Simmers and FPS

[Patco Lch 1,464]

I have been caught up as much as anyone in my twelve years of simming in the maximum FPS possible on my systems chase. Kind of fun actually to see how much more performance you can squeeze out.

Seems I read that a motion picture sets at 25 FPS because that's all the human eye and brain can process. So I have often wondered if anything above that serves any purpose in the sim other then bragging rights. As long as you have relatively smooth performance is there any point to 25-30FPS Plus?

[AnkH 2,239]

This 25 FPS myth of the human eye is just plain wrong, you should do some more reading 😉

[RALF9636 1,921]

You will have those who run the sim at 20 FPS and happily enjoy high graphic settings. You will have those who run the sim at around 25 FPS and don't see any difference to higher framerates. You have those who swear by 30 FPS. And you have those who want 60 FPS. Maybe you will even have those who say they see the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS.

And probably shortly before this thread gets closed they will all call each other names.

 

My advice: Test for yourself what is the lowest framerate you are convenient with. And test each framerate at least for a few days before you test a different one. Give your eyes and brain the chance to get used to the framerate before you decide it is too low for you.

 

[FDEdev 955]

Depends a lot on the type of flying you are doing as well.  Tubeliners can be perceived as 'smooth' at 20fps, doing aerobatics at less than 60fps  isn't desireable for many. 'relatively' smooth would be a no-go for me in any case. 

[Patco Lch 1,464]

I took Chris's advice and did a little research. I found the eye doesn't process at all but the brain averages 20 fps but can go as high as 60 in panic situations. This is why things seems to slow down in say an automobile accident.

I just often wondered if there is any need for higher frames. Ive never been able to run a sim over 40 or 50 consistently so wouldn't know. It would be incredibly immature for people to call each other names and close the thread over a benign qustion such as this. I intended a friendly tone but I suppose some have the post holiday blahs.

[David Vega 348]

@PATCO LCH, are you saying that you're happy with your 25-30 FPS and that others should do the same and are interested in knowing what others think of this?  If so, I'm mostly interested in the simultaneous fluidity and realistic accuracy of the airplane simulation and how I perform as a virtual pilot in it.  I don't have the frame rate counter on, and try to not think about that at all.  But, I do understand and respect that some get satisfaction from seeing a high count and some of those like to brag about it.  Some folks spend lots of time searching for the best way to tweak their software/hardware to make that frame rate counter go as high as it can go while others like to fix it thinking that what's not spent on elevating the number is spent on making other things seem more fluid, like gauges, etc.  The cool thing about this hobby is that it offers plenty of flexibility.  

[mpw8679 428]

Anyone that claims smooth performance at 20 FPS needs there eyes checked.  30 FPS is the minimum.

[RALF9636 1,921]

2 minutes ago, PATCO LCH said:

It would be incredibly immature for people to call each other names and close the thread over a benign qustion such as this.

I totally agree but unfortunately we've there before about this topic, more than once, and most of the time it went south pretty fast... This is avsim 😉

So that remark was meant tongue in cheek 😉 and it wasn't intended against you or your post in any way.

 

[RALF9636 1,921]

Just now, mpw8679 said:

Anyone that claims smooth performance at 20 FPS needs there eyes checked.  30 FPS is the minimum.

And here we go again... 🙂

 

[slait 169]

This is an interesting little write up on this topic I found interesting:

Quote

Myelinated nerves can fire between 300 to 1000 times per second in the human body and transmit information at 200 miles per hour. What matters here is how frequently these nerves can fire (or "send messages").

The nerves in your eye are not exempt from this limit. Your eyes can physiologically transmit data that quickly and your eyes/brain working together can interpret up to 1000 frames per second.

However, we know from experimenting (as well as simple anecdotal experience) that there is a diminishing return in what frames per second people are able to identify. Although the human eye and brain can interpret up to 1000 frames per second, someone sitting in a chair and actively guessing at how high a framerate is can, on average, interpret up to about 150 frames per second.

The point: 60 fps is not a 'waste'. 120 fps is not a 'waste' (provided you have a 120hz monitor capable of such display). There IS a very noticeable difference between 15 fps and 60 fps. Many will say there IS a noticeable difference between 40 and 60 fps. Lastly, the limit of the human eye is NOT as low as 30-60 fps. It's just not.

The origin of the myth: The origin of the myth probably has to do with limitations of television and movies. Movies, when they were recorded on film reel, limited themselves to 24 frames per second for practical purposes. If there is a diminishing return in how many frames people can claim to actually notice, then the visual difference between 24 fps and 60 fps could not justify DOUBLING the amount of film reel required to film a movie.

With the advent of easy digital storage, these limitations are mostly arbitrary anymore.

The numbers often cited as the mythological "maximum" the eye can see are 30 fps, 40 fps, and 60 fps.

I would guess the 60 fps "eye-seeing" limit comes from the fact that most PC monitors (and indeed many televisions now) have a maximum refresh rate of 60hz (or 60 frames per second). If a monitor has that 60 fps limit, the monitor is physically incapable of displaying more than 60 fps. This is one of the purposes of frame limiting, Vsync and adjusting refresh rate in video games.

The human eye can physiologically detect up to 1000 frames per second. The average human, tasked with detecting what framerate he/she is looking at, can accurately guess up to around 150 fps. That is, they can see the difference in framerates all the way to 150 fps.

 

[Patco Lch 1,464]

Guys, I m sorry for starting this. Doing too much idel thinking. Happy New Year and God bless to all.

[Bob Scott 7,716]

Motion pictures also utilize blur to impart a sense of motion...not something done when rendering motion as a frame-by-frame sequence of digital images where the only sense of motion is displacement from the previous frame.

 

[chapstick 2,757]

1 hour ago, mpw8679 said:

Anyone that claims smooth performance at 20 FPS needs there eyes checked.  30 FPS is the minimum.

And some people will even say they’re getting a “smooth 10 fps” lol

I can easily tell the difference between 10/22/30/60 fps, and would love to see our sims consistently hit 60 some day. 

[GSalden 4,656]

Here I use 4K / 30 hertz / Unlimited in my full suze cockpit on both view pc’s.

 I would love to use 60 hertz / Unlimited but then both my 2080 / 2080 Ti are only showing a purple image as the total of pixels x frequency is too much for these cards using NVsurround with 2 displays ( 2x 4K )  🤔

Regarding what a human eye is able to see does not interest me one bit. It is how good it looks to me ...

 

 

[Ricardo41 5,936]

12 hours ago, PATCO LCH said:

I have been caught up as much as anyone in my twelve years of simming in the maximum FPS possible on my systems chase.

If you leave this obsession with frame rates behind, you'll actually start to enjoy flight simming and stop flight sim fiddling. This is an old, pointless, and endless discussion that usually leads to stabbings, murder, and mayhem (virtually speaking).

I see a lot of folks spend an arm  and a leg on shiny new hardware, only to rush to the fora and start crying about how they were expecting "more framerates". Well, if you smash all your sliders to the right, why are you complaining?

Back off your sliders 1 -3 notches to the left. 

Secondly, the acceptable threshold for fps will differ wildly between simmers, so discussions are pointless. 

I have a 4 year old PC with 8 gigs of RAM and if I set my sliders to the middle +1, my framerates (locked at 25) will vary between 23 and 25, with the occasional dip into the middle to high teens while flying into dense scenery. Not great but works for me.