Framerate and You

Games Other Halo
#1

It’s my belief that a good framerate is what makes a game so immersive, beyond the point of graphics and killer acting. Smooth action can really make a game stand out, and choppy corners cut can really kill one.

Halo 4’s art style looks simplified and sharp, which is good. A subtle art style would contribute to a higher framerate, lacking the abundance of needless details.

A higher framerate would benefit every aspect of a Halo game, including Theater. I think this should be one of 343’s priorities. Thoughts?

#2

Absolutely could not agree more. Halo 3 and Halo Reach look very busy. Just because you can put a zillion objects and polys on the screen doesn’t mean you should.

#3

I couldn’t disgree more. In order to get a higher framerate, the graphics would need to be lowered. And high framerates simply don’t have enough benefits to do such a thing. I personally have never experienced gameplay of any 30 FPS game choppy, not even right after a session of 60 FPS game.

As of now, making the game higher FPS makes no sense. It makes the graphics look bland while giving nothing noticeable back. With 30 FPS we can have better looking graphics, that’s something I’d take over high framerates any time.

#4

A game is the sum of its parts. Yes, framerate issues can cause problems but that doesn’t make it the defining part of a game.

#5

How about a game that looks good and smooth and also performs good and smooth? And doesn’t have a zillion superflous flanges and doohickeys that get in the way of your strafing?

#6

> How about a game that looks good and smooth and also performs good and smooth? And doesn’t have a zillion superflous flanges and doohickeys that get in the way of your strafing?

lol indeed.

I hated a few of Halo 3’s maps simply because there was a lot of unneeded outcroppings that got in the way of strafing and basic movement. Reach was a ton better in this aspect, but that still didn’t make up for its broken game mechanics.

> I personally have never experienced gameplay of any 30 FPS game choppy, not even right after a session of 60 FPS game.

Either you’re lying, or your eyes seriously can’t tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60. After playing a game at 60 FPS and moving to Halo 1/2/3 I just want to stop playing immediately. It’s so horrible. Sure, once you get used to it it’s fine, but the switch at first just makes you want to rip your eyes out. Reach’s heavy motion blur actually helps the transition, but I hate motion blur and film grain. I hope they’re not in Halo 4, but what are the chances?

Anyway, OP, I personalty couldn’t disagree more with your OP. Not because I think a FPS boost is bad (I’d welcome it with open arms) but I don’t think Halo 4’s art style looks simplified at all! I think it’s full of unneeded visual noise! But that goes without saying for concept art. I’m not going to say anything till I see some actual in-game screenshots. I do agree Halo should strive for at least 60 FPS though.

#7

This might be a stupid question, but what is framerate? Lol xD

#8

> > I personally have never experienced gameplay of any 30 FPS game choppy, not even right after a session of 60 FPS game.
>
> Either you’re lying, or your eyes seriously can’t tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60. After playing a game at 60 FPS and moving to Halo 1/2/3 I just want to stop playing immediately. It’s so horrible. Sure, once you get used to it it’s fine, but the switch at first just makes you want to rip your eyes out. Reach’s heavy motion blur actually helps the transition, but I hate motion blur and film grain. I hope they’re not in Halo 4, but what are the chances?
>
> Anyway, OP, I personalty couldn’t disagree more with your OP. Not because I think a FPS boost is bad (I’d welcome it with open arms) but I don’t think Halo 4’s art style looks simplified at all! I think it’s full of unneeded visual noise! But that goes without saying for concept art. I’m not going to say anything till I see some actual in-game screenshots. I do agree Halo should strive for at least 60 FPS though.

Actually, I’m not lying. I could play Forza 4 which runs at 60 FPS for few hours and immediately move to Halo with no change in how it looks to me.

If we compare that near unnoticeable increased smoothness to the amount of loss of graphical detail, 60 FPS is definitely not worth it.

I also remembered a nice little detail about the Halo engine called dual frame-buffer. If my memory serves, both buffers run at 30 FPS, making a total of 60 FPS. The lighting is something that Halo is very good at, it’s also the thing that makes the biggest difference at how the game looks. Thereby, 60 FPS would probably mean abandoning the amazing lighting effects. That’s another reason for me to say no.

I literally see no point at making a current generation game 60 FPS. Black Ops is a good example of what this causes: boring and bland visuals.

> This might be a stupid question, but what is framerate? Lol xD

You know how movies consist of pictures that are shown so fast that it makes the illusion as the picture was actually moving? Framerate means the amount of those pictures that are shown in a time span of one second. Movies usually show 24 frames (pictures) in one second, this means they run at 24 FPS (Frames Per Second).

Video games usually run at 30 FPS, but some newer games run at 60. The problem here is that when it comes to video games, each frame needs to be rendered in real time. This means that having higher framerate means more processing power needed. Thsi usually means decrease in visual detail if the system can’t handle the increased framerate. As 60 FPS is double the amount of 30 FPS, the game would need twice the amount of processing power to render that with the same graphics.

#9

> > > I personally have never experienced gameplay of any 30 FPS game choppy, not even right after a session of 60 FPS game.
> >
> > Either you’re lying, or your eyes seriously can’t tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60. After playing a game at 60 FPS and moving to Halo 1/2/3 I just want to stop playing immediately. It’s so horrible. Sure, once you get used to it it’s fine, but the switch at first just makes you want to rip your eyes out. Reach’s heavy motion blur actually helps the transition, but I hate motion blur and film grain. I hope they’re not in Halo 4, but what are the chances?
> >
> > Anyway, OP, I personalty couldn’t disagree more with your OP. Not because I think a FPS boost is bad (I’d welcome it with open arms) but I don’t think Halo 4’s art style looks simplified at all! I think it’s full of unneeded visual noise! But that goes without saying for concept art. I’m not going to say anything till I see some actual in-game screenshots. I do agree Halo should strive for at least 60 FPS though.
>
> Actually, I’m not lying. I could play Forza 4 which runs at 60 FPS for few hours and immediately move to Halo with no change in how it looks to me.
>
> If we compare that near unnoticeable increased smoothness to the amount of loss of graphical detail, 60 FPS is definitely not worth it.
>
> I also remembered a nice little detail about the Halo engine called dual frame-buffer. If my memory serves, both buffers run at 30 FPS, making a total of 60 FPS. The lighting is something that Halo is very good at, it’s also the thing that makes the biggest difference at how the game looks. Thereby, 60 FPS would probably mean abandoning the amazing lighting effects. That’s another reason for me to say no.
>
> I literally see no point at making a current generation game 60 FPS. Black Ops is a good example of what this causes: boring and bland visuals.

I agree. I’ve never noticed problems when moving between games with different frame rates. In fact Halo Reach is one of only 3 games where I ever had framerate issues. From my point of view, if lowering the framerate to 30fps allows them to do other things, then it wont bother me one bit.

#10

Yes, H4 should have amazing framerate capa- AMAZING FRAMERATE CAPABILITIES!.. Are you mad Peter? You look mad.

#11

> You know how movies consist of pictures that are shown so fast that it makes the illusion as the picture was actually moving? Framerate means the amount of those pictures that are shown in a time span of one second. Movies usually show 24 frames (pictures) in one second, this means they run at 24 FPS (Frames Per Second).
>
> Video games usually run at 30 FPS, but some newer games run at 60. The problem here is that when it comes to video games, each frame needs to be rendered in real time. This means that having higher framerate means more processing power needed. Thsi usually means decrease in visual detail if the system can’t handle the increased framerate. As 60 FPS is double the amount of 30 FPS, the game would need twice the amount of processing power to render that with the same graphics.

Ah ok, I think I get it. So why would people think 60 FPS is better? Well, unless they have the equipment to pull it off, which I’m guessing they don’t.

#12

> > You know how movies consist of pictures that are shown so fast that it makes the illusion as the picture was actually moving? Framerate means the amount of those pictures that are shown in a time span of one second. Movies usually show 24 frames (pictures) in one second, this means they run at 24 FPS (Frames Per Second).
> >
> > Video games usually run at 30 FPS, but some newer games run at 60. The problem here is that when it comes to video games, each frame needs to be rendered in real time. This means that having higher framerate means more processing power needed. Thsi usually means decrease in visual detail if the system can’t handle the increased framerate. As 60 FPS is double the amount of 30 FPS, the game would need twice the amount of processing power to render that with the same graphics.
>
> Ah ok, I think I get it. So why would people think 60 FPS is better? Well, unless they have the equipment to pull it off, which I’m guessing they don’t.

Maybe in H5 when we get a the new and improved console.

#13

> > You know how movies consist of pictures that are shown so fast that it makes the illusion as the picture was actually moving? Framerate means the amount of those pictures that are shown in a time span of one second. Movies usually show 24 frames (pictures) in one second, this means they run at 24 FPS (Frames Per Second).
> >
> > Video games usually run at 30 FPS, but some newer games run at 60. The problem here is that when it comes to video games, each frame needs to be rendered in real time. This means that having higher framerate means more processing power needed. Thsi usually means decrease in visual detail if the system can’t handle the increased framerate. As 60 FPS is double the amount of 30 FPS, the game would need twice the amount of processing power to render that with the same graphics.
>
> Ah ok, I think I get it. So why would people think 60 FPS is better? Well, unless they have the equipment to pull it off, which I’m guessing they don’t.

It seems that some people better distinguish the difference between 30 and 60 FPS than other. It technically looks better, but as I said, it comes with the cost of visual detail.

If you’re more interested into the subject, you can search the framerates of some of the games you have from google. If some of them are 60, you can compare and form your own opinion.

To ease your work, here is a very small list of games you potentially could have that run at 60 FPS:

Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Forza Motorsport 3
Forza Motorsport 4

If you have any of these games, you can compare it to Halo Reach and look for yourself do you see any difference. The difference would be that the Reach would look somewhat “choppy”.

I hope that helped. :slight_smile:

#14

haha i actually can not see or feel any difference from 30 to 60 FPS, so i don’t care what direction they take regarding frames

#15

Rage runs at 60fps and absolutely destroys every other console game in terms of graphics.

I’d personally prefer that the game run at 30fps (like every other Halo), but that 30fps HAS TO BE SMOOTH IN ALL MODES.

That includes 4 player splitscreen on forged maps.

#16

> This might be a stupid question, but what is framerate? Lol xD

here is your answer.

P.S. halo should stay at 30 FPS

#17

To put this simply, the most important aspect of a video-game is the resolution. I’m an avid PC gamer, so I’m used to getting in most my games over 80 frames per second, and let me tell you the benefit of frames over resolution is very insignificant. Most console titles are 1280x720, or lower. In most cases games with the graphic fidelity of Halo usually have to be rendered at a sub-HD level in order to run smoothly. There’s no way they can keep evolving Halo like the way it’s been graphically and add more frames, it doesn’t work.

Another thing to notice is consistent frame rate is way more important than more frames. So if they’re going to change anything (which is most likely impossible on outdated console hardware) then the resolution needs to be amped to 1920x1080, not more frames.

#18

> Rage runs at 60fps and absolutely destroys every other console game in terms of graphics.
>
> I’d personally prefer that the game run at 30fps (like every other Halo), but that 30fps HAS TO BE SMOOTH IN ALL MODES.
>
> That includes 4 player splitscreen on forged maps.

Well, I heard that id software were able to do some pretty cool things to allow stuff like their mega textures. But that’s all I know. I just wanted to point out that most games still can’t accomplish such a feat.

That said, it doesn’t matter do we have that 30 FPS or 60 FPS. We could always be ahving a game that is able to run even at 120 FPS, but is usually kept on the level of 30 because there is too much to process. What I mean is that if you want to have an actually smooth experience, you better keep it low. Because which sounds better to you? A game where the framerate varies between 25 and 60 FPS, or a game that varies between 25 and 30 FPS.

You can imagine that you have played for a while when there is nothing happening. Everything is fine, the game is going with steady 60 FPS. Suddenly the game shows it’s real visuals and the framerate drops to 30 FPS. For those who can already distinguish the difference between 30 and 60 FPS, it would be extremely frustrating, even more than looking a game with consistent 30 FPS.

Thereby, let’s just be happy that we can at least have a framerate that is consistent.

> To put this simply, the most important aspect of a video-game is the resolution. I’m an avid PC gamer, so I’m used to getting in most my games over 80 frames per second, and let me tell you the benefit of frames over resolution is very insignificant. Most console titles are 1280x720, or lower. In most cases games with the graphic fidelity of Halo usually have to be rendered at a sub-HD level in order to run smoothly. There’s no way they can keep evolving Halo like the way it’s been graphically and add more frames, it doesn’t work.
>
> Another thing to notice is consistent frame rate is way more important than more frames. So if they’re going to change anything (which is most likely impossible on outdated console hardware) then the resolution needs to be amped to 1920x1080, not more frames.

That’s it, changing anything is pretty much impossible with the Xbox 360 without losing some other feature. The resolution has pretty much the same problem as framerate, the game needs to render more pixels. And lowering graphical quality to have a higher resolution just doesn’t make sense at all. That’s like buying a Bluray player to watch DVDs, it just makes no sense.

We just have to wait for the next generation of consoles when we can have better graphics and higher resolution and higher framerate.

#19

So much ignorance in one thread, truly amazing. So those hyper competitive PC gamers that jump through hoops to boost frame rate are all just dumb eh?

And the idiots who would be happy with like 25fps? How fracking blind are you? Anything less than 30 looks like choppy -Yoink- to me, I don’t know how you people stand it. Once you go over a hundred or so, then you hit the diminishing returns where your eye can’t really tell.

I’ll take a steady 60+ fps with functional graphics and the console’s power being put towards better AI and physics over barfing up as many pixels on the screen as possible just for pixel bragging rights.

Just because you can have a zillion pixels and objects in the FOV at the same time, doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes less is more.

#20

> I’ll take a steady 60+ fps with functional graphics and the console’s power being put towards better AI and physics over barfing up as many pixels on the screen as possible just for pixel bragging rights.

AI calculations, and physics aren’t handled by the GPU, so why bring it up?