This weekend, I've been playing The Force Unleashed. I know it's locked at 30 fps, but I didn't really notice it at all. It plays pretty fluently to me.
Who here has a monitor that can display more than 60 fps (Hz), and what kind of games do you play? Does anyone feel that playing (for example) The Witcher 3 at 144 fps / Hz is a better experience than, let's say; 45 fps, or even 60 fps?

I like reading up about computer games, but sometimes I feel like I'm a chess player surrounded by jocks claiming to play chess. (the disconnect between single player games and online multiplayer)

IIRC over a certain HZ rate(like with fps) your brain can't tell the difference or there isn't much improvement. Same with resolutions(like UHD and above).

Most of my displays are standard 60Hz displays, however I have a laptop with a 120Hz refresh also. The higher the frame rate is the smoother you will see motion on the screen. This is more pronounced with games that have high speed movement, either animations moving at high speeds, or the potential for rapid movement such as turning your head fast in a first person shooter.

Everyone's eyes and visual perception differs however, and some people may see flicker or other jumpiness at a given frame rate, while someone else perceives it as being perfectly smooth. There are web based test sites out there which you can use to test the differences between different refresh rates. They usually use horizontal animations at different speeds to demonstrate the results.

The type of game it is and how your attention is focused on it and attention to detail is another element where someone may notice the difference and someone else may not. I tend to be very detail oriented and notice things, while I have a friend who is more macro focused and probably wouldn't know the difference if I dropped his frame rate down from 60 to 25.

The same is true with different video resolutions as well. Some people think anything higher resolution than 1280x720 is just wasting GPU cycles as they can't tell the difference, while others like me see very clear marked improvements in visual detail and fidelity at each resolution jump to 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160 etc.

So there are clear improvements and benefits, but whether or not and how each individual person may perceive them will depend on the individual's own eyes, how their brain processes it, their attention to details, and likely psychological factors as well.

Aside from that, higher frame rates produce lower latency which can provide definite benefits to gamers of certain types of games, in particular competitive multiplayer - even if they can't perceive the visual difference between various higher FPS rates.

Personally, I'm pretty much happy with 60FPS with anything, and can enjoy some games as low as around 25FPS if I have to, but I definitely prefer to get the rate up as close to 60FPS as possible. On my 120Hz display I definitely notice smoother visuals which gives better immersion, but it's icing on the cake rather than a massive game changing experience for me. I'm still happy with 60FPS, and for my personal taste I prefer higher resolution over greater than 60FPS when it comes to spending money, however if one can have both then that's all the better too. :)

Hope this helps.

All of this is good info but as I said earlier one's brain cna only notice so much because of limitations.

Which I pretty much covered in my post if you read the whole thing. There are very definite benefits to higher framerates that go beyond visual perceptioin, namely latency as mentioned. Everyone will benefit from the improved latency regardless of what their brains may perceive visually.

I know people who literally can't visually tell the difference between a 30FPS and 60FPS game so the claim, even when doing direct comparisons side by side. Personally, this blows my mind as I can very clearly tell the difference between 30FPS, 60FPS, and 120FPS displays by looking at them for a second, with 100% accuracy with a game with high speed lateral motion such as an FPS. Beyond 120Hz I have no idea as I haven't first hand seen a display higher than 120Hz. With RTS games or other games with little to no movement or only slow motion going on the differences are negligible for most people. The perceptible benefits come when there is a lot of fast motion going on, as the distance of movement between subsequent frames is much wider at lower frame rates than at higher frame rates, so animation is much smoother with higher FPS.

Nothing to add after such excellent posts.

Saints Row 2 is locked at 30F/s and that game is clearly suffering from that.

RTSes are usually quite playable at 30fps as long as the UI runs at refresh rate and there's a hardware cursor. It's harder for me to put up with strategy games where the UI & mouse cursor also run choppy..

First person shooter at 30 FPS? I'm gone.

But what's a first person shooter? For some people it's twitching around in online competitive PUBG (or whatever). For me it could be Half Life or Amnesia, lurking around, sucking up the atmosphere, exploring, enjoying the story, the non-shooting interactivity.... and yeah doing some shooting around too.

One thing that people still largely ignore is the effect of frame pacing. Out of sync frames are often what people are seeing as a negative experience, and not the actual low frame rate itself. I've played games that are 30fps and feel and look smoother than the very next game I play at 60fps- because the 60 fps game has a variable frame rate and poor frame pacing whilst the 30fps game is at least consistent and locked at an even division of the monitors refresh- so no frames ever have to wait for a refresh cycle. On the other hand with resolution, it's never in doubt- I can always see the improvements from 1080 to1440 and to 2160.

I actually just got a new 120Hz freesync TV to supplement my monitor- especially for console gaming. The refresh is nice...but the staggering upgrade is not the refresh rate but the amazing sharpness and colour improvements- especially HDR. It's game changing, now I don't want to play on my monitor anymore- it's that game changing.

So yeah, I firmly fall into the "once above 60fps use the power to improve visuals" school. I feel it's better to go with what I can definitely see rather than the thing I cannot. And there's nothing wrong with certain types of games at 30fps when it's done with consistent frame pacing. 30fps did not stop me enjoying Horizon Zero Dawn or Sunset Overdrive. But likewise I wouldn't want to play a twitch shooter like Doom 2016 or a racing game like Forza 6 at 30 fps.

I've read these "scientific" articles too... often explaining why movies (film in general) are 25 or 30 fps. Have you ever seen a movie in 60 fps? I definitely see the difference! But no, I don't prefer it - it might be more realistic but (to me) it looks more like a "home video".

Probably most people think of games from series like Unreal (Tournament), Quake, Doom, Far Cry, Wolfenstein, Call of Duty, FEAR, STALKER, Max Payne, Serious Sam, Dead Island, Dying Light, Counter-Strike, Battlefield, Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem, Metro, Painkiller.

I read it for the most part...I was merely bringing that up & imo even latency returns can be negligible with how much "good" they bring/how big they can be after a point.



You can tell the difference to a point, but beyond a certain threshold(which varies between people but usually falls within a set of limits/averages) it is hard to discern much improvement or notice the improvements.

And yeah the uncanny valley/etc effects can come into play with super high res and super fast fps stuff as well.

Some games in your list were definitely not made to be fast pacest: STALKER, Metro, and even Max Payne (1 & 2, a lot more cinematic and not nonstop action).

Well, in the context of movies there's just 25/30 fps or the very recent 60 fps. There's no (AFAIK) going beyond that threshold at the moment.

I know that there are a few 240 Hz gaming monitors out there. I can't really experience it without buying one - but I just can't imagine that with the kind of games I play and how I play them - that I'll ever notice much of a difference.

But you do need to aim smooth and quickly in these games. At 30 FPS I feel the lag affecting my precision while aiming. Anyway, the way I see it, if the gameplay has sudden moves in it (aiming, steering in a racing game), then it's definitely better to have 60 FPS ore more.

I think The Hobbit had 45 FPS.

Most people are probably fine with 100-120 Hz, so the now standard 144 Hz for high refresh rate monitors will suit anybody.