What framerate do you consider "Unplayable"?

[Shalmanese]

Seems to me that many people around here are whining about 35-40 fps as being "unplayable", Right now I play Quake2 on a P266MMX laptop with a non-active screen at about 17fps for hours and I find that perfectly playable. Is it just that my mind hasnt adapted to "true 3d gaming" yeat and that when I start playing with a geforce2 ultra I suddenly find 17fps to be unplayable.

What framerates would you consider to be unplayable??

 

[Priit]

17FPS is little too few, 25FPS is something I find to be smooth (no need for 60, 120 or 200FPS). It really depends what type of game you are playing, too.

 

[BlueScreenVW]

As long as it doesn't dip deep down to often, I can accept about 35-40 fps. But in Q3A it's usually heavy lag when there's a loot of blood and stuff on the screen, so I'd say at least 60 as a timedemo average is nice (to avoid <20 fps dips, that is).

 

[Gorgonzola]

i usually get between 25-30 fps in q3a on my sh!t computer, and it is perfectly playable! im sick of all the people saying &quot;oh no, when i switched from win98 to win2k my fps dropped from 120 to 100! its not playable anymore&quot;. people that say that are completely imagining that its unplayable. they look at the fps in the corner of the screen and they see a lower number, and then fool their brain into thinking that it is way different.

thats how i see it.

 

[Stosh]

The way I look it it, the more the better. However, In heavy battles you can get a drastic reduction in fps. So if your running at 30, and it drops to 10, thats very bad.

I play a lot of UT. It depends on the map. On some I will get higher FPS due to less polygons. Offline I average bout 55. Online,(due to my Netspeed) I get bout 28. That 28 fps is steady, it does not drop.

As for your question, Anything above 25fps is fine. If my fps is lower, I don't want to play. I have played with 15fps...but it really sucked...

 

[Gorgonzola]

when quake2 was first released i had to play it on my old cyrix 166mhz (now dead ) without a 3d card, and it can't have been getting more than 20fps (it also had a dodgy serial mouse which made it even jerkier). but it is amazing how much better you will be at a game if you have to practice in sh!tty conditions like this. i became better at railing than any of my LAN mates who were on faster systems, so when i finally switched to a faster computer, it was unbelievably easy to hit just about any rail shot.

 

[ApacheXMD]

any below 25-30 is absolutely unbearable for me. and really, it's not all psychological.
framerate takes a big fat hit on that castle map in rocketarena3.

-patchy

 

[snow patrol]

It's interesting actually.

To do a little test, I started a game of Quake 3 and capped the frame rate so that it never went above 30. I also lowered the resolution to 640x480 to ensure that it never went below 30fps either (i.e. it maintained a constant 30FPS in game).

This was perfectly playable. In fact, when I changed this to a constant 60FPS, I noticed almost NO difference in playability or smoothness.

Anything below 30 and I started to notice jerkiness and to be honest, I wouldn't really want to play below a constant 25 fps. It's ok to be screaming along at 90FPS whilst staring at the floor, but it's the dips into the 20's and 10's when things get really busy that make things hard. I'd be happy with a constant 50FPS as long as it never went below that

 

[trmiv2]

Whatever framerate I'm getting right now in the No One Lives Forever demo is unplayable. I get a headache whenever I play it, so that would make it pretty unplayable. I'm not sure the exact number, but it can't be over 30fps. I REALLY need a new video card. I am currently using a Matrox G400 MAX with my Athlon 650, which really wasn't a gaming card when it came out. I am thinking about picking up a GeForce MX card with the twin view. If only I didn't have to buy Christmas presents........

 

[Renob]

For me 40fps is the the bottom line... On my friends system its an old one he get around 35 to 45 and I for one can tell the difference this is in Q3 now on my system im getting around 120 800x600 and it never drops below 100 and i love it its so smooth and people who say you cant tell the change between say 50 and 80 fps need glasses i can tell a big change in how the game feels so when im on someones else system the lowest is 40fps and when im at home its 100fps.......

 

[Moonbender]

There are studies on this topic. Until some months ago, it was common to say that anything above 25 fps should be fine. This has a simple reason, starting at 25 hz the human eye is not able to distinguish single pictures and instead sees a motion. Cinama movies run at about 23 fps, I think, and I rarely see people complain about the movie being not smooth.
However, recently, everybody starts saying that the number can't be high enough, that for some reason the human eye sees different when playing a game, and that for this reason 25 fps are not enough. I'm sorry, but I don't really believe it

I'm playing HL mods such as CS and FLF (obviously not the most system-straining FPS) on my 300mhz Celery and a Banshee. Usually I get something like 30 to 40 fps, in wider scenes with many people this drops to 15 to 20 fps. I can play everything fine, the rare stuttering is annoying, but I still 0wn y0u

Of course, people throwing around high frame rates DO have a point. Most likely they're talking about their maximum frame rate. However, the maximum frame rate is rather irrelevant - what matters is your minimum frame rate. Your minimum frame rate should always be above 25 fps (in my case it doesn't). You will get ridiculously high rates when viewing a simple scene (like a single wall) but when the game gets more complicated, the minimum frame rate will take a serious hit.

The minimum frame rate I consider playable is 15 fps. It would be playable, but you (or at least I) would notice a stuttering. My target minimum frame rate when considering resolutions and effects is about at 30 fps.

 

[Shalmanese]

hehe.. Sometimes, when I couldnt be bothered getting out my laptop and setting it up, I would use the old school desktops which are cyrix pr100 (ie 75mhz clock, 486 speed). Playing AQ2 at about 5-7 fps. At the start it seemed unplayable cos I was used to my &quot;liquid smooth 17fps&quot; but after about a week I used to lead servers with my sniper rifle, running around in dogfights(not camping). It seemed perfectly smooth when you were absorbed into the game but if you actually concentrated on the screen for a while, you began to think, how the hell am I doing this??. I can still kick almost any half-decent player if we were both playing at 7fps I reckon

 

[BFG10K]

Shalmanese:

Is it just that my mind hasnt adapted to &quot;true 3d gaming&quot; yeat and that when I start playing with a geforce2 ultra I suddenly find 17fps to be unplayable

17 FPS? Yeesh! :disgust:

If you you've never seen anything faster and don't have a direct comparison it may seem &quot;smooth&quot; to you. But even then 17 FPS should seem jerky no matter who is playing and no matter what you've seen. My system runs Quake 3 at 55 FPS and that's not good enough because there are areas with heavy lighting where it does slow down. My friend's crappy system runs Quake 3 at 25 FPS and he tries to tell me how smooth it runs, yet everytime I watch him play it's like watching a slide show.

So basically I won't touch a game if the average framerate is less than ~50 FPS, and I prefer at least ~75 FPS.

Moonbender:

However, recently, everybody starts saying that the number can't be high enough, that for some reason the human eye sees different when playing a game, and that for this reason 25 fps are not enough. I'm sorry, but I don't really believe it

Well why don't you try a 75 FPS system and a 25 FPS and get back to me on whether you see any difference. 25 Hz is absolute BS and it's closer to ~70 Hz. Just ask how many people need 75 Hz monitors (or higher) to not see any flickering.

 

[Moonbender]

You're confusing two things which might be related, but are (obviously) not the same. Starting at 25 fps, you don't see the single frames but rather an animation (of course the number is not the same for everybody, some might see single pictures until 35 fps etc). Sit in front of a TV and try it out, it works quite well.
The refresh rate of a monitor is a different matter, I think. My standard refresh rate is 85 Hz, which is OK for my 17&quot;, but for larger monitor the rate has to be higher. Seeing a picture at 65 Hz or less is quite uncomfortable to me. However, it's not like animations would start to get jerky! Anyway, I don't know exactly about this, it'd be great if someone could shed some light on it.

Oh and about getting used to higher frame rates, I did play HL in some quite low resoultion getting about 60 fps on average, and I switched back to my &quot;absolute BS&quot; 25 fps without problems.

 

[Moonbender]

Double post ... blame it on ... um ... the weather!

 

[Zucchini]

&quot;Seems to me that many people around here are whining about 35-40 fps as being &quot;unplayable&quot;, Right now I play Quake2 on a P266MMX laptop with a non-active screen at about 17fps for hours and I find that perfectly playable. Is it just that my mind hasnt adapted to &quot;true 3d gaming&quot; yeat and that when I start playing with a geforce2 ultra I suddenly find 17fps to be unplayable.&quot;

Hmm i guess your playing by yourself, its a different story if you play multiplayer. People with high framerates have a easier time and probably would wipe the floor with you 60fps average is what we shoot for, the difference between kind of smooth and silky smooth is amazing, once you get used to it you can't go back, it also adds to the feeling of immersion.

 

[Rendus]

My minimum was around 20-30 in Half-Life (K6-2 300, Voodoo2). I've since upgraded and it's slowly rising (TBird 900, Voodoo3, soon to be GF2MX). I find the K6-2 tolerable now, and nothing more.

 

[BFG10K]

Moonbender:

You're confusing two things which might be related, but are (obviously) not the same....Sit in front of a TV and try it out, it works quite well.

And you're confusing four things:

(1) TV and monitors are not the same thing.
(2) TV and games are not the same thing.

Oh and about getting used to higher frame rates, I did play HL in some quite low resoultion getting about 60 fps on average, and I switched back to my &quot;absolute BS&quot; 25 fps without problems.

That's not the same thing and you know it.

Zucchini (LOL!):

the difference between kind of smooth and silky smooth is amazing, once you get used to it you can't go back, it also adds to the feeling of immersion.

Yep. There is a definite difference between smooth and fluid, and fluidity usually comes once you are past the 75 FPS mark and definitely once you are past 100 FPS. It's the difference between playing the game as a series of animations and actually being in the game.

 

[EdipisReks]

moonbender, you don't seem to understand that TV and cinema has motion blur, computer monitors don't. because of this, it takes more FPS to be &quot;smooth&quot; on a monitor. also, when you turn, the higher FPS you have, the smoother it is. if a turn takes 1 second, and you are getting 30 FPS, it will be A LOT jerkier than if you are getting 60 FPS, because you are seeing very different things as you turn, and the 30 FPS is refreshing slowly enough that you can really see it.

--jacob

 

[EdipisReks]

oh, by the way, i'm happy with about 25-35 FPS.

--jacob

 

[mo1her]

I played CS with ~18fps for a long time. My frame-rate always droppend when an enemy showed up. Playing CS on other systems with 40fps+ made it unable for me to play on my PC.

Moonbender I invite you to play CS with 60-70fps just to see the difference

 

[Moonbender]

Right. And in another year, no one will be able to play at anything less than 150 fps, because it's just SO stuttering (the 'average' graphics card will cost $2500). Not to mention the new bus technology which had to be developed for mice, in order to make them notice every shudder of the gamers hand (nano-optical mouse with shudder detection, $800, plus dust-repulsive titanium mouse pad, $300).

Once I get a new machine (*prays*), I'll hopefully be able to try non-&quot;absolute BS&quot; frame rates. According to some here the difference must be so unbelievable I will never turn back. LOL, we will see.

And mother, you know I always manually limit my frame rates to 10 fps in order to give you SOME chance in CS

 

[Shalmanese]

<< Hmm i guess your playing by yourself, its a different story if you play multiplayer. >>


single player??, hell no!, I wouldnt touch Single player quake with a 10 foot pole, This is playing Action Quake2 on my laptop at school with something like 20 player games. Trust me, learning to compensate for lag and dodgy fps is a skill unto itself. Especially with a sniper rifle

 

[snow patrol]

<< Trust me, learning to compensate for lag and dodgy fps is a skill unto itself. Especially with a sniper rifle >>



Very true! I used to play FPS games with an 8meg RAGE Pro (sucked donkey's balls), so I know about jerkiness as well.

 

[demenion]

I used to play Quake 2 in 400x300 resolution software rendering and get about 15 fps, it actually was not that bad.