The game I’m currently working on has an FPS cap at 60. It is frame dependent, as in the speed of objects in the game is dependent on the frame rate.
When there are a large (but reasonable) number of entities on the screen, the frame rate drops from 60 to as low as 57. This means that a second of gameplay takes about 0.05 seconds more
Is this worth worrying about? I’m having a hard time deciding if this is noticeable or not.
Thanks
Usually you’d just play the game yourself and decide, whether it’s noticeable or not…
Without having played your game: I think it’s nothing you should worry about.
Might depend if you’re doing anything that could cause the display to be vsynced, because then you could drop to 30fps!
You can’t tell if you’re viewing 120 images per second, or 60. So I highly doubt anyone would notice if your game drops to 57 fps for a few seconds, as long as your game logic isn’t tied to your number of fps. (And thus making your game move slower)
So unless there’s some vsync or other weird stuff that caps your fps, then I doubt it’d be noticeable. 
I would say yes, because, a sudden drop to 57 frames PER SECOND, means that there was a big delta spike
BUT, it is ok for the most time.
Cas said this nicely once, and I paraphrase “users will tolerate seldom “medium” lags but they won’t tolerate constant laggs and jitters” - every game you play lags once in a while…
Try me.
It will make absolutely no difference to perceived quality if it only happens now and again.
Cas :0
OMFG DID THIS JUST CHANGE?!?!?
or did you post another Cas :0 before? looking up
EDIT: no serously…
Do you always write “Cas :)” under every post you make manually?
So you just missed the timing of the shift key?
Oh my god… I thought it was generated 
The amount you move per second does not change, just because there’s a drop in frames. So it should make no difference, what so ever.
If your movement per second changes with the amount of frames you display, then you’re doing something wrong. Whether you paint and show 200 frames a second and moving some 200th part of an inch every time or you paint and show 60 frames per second and move some 60th part of an inch each time, does not make any visible difference.
The eyes doesn’t need more than 29ish fps for things to look fluent.
I don’t think you can imagine how wrong you are.
Even the 60 FPS argument isn’t true. Eyes can see much more. 120 FPS will become a standard eventually
hugs
Yeah, but there is a law of diminishing returns, and it’s based on the fact that everybody’s eyes work at very slightly different rates and so does everybody’s monitors. No point in running at 120fps when the monitor draws at 60fps. And 60fps appears to have been chosen because it is pretty bloody smooth for almost everyone.
Cas <-- yes, manually written under every post I’ve ever made on the internet, ever. I have been rumbled.
General principle about perception: senses are biased towards perceiving discontinuities. If you go from 60 to 57 and back gradually (all else being equal), there is much less chance of it being noticed than if the change is abrupt.
Carmack is already pushing 120 FPS tech while building the rift and stuff
and he even said that JUST using the desktop the cursor and stuff feels so much more fluent in 120 fps
and since all this 3d monitor crap and the awesome rift headmount technology will demand 2x60 fps, there will be a surge of 120 fps monitors
There’s plenty to say about relative frame-rates and about the magic number framerate myth and game performance testing in general, but your update rate is dependent on your frame rate. Bad idea. That will lead to problems unless your game is chess or checkers or tic-tac-toe or sudoku or something.
On another thread discussing delta time Cas implied that it is a valid way to cap the FPS to a number and do make it dependent on that :-X … unless I misunderstood that completely :persecutioncomplex:
The problem with that is that it makes your physics system behave differently based on what type of computer your game is running on and how background processes (including GC, operating system processes, or virus scanners) affect your games performance. I once played a puzzle game where one level become unsolvable except by trial and error because the physics system changed every time with minute changes in delta times. It wasn’t always noticeable, but it was a huge problem when it did happen. I imagine you could construct a simple-ish game where no one would notice, but maybe that would be worse if you frustrated your users and neither the players or the developer could pinpoint the problem.
Target your update loop to execute with fixed time steps with plenty of time to spare. If you’re conservative with the update loop then you don’t suffer if the performance decreases or can’t match the performance of your developer’s machine and if the game performs faster you still don’t suffer one way or the other and you’re rewarded with better frame rates (like 120Hz) or more time for fancier (optional) graphical effects.
To my knowledge this even extends to the framerate question. A solid 10FPS can look smooth for games without fast objects. More important to the eye than a high framerate is a jitter-free framerate - at least this was my experience so far.
Old games used to do their drawing in the vertical blank interrupt, so usually at 50 FPS, and that was perfectly smooth. I’m still feeling uncertain if a “vsync” like it’s done nowadays is the same … I see too much tearing and stuttering in games to actually believe it. Please correct me if I’m wrong there.
Back in the years i remember when i used to play Quake 2 online…
Since we had slumpy 56k modems, we had to use cl_maxfps 30 to prevent lag
When broadband started to spread out, and we could use cl_maxfps 60, it was BEAUTIFUL SMOOTH MOVEMENT
I tried cl_maxfps 100 once, and i was like “OMG ITS A WHOLE NEW WORLD”
cl_maxfps 400 gave me nausea, and i don’t even know why.
And now i think how fun are the logic updates in Quake 2. With 100 fps you could jump higher :clue:, so being able to play online with 100 fps would give you a slight advantage.
And setting cl_maxfps 0 would render you immobile on the map; Neo-like missile dodges? yep.