I’m not casting judgement on or disagreeing with anyone who finds 30fps acceptable. The question of the topic was whether people are spending money on hardware unnecessarily, and the screenshots provided suggested that it is necessary if you want more than 30fps.
The argument that we subsequently descended into started because someone said TV was 24fps, which is factually wrong. Obviously it’s impossible to not correct something like that when you read it on the internet.
The TV/film argument is always daft in the context of video games anyway, since they’re both completely passive.
That! I recently bought a gaming laptop next to my main rig just because I could. Plus a whole new set of flight controls for the A320 ^^ :D. Saved up around 2000€ since the start of the pandemic. Well back to the main topic. FPS matter! I personally can see a clear difference between a 60 FPS and a 25 FPS image. One of the reasons I could never enjoy “conventional” 3d movies at the theater until Peter Jackson came up with 60FPS 3d for the Hobbit. It is not so much, what your eye can actually perceive but what your eye has the chance to perceive.So if you move your head and watch a 25 FPS video scene, you will experience stuttering in your peripheral vision. Do that at 60 FPS and it will appear as a smooth progression!
This a pervasive myth in these forums that’s been discussed dozens of times. As soon as the camera or scene moves fast enough, you can easily see the difference with higher frame rates. 24 fps film is shot with the shutter open long enough to include natural motion blur. Your brain is basically tricked into seeing the resulting smeared image as smooth motion, filling in the gaps when the shutter is closed between frames, and interpreting the image as continuous even though it’s not. And skilled filmmakers know not to push this motion. Shoot an action scene improperly with the wrong exposure settings, or pan that camera too fast, and it’s still going to look like crap.
As soon as I turn my head with a TrackIR, I don’t need the counter to be able to tell the difference when my fps drops from 60 fps to 30 fps due to some performance snag in the simulator. Not that I need 60 fps, but man it’s buttery smooth compared to the slight chop of 30 fps. But it certainly makes a difference when you’re getting knocked around in turbulence and tracking the gauges.
I’ve always been impressed with how Flight Simulator performs on lower end hardware, and there is definitely diminishing returns as you spend more. During the Alpha I had a 10 year old i7 in my rig and an R9 390, and the game was playable at 1440 and medium settings. It wasn’t smooth, but it worked well enough, and I was amazed by that. But man you jump up to 4k Ultra @ 60 fps, it’s pretty nice. So much so that I’m not itching to get my VR headset working again. Is it worth the cost? That’s just personal preference.
VERY good point.
I built a golf simulator so I could golf year round. We have a very short season up here. Dropped about $25K CDN. Kind of puts the $2400 in PC bits for MSFS into perspective.
Exactly. I’m an astrophotographer. If that isn’t a giant money pit of a hobby, I don’t know what is. lol
I just bought a new telescope back in the fall that was about $4000 Cdn after taxes. When all my gear is combined, I probably drag about $15-20k worth of gear out to the field with me every night I go out. It is what it is.
“Flight simming is a hobby that stands on its own from gaming”
Indeed, put the cost of a capable PC into perspective against the cost of peripherals and a sim-pit build (even a modest one, not a wrap around projection sim with motion actuators) and the monster PC actually begins to look like the cheapest component in the set up.
Well there ya go. I’m running 5120x1440 (2.66x your resolution) and many here are running 4K (which is exactly 3x your resolution). And your frame rates are only in the low 30’s. You also don’t say what settings you’re using in MSFS. I use Ultra.
I believe sometimes we have a fps problem combined with a stutter problem. And stutters are stutters, whether it’s 24 fps or 120 fps. That’s why high fps doesn’t imply fluidity in all cases.
Been reading this with real interest. I think the one thing that we can probably all agree on is that no-one likes the price gouging that’s been going on with mid and high end GPUs.
What I don’t like is that whatever your budget, paying more than was intended for a good enough GPU is just ridiculous. I can’t recall a time when it has been as bad as it is right now!
The thing that I don’t understand about it is how anyone is successful selling one at the prices they’re asking. RTX 3080’s are going for $1500+ from scalpers and RTX 3090 for $3000. Uuuuhh… you can buy a full pre-built computer with those cards for only about $600 more (sometimes less) than what they are asking. Pull out the card, put in your old, and resell the machine and make back most, if not all, of the price difference.
Great point my flight sim hobby doesn’t even come close to my old track racing days.
We are talking about hundreds compared to thousands on rebuilding engines and transmissions every other season.
Well it’s a matter of preference. You’re ok with low-medium settings, i want high ultra settings. I can’t complain really, 3700x, 2070s, 32gb ram, 25-40fps. But i’d prefer 50-60fps, when it drops to 30 it’s annoying and when it drops to 25 i want to close my eyes. Will upgrade when gpu’s will be available to buy which won’t happen in at least 4-6 months. besides resolution matters. Some people have 4k monitors, so 3080 is a must for them. I play on much lower res 3440x1440 but it’s still pretty high so 3070/3080 should do nicely.
Very wrong. There is definitely a big visible difference between 24fps and 60fps or more.
Also, 24fps are only enough for movies (or TV) because movies have motion blur, which fools the eyes into seeing more frames than there are.
But games only have fake motion blur with a ghosting effect or no motion blur at all. Razor sharp images definitely need more than 24fps to appear really smooth with faster motions.
You can even see examples of that in movies: Saving Private Ryan, for example, uses a faster shutter speed in the combat scenes. The result are crisper individual frames with less motion blur and a jittery visual that is very different from the usual 1/48th of a second exposure (180° shutter angle) that movies utilize.
How does the size of a file correlate with the latency to access it?
Doesn’t the latency spring from the time the read/write head needs to find the data on the platter? Only then does the size of the file come into play.
So if you have a lot of small add-ons and the arm of the HDD has to cycle frantically to find/retrieve all the data on the platter you get worse performance. It used to be like that back in the day, wenn all the terrain tiles were scattered around on a fragmented HDD for instance.
I am sorry. You are imposing your perceptions on the world.
Skip, I agree and understand your explanation of frame rate illusions. However the reality is, the vast majority are NOT aware of any significant differences above 30fps. This is not about what the eye sees or what the brain is interpreting. The brain IS very capable of processing moving images at significantly higher rates. The issue is that very few people have any need to. As a result, the brain doesn’t bother.
The sense of smell can be tuned to identify many 1000’s of scents at levels below that where the vast majority would not smell anything. The blind have shown an ability to navigate complex environments by the sense of hearing only. Every individual is different and some are more tuned to their visual input. Someone that has an extraordinary sense of taste, may not realize that they are one of a very small minority that can taste the difference between vintages.
If you are sensitive to higher frame rates, it may be that you spent far more time playing games that required it and so your brain has adjusted the dissemination of that information as a priority. My brain couldn’t care less that some guy just popped into a window across the square and squeezed of a 30 cal burst in my direction. My brain just absorbs the fact that the kill cam is slow mo anyway.
This all means that just because others perceive the world differently than you does not mean they need medical attention. It also means that the movie makers are going to continue making movies that fool most of us.