hi there,
videogamesystem only person here:
first of all: 60hz and 60fps... there is a difference right?
and since i have never experienced anything about 60fps(because i only play on a dedicated system) is there really a difference? for me, its like day and night comparing 60 to 30.
but everything about 60... its already fluid, so what is 120fps like?
can someone show off a gif/webm or something?
is this possible on a normal screen?
or is my macbook not able to show the gif/webm?
hz is used in the context of the refresh rate of the panel.
Framerate is the amount of times per second the game engine sends a frame from the framebuffer to the monitor/tv
A 60 hz panel always refreshes at 60 hertz, at a fixed rate (like a steady heartbeat), no matter how fast or slowly the frames are sent to it.
Every time the monitor is refreshing there can be 3 results:
-new frame is ready: new frame is drawn (ideal)
-new frame wasn't fully done yet, the part that is done is drawn and the rest is just redrawn from the previous frame.
This is called screen tearing
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Tearing_(simulated).jpg
-no new frame is ready (low framerate or vsync): the previous frame is just drawn again, this repeating frame is perceived as a stutter
You want a new frame to be ready for every refresh tick of the monitor (or at a factor of the refresh rate, e.g 30 fps so you can show every frame twice and it stays consistent, at 20 fps you could show each frame twice but that is too low to give the illusion of motion then it just looks like a series of still images)
The only way to do this is a locked consistent 30 or 60 fps for a 60 hz panel.
Any time the frame takes longer than 16 or 33ms it's out of sync with the monitor and you'll get either tearing or some form of stuttering
You can force your gpu to wait for the refresh of your monitor before sending a new frame by using vsync
Problem with this is that it is done by rendering multiple frames, NOT sending them (storing them) until the refresh tick is up so that there is always one ready.
usually either 2 or 3 frames
What this means though is that what you are seeing on screen is 1-2 frames behind what is actually happening (and you also won't see the feedback for your inputs for 1-2 extra frames)
This is called input lag, and input lag is the devil, it's the worst thing you can possibly have in gaming.
It'll make controls feel unresponsive, and the delayed feed back will make it much harder to build muscle memory for the game.
High input lag ruins games, it doesn't matter how good or bad the other aspects are, you can have the best cake on the planet, once you drop it in a puddle of vomit it's ruined, throw it away it's no longer suited for consumption.
The easiest solution to all of the above is getting a higher refresh rate monitor and playing at higher framerates.
There will be more frames that sync up with the monitor so there will be less instances of tearing, and since each frame is visible for less time the tearing will also be much less noticable when it happens.
Recently there are variable refresh rate monitors (gsync and freesync) that don't have a fixed refresh rate time and can wait for the frame to be ready before refreshing the panel (but only within a certain range for now, so it's still limited but a HUGE step ahead for gaming nonetheless) , which eliminates tearing , eliminates repeating frames (no stutter) and doesn't cause the massive input lag that vsync does.
As for your second question:
60 fps is a lot more fluid than 30 (obviously, there is twice as much information here, the transition between each frame in movement onscreen is much smaller so it looks much smoother)
120 fps doubles that again so it's even smoother.
It also again halves the input lag (great for gaming, more responsive controls makes for an even better feeling)
Outside of that the main thing is the blur.
60 fps provides quite smooth looking motion but it's going to look blurry because of the way display tech works combined with how our eyes work (sample and hold as I explained in my last post)
If you want to actually be able to track stuff or identify enemies in a fast panning scene (fast movement on screen, aka ALL the time in first person shooters and the like) you need a higher framerate.
At 60 fps it'll just be a smeary blur once you swing the camera around. (thanks to lcd technology being inherently flawed and sucking a bag of dicks for gaming purposes)
It's pretty sad to have say a 1440p monitor , have everything look super nice and sharp and detailed on your screen then the second the image moves all the detail is lost in a nasty blur (like someone rubbed an alcohol soaked rag on a painting)
Funnily enough , if you took a picture of one of those frames at 60 fps on a 60hz monitor (assuming it had a fast pixel response time), the image would look perfectly sharp!
But due to how our eyes and brain work we interpret it as a blurry mess.
The shorter the time that the image is shown on the screen is, the better for our eyes and the sharper it will look, you accomplish this with a higher refresh rate+ framerate and for lcd panels there is also backlight strobing (showing a black frame in between each game frame to make the time that the game frame is on screen shorter, but this comes at a big penalty to brightness)
The ideal gaming experience is
-a pulsing panel (aka low image persistence) for our eyes
-with fully variable refresh rate (to eliminate tearing and duplicate frames)
-that can support a high refresh rate ( for low input lag and high smoothness)
- with a game engine that can pump out frames at a very steady rate (again for higher smoothness and very importantly CONSISTENT input lag, the only thing that is as bad high input lag is inconsistent amounts of input lag, you interpret this as slowdown and it makes muscle memory
much harder to train)
There is no pulse display tech on the near horizon (we had it with crt but hey apparently fuck it let's go for SHIT lcd instead)
We are making the first babysteps into variable refresh rate panels (gsync and vsync), which is a big breakthrough for gaming
High refresh rate monitors are finally becoming more commonly available again after like 8 years of going backwards (we used to have 100-120hz crts in the early 2000s, then went back to shitty 60 hz panels for ages when the lcd era started)
Frametimes in modern engines have become way less consistent compared to the quake 3 days (I guess because there are a lot more variables now), dx12 might bring some relief, super high framerates are desirable because it will make the peaks and valleys in frametimes less noticable.
edit: if anyone wants to experience the impact of even/uneven frame times in games and you have a decent pc then play:
-bioshock infinite at 60 fps
-ys
ath of felghana at 60 fps
Both with the framerate unlocked
Bioshock has incredibly uneven frame times (with a consistent 60 fps each frame would take 16ms, but while fraps will tell you the average framerate is 60 fps, each frame will be anywhere between 50 and 10 ms long, and it will be a stuttery garbage mess that looks andfeels worse than most 30 fps games)
Then you'll get to Ys, which will run at 800-1500 fps unlocked (but only shows 60 fps obviously), which means every single frame will be exactly 16 ms apart.
I found that game an eye opening reminder of how good it feels and how smooth it looks to be able to get a smooth, consistent, even framerate and what a crying fucking shame it is that so few games and game engines provide such stable frametimes (hence the best way to get smooth games is to simply brute force it with high framerates on high refresh rate panels 120 hz, 144 hz, 240 hz, the higher the better)
