Framerate capped at 60fps

http://pc.ign.com/articles/456/456054p1.html?fromint=1

I'm not sure whether this confirmation has been said before, if it has, sorry about that.

I think ID said somewhere that the target framerate of the game is 35fps with all options turned up, so this seems reasonable. No doubt there will be an easy way to uncap it anyway.

Completely reasonable. First one who starts whining about this for some reason gets poked in the eye.

ya, im totally fine with that.. and sides, usually just a few little lines of code can remove a framerate, so, not a prob.. :D

I dont even know whats going on so yea! right the fuck on!.

I never need ZDoom's 273 FPS... you don't see a difference against 100FPS for
example.
But 60?

I thought you only needed it to be 24 to be smooth flowing to the eye anyway so whats the big fuckin deal?

Tyockell said:

I thought you only needed it to be 24 to be smooth flowing to the eye anyway so whats the big fuckin deal?

It's an argument I've participated in a dozen times before, several times on these forums, even. So it's getting boring.

Basically, 24 is smooth but 60 is smoother. Anything higher doesn't really make a difference, as long as your system can sustain a high framerate all the time.

Lord FlatHead said:

Anything higher doesn't really make a difference

Wrong.

The thing is that you probably won't notice going from 60 and upwards, but you *will* notice going from a higher framerate and down.

Sounds reasonable to me. Whether it will stay at 60fps on my 2ghz 512ram pc is possibly another question.

edit: never mind the question

Well, the "cap" is a good idea because as Fredrik says the swings between framerates are what annoys your eyes, not the framerate itself (unless its REALLY low, in which case a cap wouldnt make a difference)

But why 60? Wouldnt 100 gameticks per second be a better idea anyway? Idve choosen hihger, like 75fps.

Also, If the screen is rendereing double frames then why put a cap at all?

It's a cap on the physics engine, not the renderer. The renderer gets capped too because it would be useless to render the same frame over and over again (which it'd be doing if nothing had moved between two frames).

>I thought you only needed it to be 24 to be smooth flowing to...

Heh, that is what they said for Commander Keen, and yet they equipped Doom with
35fps.

When ZDoom first changed from 35fps to more, there was a difference... having
more than 35fps in a Doom engine... euh it felt like I was having a modern-age
renderer under it.

Arenot televisions from 25 - 29.something or 30fps.

TVs are usually 24fps, but they have motion blur which adds a lot so that it doesn't feel jerky.

IIRC, on TV screens, the human eye can't really tell any difference in frame-rate above 75fps, for computer monitors it's like 100-150 depending on the person.

Wobbo said:

Also, If the screen is rendereing double frames then why put a cap at all?

Perhaps it won't make a difference visually, but a cap could remove some unnecessary workload from your GPU. And thus make it run cooler.

Tyockell said:

I thought you only needed it to be 24 to be smooth flowing to the eye anyway so whats the big fuckin deal?

In most cases for television shows and film, something like 24 fps is fine. But for First Person games, or any other games that have a lot of fast motion, it's preferable to have a higher frame-rate. Imagine your playing Doom3 (like you haven't been doing that already) and you hear something behind you, and you turn 180 degrees in let's say a quarter of a second. At 24fps only 6 frames are going to be drawn from the time that your facing forward to when you've turned around. At 60fps it's gonna be 15 frames, a very noticable difference.

Fredrik said:

It's a cap on the physics engine, not the renderer. The renderer gets capped too because it would be useless to render the same frame over and over again (which it'd be doing if nothing had moved between two frames).

why is the physics engine capped at 60 tics? Wouldnt 100 be easier for the math (i.e. dividing and multiplying by ten?)?

A logical and while we're at it, reasonable decision by id, though i was a bit perplexed at first... i mean, there was Carmack 2 years ago, saying that 30fps is the bar max cap they'll cleave the game on, and hereby, we're getting a two-fold jump - great news! :)

Guess that either Carmack underrestimated the technology roadmap at the time, or he was simply aware of too many "for your eyes only" type of material :)

See. I hate these things.

Wobbo said:

why is the physics engine capped at 60 tics? Wouldnt 100 be easier for the math (i.e. dividing and multiplying by ten?)?

I don't think computers much care what they're dividing by.

Linguica said:

I don't think computers much care what they're dividing by.

Divisions by a power of 2 can be done very fast, so perhaps 64 would make a logical number.

Hey guys, I'm at school, just got bored and decided to drop in for a bit.

First, I'd like to add something to the convo:

I really don't think the Physics has a "cap" per se, as it is constantly dynamic (like Max Payne 2's physics are) so thus there are an infinite number of interactions with CSG Geometry available, and an infinite amount of light interactions with the physics models (boxes, character models, etc...). There is no "cap" on the physics system.

However, it would make sense that there IS indeed a cap on the rendering engine, as THAT is what uses up your system memory and GPU resources. RAM is simply for storing and purging the items that are sent to your monitor's display, the processor itself sends the information through the bus to your internals and peripherals (monitors, GPUs, etc...). However, since the physics are a calculation done by your PROCESSOR (as in, that big mofo in your mobo that has a fan the size of your fist), it takes very little of the resources from your GPU. The thing is, if the game is using that Stencil Shadow volume technology such as Doom3, THEN it has to work harder to render the frames with the light dynamics. In the case of Max Payne 2 (awesome game, btw), the shadows are model-proprietary (IIRC) and are simply "superimposed" against the lightmaps in the game, similar to UT2K3 and Raven Shield's shadows -- thus, we need no extreme GPU strength to render an already pre-calculated shadow model (which has restrictions, such as being very rigid, not appearing at all times, having a 2D superimposed look, etc...). The truth is, we ALWAYS need to have the GPU render EVERYTHING we see, obviously, but when the processor can take in some things more efficiently than the GPU itself, that's the best thing to work with.

To the point, though -- Stop worrying so much about your PC's performance capabilities with Doom3 and Half-Life 2, get a GeForce FX 5200/5600/5900 (I have an ASUS GeForce FX 5200 and it works fine), get a good 512 - 1024 megs of RAM, turn your AGP Aperture Size up (in your BIOS) to half of your physical system memory (I have mine set at 128 megs atm for 256 megs, damnit), get a decent monitor (one that can refresh at over 70 Hz at 1024x768x32 BPP), RTFM AND STFU!

You'll be fine. :D

Buh-bye!
Laguna

Laguna, please RTFA (it's only a few sentences long). The cap is evidently on the physics engine:

John Carmack said:

The game tic simulation, including player movement, runs at 60hz

The renderer is capped because there's no reason to make it render duplicate frames, NOT because it's a strain on the system.

Linguica said:

I don't think computers much care what they're dividing by.

yeah but if things have remainders youd see skips, computers cant render "Half a frame"

Besides, i was talking about planing for SCRIPTING, which is done by HUMAN BEINGS

Free-flowing high framerates cause fluttering and image-tearing on the screen. A consistent 60FPS is better than an inconsistent 80-120 FPS.

24FPS looks pretty smooth in full-motion video, because what is captured on a camera blurs from one frame to the next. Every frame in a computer game is perfectly still and in focus, thereby causing jerkiness at the same framerate.

Wobbo said:

Besides, i was talking about planing for SCRIPTING, which is done by HUMAN BEINGS

Try out to write a scripted event which is measured in dezimals instead of time related measurements (60).

Yeah why wouldn't they write one second as 1.0 or maybe 1000 (ms)?

I dont think most of it matters. Im using a radeon 9800 pro 256 mb now and I really cant see a *real* difference between 30 fps and 300 fps. ANd I dont think most people are seeing an actual difference. Sure the game runs Faster *faster than intended* at a higher framerate but that doesnt mean crap otherwise. THe alpha itself runs around a decent 50 with this card in my new rig. So shut yer pieholes and get over it. lol

I would agree that it doesn't really matter. But lots of people assume that since TV looks pretty smooth at 24 FPS, computer games must as well. Of course, computer games take every frame at a frozen point in time, whereas a frame in full-motion video blurs over what happens in a 24th of a second. (Actually, most FMV does not capture the full 24th or 30th of a second in each frame, and as such it doesn't look quite as smooth as it could look.)

sniperfrommars1 said:

I dont think most of it matters. Im using a radeon 9800 pro 256 mb now and I really cant see a *real* difference between 30 fps and 300 fps. ANd I dont think most people are seeing an actual difference. Sure the game runs Faster *faster than intended* at a higher framerate but that doesnt mean crap otherwise. THe alpha itself runs around a decent 50 with this card in my new rig. So shut yer pieholes and get over it. lol

Trust me, not everyone is like you. I can tell the difference in GLQuake when it runs at 100fps, to when it runs at 300fps as you turn down the size of the window (with - +).