Informative video about the 30 FPS myth

[CJ2311]

As I'm sure all of you are aware, there is an old myth going around about the eye being able "to only perceive up to 30 FPS"

Now the reason why I'm posting this video here is just to hopefully teach a thing or two about this issue to people who still believe that myth in this day and age, since I saw Octopuss claiming on the nexus forums that there is no difference between 40 and 60FPS, let alone values above that.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrfkX7J_LVs

 

Of course, this is just a small video for a start but it should at least convince anyone who's got it in their heads that 'eyes can only see x FPS" to actually do some research instead of blindly believing that 30 FPS should be the standard for gaming just because they've never even seen 60 FPS.

 

EDIT: And here's a small web page with a test in Flash or HTML5.

Edited March 18, 2014 by CJ2311

[Octopuss]

I don't believe in that. Human eye is probably "technically" capable of recognizing anything, but what we perceive is completely different thing.

The whole discussion started with some guy on Nexus claiming that Skyrim is unplayable at 50 FPS, which is super ridiculous nonsense (especially since the game caps at 60 FPS by default with vsync on with normal 60Hz monitor), which is another popular myth that says you MUST maintain 60 FPS no matter what else you cannot play. I don't know which side of the coin is worse.

 

The video is a nice explanation how things work, though.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Octopuss

[CJ2311]

Well anything over 25/30 FPS should be playable, especially if you're used to an FPS like that, it's just that one cannot deny that there is indeed a noticeable difference between 30,40,60 and 100 FPS, which was my point all along. :)

 

Also, since I started playing my games at 60FPS most of the time, I started to find that anything under 40 FPS was a bit too choppy, so yeah...

Edited March 18, 2014 by CJ2311

[Octopuss]

Don't get me wrong, I can tell a difference between 30 and 60, maybe much less in Skyrim, but definitely in Battlefield 4. It's just that I am really allergic to this bullsh.. about how 50 (or whatever) is unplayable or how people can tell a difference of 10 or even less FPS, or how anything below 60 is wrong, blabla...

Of course some people are more sensitive than others, but there are some limitations to that. And like I said on Nexus - placebo and things repeated enough times are strong weapons.

[CJ2311]

Well it would seem I owe you an apology then, I was under the impression that you were saying that the other guy was an idiot for claiming that there was a difference, I must have misunderstood you.

[Octopuss]

I am not the best at expressing myself without either pissing others off or making them understand what I say in a wrong way.

I was primarily calling him an idiot for saying the game was unplayable at 50 FPS, and then things took slightly wrong turn.

I should rewrite what I said there though: "These is NO DIFFERENCE between 40 and 60 WHATSOEVER."I don't believe 90% of humans can tell a difference between roughly 40 and 60 FPS, if we're talking static/stable FPS.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Octopuss

[torminater]

As a student of medecine I can tell you, that given enough time (seconds to minutes) anybody with a healthy sight can say which movie was rendered at a higher FPS. Not the exact number of FPS, at least not without training or comparisons with known FPS numbers.

There are no FPS limits in your brain, just thresholds that need to be overcome by a stimulus to reach the cognitively involved areas of the brain. The stimulus has either to be intense or last for a certain period of time to overcome the threshold. These thresholds adapt naturally to what the person needs it to be. Sb. who needs quick reflexes will react faster to a visual stimulus of a shorter duration than sb who tends to do no such thing. This applies to short stimuli, but also to motions. Further details on motion detection and prognostics in the article below.

As stated clearly in the video some high velocity movements may seem choppy/-ier even at the framerate of 200 if compared to the real event.

For further details and explanations please read this article:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Sensory_Systems/Visual_Signal_Processing

[EssArrBee]

I can't watch the video ATM, but I can guess it is trying to crush a myth from the olden days. This has more to do with non-physical digital projection of movies in modern times vs the physical analog projection of the old days. You had to project over a certain amount of slides of film per second to make the black lines between frames 'disappear' and that has turned into something else entirely over the years as we moved to non-physical mediums. Get a 60hz TV and 240hz TV and it will take a while to get used to one after viewing the other, pretty much because a lot of >60hz TVs tend to remove motion blur because they suck. Video rendering is so much different in games than a movie projector, so that myth should really die off.

 

Actually, this speaks to a very prevalent problem in the world today about the blending of words non-physical and digital, also physical and analog. I blame music for this when we switched from tapes to CDs. Digital just means base 2 number system was used to manage data, but we somehow forgot to tell everyone there are physical mediums that are digital. IBM makes 12 TB tape that is for storing sequential, digital data. Also, there is many, many non-physical, analog mediums. DARPA is working on this very thing and trying to rebuild the entire world of computer architecture at the basic hardware levels using analog systems. Words are important people!!!!

/rant

Also, the myth that we only use 10% of our brains should die off. The quote isn't even correct, brain doctor once said something about only knowing what 10% of brain does and that turned into something else entirely. That was also, said about 80 years ago, I think, so we've come quite far since then.

[z929669]

I did not watch the video, but the human brain likely has a limit to its capacity to perceive frames beyond a certain point ... but real life has ∞ FPS ;)

 

30 FPS is definitely lower than my max perception if looking at a fast-moving object though (film can prove that).

 

EDIT: oh, and we use most of our brain capacity, but at probably only 10% efficiency

[CJ2311]

I can't watch the video ATM, but I can guess it is trying to crush a myth from the olden days. This has more to do with non-physical digital projection of movies in modern times vs the physical analog projection of the old days. You had to project over a certain amount of slides of film per second to make the black lines between frames 'disappear' and that has turned into something else entirely over the years as we moved to non-physical mediums. Get a 60hz TV and 240hz TV and it will take a while to get used to one after viewing the other, pretty much because a lot of >60hz TVs tend to remove motion blur because they suck. Video rendering is so much different in games than a movie projector, so that myth should really die off.

Yes, that's pretty much what the video aims to debunk.What's really "funny" about all this is that even Thomas Edison recommended a framerate of 48 FPS to avoid straining the eyes, and that was in the 20's... 

EDIT: oh, and we use most of our brain capacity, but at probably only 10% efficiency

I know a lot of people IRL who don't even seem to use 1% of their brain's capacity OR efficiency to be honest :P

[Aiyen]

The 30 FPS limit is essentially at leftover from consoles and is the only real reason it is still prevalent at all. Which again is because of old TV´s and how they displayed images. 

This is the problem with the least common denominator.... when the previous generation of consoles came out many people globally still had old tv´s and hence it was not removed then. 

 

As for the brain ... that is always funny. The measure of efficiency is vague at best, and since sleep, subconscious processing etc. are not really understood at anything but the most rudimentary level then it is just a fun random number people are throwing around. 

For example most people have tried to work on a problem for hours on end... then they move away from it and do something else for a little while, and then when they return to the problem then they solve it really fast relatively speaking. So... even though the initial efficiency was not really high, then afterwards it turned out that it was in fact quite high. Just because you do not work actively focused on a given task does not mean that the brain does not process the information. 

[z929669]

Efficiency is partly measured by the active 'connections' among the brains neurological 'centers'. More connections ~= higher efficiency, and most people lack a consistent # of connections among the different centers since they are not really using those centers in conjunction with one another in any consistent manner ... brain 'exercise' is key to developing those, but most of us don't have nearly as many as we could have.

 

I am no expert in this area, but rather am regurgitating an overly-simplified rendition of what I have learned (perhaps inacurately), which is testament to my own lack of 'connections' among the areas of my brain that pertain to remembering this stuff :P