Be Excellent To Each Other

TBH that was the only thing I didn't like about S/S. It was an absolutely fantastic game but just felt like you were driving in treacle. I do agree that at 60FPS you would need ninja training to avoid some of the explosions and devastation though.

I wouldn't know what to do with sixty first-person shooters in a driving game, so I'm glad there's only half that amount in NFS:HP.

You don't actually travel any faster. If anything, 60FPS would mean you would be fractionally, microscopically faster to see something coming up, and would make it easier to react. Not that something happening 1/60s earlier is actually noticeable.

Well it was known for running like a dog on the PC. I suppose if they lifted the FPS cap it would have given powerful hardware a chance to stretch its legs more but capping it at 30 just made it all very jerky.

I don't even know if they released it here in the U.K in the end. They released it in the U.S, got slagged off because it ran like shit and then put the PC version on hold indefinitely.

I should look into it really and see if there are any updates. Shame because as a game concept it was absolute aces.

Split Second was perfectly fast enough for me, so I've never understood people moaning about games only being 30FPS. I've looked up 30 vs 60 animations and demos online, too, and can't see the blindest bit of difference.

Then your eyes and/or brain aren't working properly, seriously.

It's not a question of how 'fast' a game runs either, it's a question of how smoothly.

Racers routinely ran at 60FPS on the original XBox, Out Run 2 on my old XBox is a nicer game to play than Hot Pursuit on the supposedly 'next-gen' 360.

30FPS also increases input lag and gives that 'treacle' feel to the controls.

Compare Forza 2/3 and Burnout Paradise with Hot Pursuit, 60FPS to 30FPS really is night and day to my eyes.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... blog-entry

Meh. Everything seems smooth to me, right down to 15FPS or so, as long as it's consistent; it's the spikes that make me notice. And, frankly, I'm not sure I've anything to gain by caring to notice.

Oh dear, not this again.

It's not his brain that is wrong, it's yours.

Exhibit 1) Who can enjoy the greater range of games? It's not you. I'd say that was a failing.

Exhibit 2) The Eyes are responsible for only a small amount of what we actually see in the end. As it stands, his brain is far better at interpolating what it should see, which is why he doesn't see any problems. Yours is evidentally shit at it. And that's your brain going wrong, not his, becvause the brain is supposed to interpolate the information coming from the eyes.

From what I can tell, the vast majority can't tell the difference enough to be bugged by it (assuming solid enough input code, and even then not so many - see: GTA4 and it's legions of 10/10 scores.)

So you've either trained yourself out of the ability to play 30FPS games (In which case, congratulations, that was an epically clever move), expectation is making this the case (most likely) or there actually is something wrong with your brain.

I love you, Dave.

This is as simple as I can possibly make it

Run the attached .exe, set it to the maximum resolution your screen can handle, press F2 to change it to the 'rolling hills' demo, then press M to get rid of split screen, then press SPACE to toggle between 60FPS and 30FPS.

I'm sure many will find that 30FPS is 'tolerable', or 'playable', or 'good enough', but I honestly think that:

a) 60FPS objectively looks a lot smoother, and a lot nicer, to just about anyone's eyes.

b) A game would be better running at 60FPS than 30FPS.

You can also set it down to 15FPS using the up and down arrows, which isn't 'smooth' by absolutely any definition in the known universe.

Cue some people going "Oooh, massive difference" and some saying "CAn't tell the difference"

And the difference between the two groups? The latter group goes in not expecting to see any difference, and the former do. If you want to see something, you will. Say hello to the Human Brain.

Cue me going "I feel positively ill after staring at it in 30FPS"

Cue me going "I'm not running some random .exe just because someone off the Interwebs told me to." I'm sure it's fine, but...

I've scanned it with MSE and Kaspersky

I've made similar things in the past. No difference as far as I'm concerned. As it stands, I'd only trust something that - to my knowledge - hadn't been made to skew the results. As that would be easily doable.

There is no spoon, lol.

Now you're just making stuff up.

At no point have I said I can't/won't play/enjoy games running at 30FPS, (including Hot Pursuit, in fact, earlier in this thread I said I was getting accustomed to 30FPS, which would understandably take some time given that my primary gaming platform is the PC and 60FPS+).

I've played GTAIV through to completion twice on the 360, which is arguably the worst game this hardware generation for input lag and an abysmally shonky framerate. I could see that it was running like a bag of crap a lot of the time, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and played it through to the end.

You're disingenuously implying that being able to perceive the technical shortcomings of a game - (and running at 30FPS is a shortcoming, otherwise devs wouldn't aim to get games running at 60FPS wherever they can) - and being able to enjoy that same game are mutually exclusive, when I've never suggested such a thing.

30FPS is inferior to 60FPS as a gaming experience, it's as simple as that, your pseudo-science about interpolation means nothing (and I think you're getting movies/TV confused with games anyway), my eyes and brain can obviously work with 30FPS just fine (as my times on the Hot Pursuit demo make clear). The act of saying 'It's running at 30FPS which I don't like' is a long way removed from saying 'I can't/won't play 30FPS games and my brain is broken because I'm able to perceive the difference between 30FPS and 60FPS', which appears to be your contention.

Like I said, though, I've nothing to gain by trying to see the difference, so I'll pass if it's all the same.

Heh. Run.

Poor test, as the rendering is _shit_ regardless of framerate. The level of tearing is quite appalling. Despite that, couldn't tell the difference between 30 and 60 on scene one, could on scene 2, but that is because the rendering was very poorly done and wasn't actually 30FPS or 60FPS given the amount of tearing, despite its claims to the contrary.

I think this discussion is missing the bigger picture. Split/Second is the best single player racing game I've played in a long, long time. And it goes for pennies nowadays and you should all buy it.

I'd take my degree of Biochem (which, incidentally, included an awful lot of how vision worked in the signalling section so not "pseudo science") and 18 odd yr experience of making games over whatever qualifications you have to offer anyday. No, I'm not getting the difference between movies and games mixed up, else I wouldn't be talking mainly about interpolation, but rather interpretation.

Your basic assertaion of "Your eyes/brain are not working" is bollocks. If it's making a more understandable image than yours is, it's better at it's job.



No. Technically it's a budgeting issue. Either is possible depending on how you wish to spend your budget. 60FPS obviously isn't too important to the vast majority otherwise it'd be considerably higher up developers lists of requirements.

Even if the demo is a sinister underhand plot to corrupt framerate discussions across the world, and even if the (marginal) tearing fundamentally breaks the distinction between 30 and 60 FPS (which it doesn't, is it still completely wrong if you set it down to 10FPS? Is the jerkiness there still a result of tearing?), you only need to look at real actual games to see the difference between various framerates.

GTAIV which will drop to 20FPS and less.

Hot Pursuit, a solid 30FPS by all accounts.

Burnout Paradise, solid 60FPS.

I've played all three games and I've enjoyed all three games, but I can see the huge and real difference between Paradise at the top of the table and GTAIV at the bottom, and anyone in their right mind would take GTAIV at 60FPS over the GTAIV that actually got released.

That's all I'm trying to say here, and this myopic head-in-the-sand attitude of 'They're all the same as each other' is clearly, objectively, factually, measurably wrong.

Unless, y'know, Criterion's senior engineer doesn't know what he's talking about:



http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... or-article

Apart from the clearly, objectively, factually and measurably parts, sure.

Blu-ray films are 24FPS, and when did you last see someone say "I really enjoyed that film, but it was a little bit jerky".

Why do gaming companies strive to push for 60 FPS on PC titles?

This is the part I don't get, the hole in the argument. Why spend ages optimising code when you could cap it at 30 FPS (instead of 60 on Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Batman and any recent PC title I have played) when you could just be lazy.

Dirt 2 was capped at 60 FPS with Vsync enabled. So was Grid. However Split second was capped at half of that and felt slow and stuttered immensely.

I do agree if a game runs smoothly at 30FPS that it could well be acceptable, but every title I have that runs at 60 FPS is much smoother and easier to play.

Dunno, I don't develop games.

Ooh! Mr Dave does! Let's ask him.

I always thought the 60FPS mark was because of refresh rates at 60Hz, therefore allowing for fewer v-sync issues. Am I massively wrong? Obviously this isn't an issue any more with LCDs, but back in the day with monitors it was, and the "magic" 60FPS probably stemmed from there.

Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, can you tech bores fuck off elsewhere so we can talk about car chases?

SHUTUP, YOU! I was trying to poo-poo the 60 FPS bollocks with vague memories from my PC gaming days when I a) gave a shit about this sort of thing, and b) didn't enjoy video games at all, spending most of my time instead obsessing over net_graph 3 in Counter-Strike and the similar bullshit in Unreal Tournament and Quake 3.



HOLD EVERYTHING, NO, STOP! STOP SHOOTING ME! MY CHOKE JUST SPIKED UP! I'M NOT EVEN SURE WHAT IT IS, BUT I MUST QUIT OUT AND BUY A NEW GRAPHICS CARD/UPGRADE MY INTERNETS, THEN I CAN CONTINUE PLAYING WITH YOU ALL. AT LEAST, UNTIL SOMEONE POSTS AN IMAGE OF THEIR NEW 'RIG' RUNNING AT 120FPS IN 1600X1200, THEN I MUST BUY MORE STUFF TO COMPETE!

OH GOD, WHAT WAS MY MOUSE SENSITIVITY AGAIN? WAS IT 3.2/10 OR 3.4/10? FUCK ME I CAN'T SEEM TO GET IT RIGHT ANYMORE. I'M SURE IT WAS 3.SOMETHING. DAMN IT! IT FEELS TOO QUICK, IT FEELS TOO SLOW. I'M GONNA TRY 2.5. NO THAT'S TOO SLOW. FUCKING HELL.

OH GOD, ONE OF THE LITTLE 'FEET' HAS FALLEN OFF THE BOTTOM OF MY MOUSE AND IT DOESN'T MOVE AS SMOOTHLY ANY MORE. I'LL BUY ANOTHER ONE. BUT THIS MOUSE DOESN'T FEEL THE SAME AS MY OLD ONE. SHOULD I USE A MOUSEMAT OR JUST USE THE BARE TABLE? WHICH MOUSEMAT SHOULD I BUY? ARE GLASS ONES ANY GOOD? DO I HAVE ENOUGH RAM? I'M SURE MY FRAMERATE WAS HIGHER THAN THIS WHEN I FIRST BUILT THIS SYSTEM. MAYBE I NEED TO DEFRAG. OH WHY IS MY PING SO HIGH TONIGHT? I'M PHONING NTL.

I'M NOT GETTING ANY BULLET REG!!!!! I'M SHOOTING HIM BUT THE BULLETS ARE GOING THROUGH HIM!! MAYBE IF I TWEAK SOME OF THE CONSOLE COMMANDS! YES! THAT WON'T MAKE ME EVEN MORE OBSESSIVE! HEY EVERYONE! WHAT ARE THE IDEAL SETTINGS? WHAT DO YOU MEAN EVERYONE HAS A DIFFERENT IDEA OF WHICH SETTINGS ARE GOOD? AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN ''SETTINGS THAT WORK WELL ONE DAY WON'T THE NEXT?'' WHAT? COULD IT JUST BE INCONSISTENCIES IN OUR CABLE CONNECTIONS DURING THIS RELATIVELY EARLY STAGE OF ADOPTION? WHAT ABOUT INCREASED SERVER LOADS DURING PEAK HOURS? OR IS IT THE SETTINGS THAT MUST BE CONSTANTLY TWEAKED? IT MUST BE THE SETTINGS.

CL_UPDATERATE 36
CL_UPDATERATE 23
CL_UPDATERATE 72
CL_UPDATERATE 1000
CL_UPDATERATE 36
CL_UPDATERATE 43
CL_UPDATERATE 65
CL_UPDATERATE 9999

Ack

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_5.html

You're painting it as being the same binary decision that Mr Dave did, like you can't be interested in the tech behind games and yet still enjoy games, or be critical of the technology of a specific game and yet still want to play it. (Or indeed, say 'This game is great but I'd much rather play it with better graphics or framerate' - why does that statement immediately preclude you from enjoying the game in question?)

I spent hours playing fucking Space Invaders for the MAME BEEX sh'mup challenge, so it's hardly as if I demand the latest and greatest of showcase visuals for everything before I'm interested and/or get to have some fun.

In my personal experience it was a binary decision. Of course you can still enjoy Space Invaders - that's meant to look shit. It's when you're not quite achieving the THEORETICAL MAXIMUM POSSIBLE PERFORMANCE in SUPER NEW HIGHLY ADVANCED DIRECT X 56 SHOOTER II that things start to become less about enjoying yourself and more about obsessing over every dropped frame and every lag spike. The day I let that stuff go is the day I started genuinely enjoying the latest games rather than "testing" them.

"I've invested X pounds in my new machine, why is this game slightly juddery? OH GOD, I CAN'T ENJOY IT AS MUCH AS I MIGHT HAVE!"

I can perfectly understand and empathise with the situation, but looking back I do think it's silly, and I'm glad I mainly game on consoles these days. I'm not "competing" with people for framerates, and I'm not worried about tweaking drivers and settings because I don't think I'm getting the level of performance I could be out of any particular game. I can just play them instead.

PC gaming used to be: Your processor speed, whether you even had a hard drive, and whether you had CGA, EGA or VGA. And whether you had an Adlib or Soundblaster card. Memory was largely irrelevant.

PC gaming is now: JohnCoffey.

I think we need to combine this thread and the Fallout thread for a PCs vs Consoles argument thread.

Definitely... we haven't had one of those for ages!

In all fairness Wogan, I don't believe I've ever 'competed' with anyone over framerates here at BEEX (or indeed anywhere else for a long time, although I admit I used to when I was into maximum overclocking and suchlike), I'm not sure I've ever even posted my PC's spec either, or if I have, it's been to point out that it's really quite shit. (CPU, mobo and RAM now 3 1/2 years old, graphics card two years old, case about six years old, clattery old 500GB hard drive etc.)

I think you're mixing up 'PH33R MY SPECS!!!! ZOMG!!!' with 'I just want the best gameplay experience possible' (without spending a fortune, the last thing I upgraded in my PC was the graphics card, which was two years ago and wasn't the best available even then).

To me, 60FPS is pretty important, it makes for a better gaming experience, so if I can play a game at 60FPS, I will. It's not about willy-waving HYPER-PERFORMANCE figures all over the place, it's simply a case of me feeling it adds to the overall game experience.

(I may still with go with the 360 version of Hot Pursuit 'cause the friends integration looks really cool and I can see that being a lot of fun, I don't see that also saying 'It'd be nicer if it ran at 60FPS though' is really such a terrible thing )

So that basically says that in modern games that use motion blur and anti-aliasing, there's no need for high FPS, right? Unless you're looking to take screenshots.

Also, sorry Meaty. I like brum-brum go drive cars. Poot-poot!

Well, he says that they can help but they're not a cure-all, especially in faster action games where the difference from one frame to the next can be so great that no amount of post-processing can compensate for raw frames per second.

Similarly in twitchy shooter games, where you might have periods of little or no movement, followed by massive quick pans around the landscape, motion blur can become very undesirable as you need a nice crisp image.

I'm not mixing the two things up, I realise they're different, and I wasn't labelling you as either - I was just outlining my experiences. However, your admittance that 60 FPS is important to you, does drop you into the obsessive camp. If you're bothered about it, you're bound to be a tweaker, and that, in my experience, is where the obsession with frame rates gets in the way of the fun. I'm not calling you an idiot or anything, quite the opposite, I'm just saying that I think you'd enjoy yourself more if you just let it go and ignored performance related guff - unless it really gets in the way of the game I mean. GTA IV on consoles was pretty borderline in this regard. I can't really think of much else on the current gen of consoles where "sub-standard" performance compared to a PC version got in the way of my fun, and even GTA IV was occasional, and from what I've heard, the PC version was pretty demanding as well anyway.

But yeah, I'm not calling you names or anything - if you enjoy PC gaming, great - just in my experience back when I played PC games almost exclusively, I realised I was more obsessed with graphical fidelity and performance rather than just plain old enjoying the game for what it is.

In Brum-brum they like go steal cars. But yes.

Poop poop!

What on Earth is going on in this thread?

Anyway, I think I just spammed everyone in my friends list with a message from the demo. So sorry about that, I regretted it the moment I pressed the button.

Somehow I got the impression that it was necessary to unlock the Roadsters Reborn thingy, but I don't even think that is the case (in case anyone else is tempted) so I've just wasted everyone's time.


Very quick impressions: The game controls just fine, as far as I'm concerned. Infinitely better than any other NFS game I've ever tried, actually. I am not happy about the 30 FPS, but the graphics are very nice. The menu screens seem to be bombarding me with friends related stuff. I find myself panicking and just desperately hitting the A button to get on to the event.

Does anyone else experience a lack of response when they're selecting their car/colour? I hammer away at A and nothing happens. Then I stop, a few minutes later, it goes. A bit like an elevator.

Finally got around to playing this last night. It isn't bad. Handling is a bit wallowing, but I suspect that is more the cars than anything else, plus the fact that I was expecting the car to turn on a dime.

As someone else pointed out - this is just Chase HQ* and not particularly disguised at that. Having said that, I imagine this will be a riot in multiplayer.





*And bits of Burnout 2.

10FPS will look bad because the brain no longer attempts to fill in missing information at that speed. The brain is provided with considerably more duplicate information from similar cells, and no longer needs to provide a quick response. But this wasn't a 10FPS vs 30 FPS discussion.

The main point was that it was utterly failing as a reliable, well programmed 3d engine which can't even reliably state what framerate it's running at, and so all it does is demonstrate that shit 3d engines show the difference between 30 and 60. But with a reasonable probability that it's not comparing 30 with 60, but rather 20 with 45.


But curiously, most criticism I've read hasn't been about the graphics speed - the graphics were generally praised, but rather the input lag. Because it takes several frames to address the input.


Except, of course, that many if not most people can't tell the difference.

[/quote]

Where he's talking about input latency, not graphic speed. And the reason that's important is that doubling the framerate halves the latency. But a well made 30FPS game still has a response time that is well under reaction time (Edit: Not reaction time. I've forgotten the correct word. But well under a time where it breaks things. Considering it's about the same response time as a typical 60FPS game with a couple of order errors). It's just that errors are twice as costly and troublesome to track down.


Because they can, mainly. They're using the same base assets as the console version, and yet because in general the PC crowd feel the need to get better benchmarks/better equipment, they have a graphics budget that far outstrips the assets which they have. They're not going to waste money on better assets. So they chuck in things like 'improved' AA and AF and 60FPS, because they're pretty much free. There's not much striving involved unless you've been utterly brainless in making your engine.


Sort of. It makes anything above 60fps pointless aside from allowing it to be comfortably synced to 60, as the tv can't display it, and anything between 30 and 60 display unevenly timed frames unless v-synced to 30.

No, I got annoyed by you incorrectly telling someone they were broken.

Mr Dave smells... of awesome.

If you look at the car as you turn there's some amount of body roll.

10 millions first person shooters couldn't cure that

Preorder for the "Limited Edition" and get two exclusive cars, and four high level cars early. No retailer-specific bonuses for once.

How much is the Limited Edition? I have £40 on a GAME voucher card, which I'm saving for this. Is it one of those pretend limited editions that are basically the same price as the normal game?

Preorder and normal becomes "limited", same as with BFBC2.

Aha, good stuff. I'll have to physically pre-order it in a shop though, because they won't let you spend gift vouchers online. The shits.