasn't.

There have also been some studies conducted into epilepsy related to digital lighting which have identified that the human brain can notice changes that the eye cannot.

I know neither of these relate exactly to the OP's question, but they are relevant all the same.

 

[Orangey]

Interesting to note about that pilot test, it seems to imply that they relied upon the persistence of the screen to ID an object. If they use Lightboost on the cockpit screens you might not get that unintended benefit.

 

[Bickaxe]

Some interesting responses, thanks.

Makes me wonder if you would really notice the difference between 2 GPU's with similar spec on certain games

 

[Rroff]

Some interesting responses, thanks.

Makes me wonder if you would really notice the difference between 2 GPU's with similar spec on certain games

Only really in terms of software support, stability and possibly feature sets. Unless one is dropping below 30fps or 60fps (depending on what they are holding at) significantly more often than another.