Good morning.Just wondering if anyone has their sim set at 60 fps or higher?I read over the weekend that the "ideal" setting was 60fps or higher as the human eye can't detect flickering beyond this point.Before I go and spend hours re-jigging my machine to see if it makes any difference, I was curious to see any comments here.Sounds like a lot of "non-flying" time for potentially nil benefit....Cheers from New ZealandTim

TimThe best thing to do is try it for yourself. I takes less than a minute to change this in SettingsDisplay. The effects vary so much from one system to another, and it's also so much a matter of personal preference, that no one can really answer this for you. Increasing the FPS limit may cause stuttering and/or slower texture loading but you won't know until you experiment.David

60fps is definitely nice and smooth. Good luck getting the sim to run consistently in that range though. Really, its not necessary at all. I find anything over about 20fps is suitably smooth. 30fps is ideal really. Under 20fps I start to feel things getting a bit laggy control-wise and motion begins to get a bit "chunky" for me. Other game genres like first person shooters or racing sims (or combat flight sims) really need to be up above 30fps (or higher) or I start to have difficulty aiming accurately and so forth, but FS9 stays fairly smooth and enjoyable down to fairly low framerates...

Yes, "smooth" is what really counts.David

You want it smooth. It's possible to have a jerky sim with stutters and a consistent 60 fps. I say, go to your default settings and max your 3d card settings for quality. You may surprise yourself on how smooth a performance you get. YMMV- so nobody start an argument over this...:-)

Thanks all.Just to clarify, I've got a grunty machine and getting about 30fps with most sliders maxed out.So, it's not a thread about fps quality per se, it's more a "biological" question about potential benefits of getting the fps above 60.Might be time to have a play me thinks.Tim

I honestly don't think that there's a system out there yet that could give 60fps consistantly, and smoothly....Well, there isn't!! Even with the latest 64bit CPU's and Geforce 6800's, it may fly in clear weather at 60fps smoothly, but land at one of the busy international airports with 200+ AI planes all doing their thing, and watch those fps plummet, and see the stutters start!!This 'game' is trying to simulate a living, breathing World, with hundreds, thousands, of interacting AI beings, globally...it'll be a long time before any PC can truly run this so effortlessly. And of course, when we reach that Red-Letter day, we'll not care 'cause we're all trying to get it to run FS14 at 30fps smoothly!!! ;)

well, the benefits of getting above 60fps are pretty small. I can sense a fairly significant difference between say 30 and 60fps (not only visually, but in terms of the "immediacy" of response to control inputs and so on), but over 60fps it starts to get harder and harder to note any difference. However, the concept of "headroom" comes into play too so getting 100fps for instance is nice becuase it means the frames are less likely to plunge into sub-30 territory when the action in the game really heats up - which is of course when you'd like the framerate to be highest since thats when you need the tight, responsive control. But you want to make sure you've got the stutters cleared up too as they can ruin the fun no matter what framerate you are getting. Like I said previously, in FS9 20fps stutter-free is totally satisfactory ftmp (well, maybe 25 :) )...

My system (top of the line custom-built at the time) was running 60-90fps for a short while after I first bought it.... However, quality tweaks and a whole lot of addons later, I average a steady 25fps (my locked setting) except in dense scenery areas and/or in some cloud conditions. Fairly stuttery though.... :(

Hi Tim,I think you're confusing things. What you are probably talking about is the CRT refresh rate, and common belief was until about a decade ago that 70Hz is enough. Anything under 70Hz really hurts your eyes after a while. However, more recent CRT devices (monitors + tvs) try to go over even 70Hz. While not that much noticable, it still puts less strain onto your eyes. LCD monitors actually have a lower refresh rate, but it's not a problem as they don't flicker as CRT monitors do (ie they work completely differently).Now the actual framerate is a different matter all together. The magic number is much lower. Movies have a refresh rate of only 24 fps(!) (and I haven't heard many people this is too choppy), PAL systems use 27 fps I think (can't remember the actual number now, could be 25fps, I'm pretty sure the US system is just under 30fps). For virtual environments (I'm working in that field), we say 10 fps is the absolute cut-off, we try not to go below. Everything above 10fps is reasonably fluid to the human eye, and doesn't cause motion sickness. Things become different again when you combine this with user input. As mentioned by someone else in a fast pace FPS game frame rates are more important again (60fps are good). Similarly, 10fps on a crosswind final is probably not quite enough in FS.Cheers, Christian

Christian,I am VERY embarrased. You're right - of course is the monitor that I meant.Don't know what I was on, I'll assume soemone at work played a joke and swapped the espresso for decaf!Now, if only I could undo this post.....CheersTim

No worries. Happens to the best of us :)Actually, I think that this is quite an easy and common mistake to make...Cheers,Christian

>Now the actual framerate is a different matter all together.>The magic number is much lower. Movies have a refresh rate of>only 24 fps(!) (and I haven't heard many people this is too>choppy), PAL systems use 27 fps I think (can't remember the>actual number now, could be 25fps, I'm pretty sure the US>system is just under 30fps). For virtual environments (I'm>working in that field), we say 10 fps is the absolute cut-off,>we try not to go below. Everything above 10fps is reasonably>fluid to the human eye, and doesn't cause motion sickness. HiA thing to remember when dealing with frame rates, especially when comparing rendered computer graphics to film and television is:Motion BlurFilm uses only 24 fps, but it has built in motion blur. This smooths the transitions from one frame to another and tricks the eye, computers don't currently do this. (3dfx tried but shortly after sold out to nvidia) When things are moving slowly on the screen, 24 fps is probably ok. However when somthing moves fast across the screen, say in half a second. Then the frame rate is effectivly halved, it will only display in 12 induvidual frames. This is what causes the problem with slower frame rates on computers.Untill we get quality motion blur, 24 fps is not going to be as smooth as a movie.By the way Pal and NTSC use an interlaced image format this means that the even scan lines of a frame is displayed first, then the odd scanlines after, this bumps the true frame rate up to 50 for pal and 60 for NTSC.Personally I find anything below 20fps to be distracting in Flight sim, but I trade off high frame rates for image quality, I average about 25-30fps.Hope this is usefullSimon.

It's also important to keep in mind that the film industry didn't decide on a 24fps standard becuase it represents any sort of ideal or maximum number of fps the human brain can resolve. In fact, they use 24fps becuase the industry determined thats about the minimum framerate needed for motion to appear smooth and fluid - they don't want to use any more raw film than necessary since film costs $ and every extra foot is less profit...I only mention that becuase people always point to the 24fps speed of film as proof not only that 24fps is smooth enough, but that we humans aren't even capable of seeing a difference above that framerate - which is ludicrous. But as far as monitor refresh rates go, yes there is a very definite improvement above 60hz. For me, 60hz is a wavery mess. I use 75hz becuase its the max my monitor will display at the resolution I run the sim at and I don't often suffer from any eyestrain at that rate even after long sessions in front of the monitor...

I can get 60 fps easy... in fs2002! :-hah I run around 30fps or so normally with fs2004. While that isn't perfect, that number gets a fairly smooth feel overall.