Coffee Talk #339: Frame Rate and You

One of my coworkers at GameSpy was huge on frame rate. His eyes were not happy with games running at anything less than 60 frames per second. Some people at the office were amazed by…

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One of my coworkers at GameSpy was huge on frame rate. His eyes were not happy with games running at anything less than 60 frames per second. Some people at the office were amazed by his ability to quickly detect frame rate, others thought he was obsessed over a technical feature that doesn’t contribute to the fun factor in games.

What are your feelings on frame rate? Is running at 60 frames per second important to you? Do you not care about the actual rate so long as it’s consistent? Does a smooth frame rate contribute to a game’s fun factor? Or is it something you don’t really notice or care about? Share your feelings in this filmic edition of Cofee Talk (running at 24p).

Author: RPadTV

https://rpad.tv

39 thoughts on “Coffee Talk #339: Frame Rate and You”

  1. So long as it's consistent. Frame rate drops drive me insane, especially when they impact gameplay to the point that they resemble the worst cases of online lag. But so long as it's running smoothly the exact number is rather irrelevant to me.

      1. I once lost an online league conference championship game in NCAA Football because online lag caused my kicker to miss a 34 yard FG. It hit the damn crossbar because the game didn't register my movement of the right analog stick properly due to the lag. The guy claimed it wasn't a problem because it was "karma" for a BS TD I had scored earlier, but that was completely clean because my WR was left completely uncovered at the line because he was blitzing and I knew before the ball was snapped that I had him dead to rights for a good 50 yards.

  2. Of course, the games that run at 60fps are more smooth but 30fps is just fine too. As long as the frame rate doesn't slow down and dip below 30 too much then I don't see much of a problem.

    So I wanted to give Portal 2 a chance and bought it yesterday. I did not play Portal 1 so I'm not familiar with the story. I'm enjoying the game so far but I've yet to see anything that resembles a story. I'm only on chapter 3 but all I see is a bunch of puzzle mini games. As of right now I'm not understanding the massive amount of hype this game is getting. I guess it goes back to the one Coffee Talk we had about games being overhyped because they are different.

  3. G2X in about 4 hours!!!!!

    I can care less about the frame rate as long as doesn't impact the game.

  4. The human eye cannot register more than 29.97 fps (how they determined that the threshold is 29.97 fps and not 30 fps is beyond me), HOWEVER… games tend to have massive drops all the time. If you start with a very high fps, then when the frame rate drops, it won't be noticeable at all unless it drops below 30.

    In the case of Ray's former colleague, I'm betting he noticed the fps drop below 25. This is not only logical, but further logic would deduce that he realized that games that run at 60 don't drop that far down as often.

    Does it bug me?… depends on the situation and the game. In DCU, when it gets too choppy, I have to reset because I can't take it for one, and 2, in raids… that's life or death.

  6. I notice it more for movies than video games. I just read a story from an interview with Peter Jackson that explains it perfectly. I dont have an issue with the frame rate with games because i hardly notice it.

    http://www.movieline.com/2011/04/peter-jackson-ex…

    In other news I manage to score a job interview for Friday. I need to go clothes shopping today :(

      1. Thanks BB and Rpad.

        @rpad

        I did see that Ortiz fight and i thought Berto was going to kill him. A couple of my friends mentioned that he should fight Pacquiao next. I laughed at them and told them Manny would destroy Victor. Berto had his chances but never landed clear punches on some exchanges, if he would’ve i think Victor would’ve quit. I don’t like him, Victor, to be honest. I was put off by his comment when he quit a fight because he didn’t want to get hurt and go out on his shield. where i immediately thought why are you a professional boxer!?!?

      2. Yeah, Ortiz sounded like a pussy after the Maidana fight, but he was so young at the time that I gave him slack. His performance against Berto was fantastic, but I agree that your friends are overreacting by saying he should fight Pacquiao. If Ortiz was taken to the limit by Berto then Pac would surely destroy him. Besides, Ortiz is a GBP fighter and Arum isn't playing ball with them.

      3. I agree. They will most likely setup a re-match with berto. Wherein berto will train harder and destroy ortiz.

      4. I think Ortiz takes his mandatory and then fights Berto. I'm not certain Berto destroys him under any circumstances. He can definitely do better, but he wasn't elite to begin with.

  7. Having consumer electronics overload at the moment. As you know, I've been in love with my iPad 2 for the last few weeks. My G2X review unit arrived yesterday. My way-too-late 3DS review kit (console + games) just arrived. I think I'm going to go to bed with all of them and have a nerd orgy.

      1. That song in crappy but the crowd loves to sing along and that song is the main reason he gets the pop that he does. I think going heel is the best thing for him now.

      3. It's also time for Cena to go heel. I've never seen a top face get as many boos as Cena. They won't do it because they got no face to replace Cena if he goes heel.

      6. The only problem with turning Cena heel is that it would probably kill his merchandise sales with kids. He sells a ton or merch to young fans that love cheering for him. Adult fans — the male ones anyway — have been tired of him for years.

  9. I don't know a whole lot about frame rates, but I do hate when a game goes from running smoothly to being choppy. I really hate it when that happens while playing online. I supposed I don't like the FPS to be below 30, which is probably why I don't play games on my laptop because I'm sure it can't handle that much.

  10. Very unnerving for a low frame rate. I pay good money for these machines to push out frames and polygons. Low frame rates can be attributed to bad coding, or crap hardware though so you have to make the distinction to which is happening.

    For instance, I was playing ME2 and the game would lag during cutscenes. The frames would noticeably drop below 30fps easily. I overlooked it solely because I was enjoying the game. Whenever I examine it though I know it isn't the TV, or my cables, or my surround decoder becoming the culprit. That leaves MS, EA or Bioware. To have product that will dip below a baseline of 30, for which I think should be around 90fps, is really unacceptable on a dedicated box like a console.

    On the PC side…if a game has frame issues due to code I will uninstall it. Self induced latency is a killer during a raid encounter, fps deathmatch, or RTS. Whenever that happens in something offline it's even worse. My PC has plenty of horsepower (i5 Lynnfield oc to 3.9ghz and xfire 6850 Asus) so whenever lag hits, it isn't the machine. I really think some of the DRM instituted on titles causes lag more often than the actual game engines do. This of course doesn't mean squat if the game is running itself in some virtualized manner though (SC2 on OSX).

    Is there a framerate too high? No. Too low? Yeah. I mentioned a baseline of 90 earlier and I think while that is more than acceptable the 60 mark is more economically friendly to consumers. The pitfall of the 60 mark (speaking consoles here not PCs) is that when there is a dip below 30 it's noticeable and interferes with the experience you have paid for with the $400 machine, $60 game, $60 Live fee, and fill in the blank HDTV.

    Recap: Framerate problems on console = unacceptable. On the PC buy more gear.

  12. I hope we all get some jobs soon and if you have a job I hope you get a promotion!

      1. I honestly don't know where to start and I'm kind of waiting for a particular article to reduce redundancy.

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