Since August of 2020 there have been countless posts, debates, and even arguments about the fps metric in MSFS. It seems “faster is better” and many people spend lots of money on hardware chasing high frames rates.
Take a look at this outline below, and maybe you can relax a little. I mean, if 24 fps is good enough for 007 and Maverick, how fast do you really need to go?
24fps is the standard frame rate for movies. In the era of streaming media when the line between movies and television is more blurred than ever, many television shows also use 24fps to achieve a more cinematic look.
25fps is the standard frame rate for television shows broadcast in the Phase Alternating Line (PAL) format. PAL is the official color-encoding system for TV broadcasts in most countries outside of North America.
30fps is the standard frame rate for television shows broadcast in the National Television System Committee (NTSC) format. NTSC is the official color-encoding system for TV broadcasts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and some parts of Central and South America.
if you’re flying slow, 25-ish FPS is fine. If you’re flying faster (like in the low altitude Top Gun activities) higher framerates are better.
Just because TV / cinemas use between 24-30 FPS doesn’t mean that’s ‘good enough’ for everything.
There’s also a lot down to personal preference etc. Some people can live just fine with 25 fps, others can’t. Also matters if you’re on pancake screen or VR.
In general; anything over 30 FPS is fine for me personally in most use cases. Anything under that, and I notice and it annoys me.
Yep… I pretty much agree with that. Since I’ve started using a VR headset anything much below 30 fps seems to be noticeable. That, and the refresh rate of the headset itself both seem pretty important.
Chasing fps or Ultra settings seems to get obsessive; I found this data interesting if nothing else. To me, it begs the question: past what point do your eyes fail to notice the increase?
1) Technical aspects to do with what your screen can handle.
Old-school 60 fps monitors had a minimum frame rate of 30 fps . Hence (and this dates back before GSync and Freesync) 30 fps became a “magic” minimum acceptable frame rate and 60 fps became the “magic” optimal number. Of course since then there are all sorts of crazy internet myths connecting 30 fps and 60 fps with some mythical biological characteristics of the human eye but the reality is that 30 fps and 60 fps just dates back to old monitors without Gsync that had a default frame rate of 60 fps and minimum of 30 fps - and 60 hz was chosen as that is the default mains frequency in many countries not for any 'magic" biological factors to do with human eyes.
Things have changed. 144hz monitors have a minimum frame rate of 48 fps not 30 fps for example and would have issues at 30 fps. However we also have gsync/freesync that lets us, through technical trickery, run monitors at frame rates well below their minimums.
2 ) In game and visual issues
These are totally separate from the technical issues above. Things in this category include some people are much more sensitive to flashing and high frequency flicker and can get eye strain and headaches. Also relevant here is firstly what you are doing and what your skill level is. For example the reaction time needed at a professional level in First Person Shooter games means frame rates down around 60 fps never lone 30 fps are just too slow if you are trying to get a snap shot at someone running past an open doorway for example. However there is a limit to how much a faster frame rate can help, if your skills and reaction times are on the average side for example you may not see a difference going from 144hz up to 200hz for example whereas for a professional it may be night and day.
Is it going to matter in Flight Sims … well in combat sims or doing formation aerobatics online, quite possibly yes . However for normal civilian flight sims the main issue will be whether your eyes/brain can handle 30 fps or find it deeply disturbing and there is no way to know that without trying.
What’s best for you is what’s best. About the only time you’ll ever notice a difference between 30 and 60 is when watching a prop disk. My gaming laptop wasn’t stellar when I bought it in 2000, and there are certainly better out there now, but I have my settings tweaked to where I can consistently get 35-30 FPS. Things that make a bigger visual impact get cranked, those that don’t, get scaled back to save resources for the first group. You’ll find the list in my profile.
Interesting thing this that I have wondered about but never tried to quantify. From a number of sources, it would appear that peoples’ reaction times to visual stimuli are typically around 0.25 seconds with a standard deviation of around 0.02 seconds. The difference between “the average person” and someone in the 99.7 percentile would be three standard deviations, i.e. around 0.06 seconds. For serious first person shooters, more appropriate perhaps is the difference between someone in the top 2.5% vs. someone in the top 0.3%, which is the difference between 2 and 3 standard deviations = 0.02 sec.
In terms of frame times: at 30fps the frame time is 0.033 seconds. At 120fps the frame time is 0.008 seconds. The difference is 0.025 seconds. Which is close to the difference between the 97.5 and 99.7 percentiles. Is that worth it to hard core first person shooters? I suppose if you are really serious then yes.
For a flight sim? For me anything over 30fps is acceptable, 45 is where I am very happy and 60fps is fantastic.
I can only repeat what I said above: For me anything over 30fps is acceptable, 45 is where I am very happy and 60fps is fantastic. Even for precision formation flying, realistically speaking, I think for almost everybody the 0.025 second frame time difference between 30 and 120 fps becomes academic.
If you have a slow response LCD monitor like IPS, supplying 60, 120 or higher frames to the monitor can significantly reduce the motion blur effect of response rate. Naturally this is more important with faster movement, but it’s not the plane being fast that matters as much as the view. I use a pancake monitor at 120hz but have head tracking, so moving my head causes the view to blur when frame rate is low.
Someone else already wrote a paper on frame rates, response rates and other LCD monitor issues so I won’t go on about it, but there is a lot to understand about those interactions, some may be surprising.
Linus actually tested this back in 2019. The professional gamers/streamers (including Shroud - Michael Grzesiek ) were substantially better at 240 hz but for Linus and the non-pro guys the improvement was much less significant:
This of course is not necessarily relevant to flight simming.
For me anything less that 40fps is no good. Looking ahead it’s fine but when looking out a side window, you can see the deltas or the lack of them as the scenery judders past.
Your examples are all passive. The desire for high FPS is largely due to minimising the latency between user input and the image reacting, something which is completely non-existant for film and TV.
1/30th of a second is very noticeable in that respect.
I am sure this has been said before on the forum but unfortunately was not accepted as 100% correct by many responders for various reasons, all of which were valid.
I am quite happy with 30 so that is my standard.
I believe the frequency of mains power was selected because some tests were done to see if some individuals could see a flicker in a light globe at various frequencies and 50 was the value chosen but anything higher, like 60, is OK too.
You don’t need 60 FPS for a flight sim. This isn’t CoD or a racing game. 30 FPS is the best you can already have. I have a i5-10600K, 16GB RAM and a GTX 1660 Super. And it run smoothly at 30 FPS, on a mixture of medium/high settings with ultra resolution, high volumetric clouds and TLOD set to 160. That includes the Fenix A320 and the PMDG 737. I could of course turn off V-sync and get around 40 FPS. But then again, you’re pushing your rig harder. I don’t like that. I just like setting to 30 and forgetting.
Gaming for more than 20+ years, my preference is below. Less hurts my eyes.
Microsoft Flight Simulator = min 30fps, avg 45fps preferred (tubeliner)
Racing games = 60 fps minimum.
Not fast paced driving = 60fps constant enough
FPS = min 60, 90 fps preferred
Fast pace FPS = min 90 preferred.
City building, tycoons etc = 25 fps is sufficient.
Sorry 20 fps is just fine here, everything on ultra runs nice and smooth @ 3840x2160 no artifacts etc. Now if this had an air combat module, then I would probably change my opinion but…
The FAA has a minimum of 60-hertz refresh rate for all visuals used in Flight Training Devices and Full Flight Simulators. (ATDs are certified under different rules.) The goal in manufacturing a device at the company I work for is 1:1 rate or 60 fps locked. When certified the simulator must have no lagging and must present a smooth presentation of the visual simulation. 60 fps helps us exceed the certification requirements.
