Things Console Peasants Say Episode #5 - The 30 FPS argument

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Today topic is the argument that 30 FPS is enough or even better then a higher framerate

As it is common, this argument usually has a few different way it goes, starting with the argument that the human eye cannot perceive anything higher then 30 FPS and usually ends at 30 FPS is a cinematic experience.

#1 The human eye cannot see anything higher then 30 frames per second

This argument usually goes something along the lines of this “But why would you need to play at 60 (or more) frames per second? You are only capable of perceiving 30 anyways.”

This argument is complete crap if you go and do any sort of research. It’s origins come from movies because those originally and sometimes still do use only a 23.96 FPS. And even earlier, the movies ran at 16 FPS as that was the frame rate when humans started to see fluid motion instead of a slideshow of images. The issue is that motion blur plays a huge factor in this as the camera is recording (and then later the projector playing) the images at a very constant speed. The graphical engines video games use work quite differently.

But back to the topic of the human eye. In psychophysics of vision, there exists a concept called the Flicker fusion threshold and that essentially is the how capable you are at perceiving a single frame appear. Highly trained people have been shown to see image flicker up to the speed of 1/250th of a second but the average human will have this threshold at around 1/100th – 1/150th of second, depending on the type of the image.

#2 30 FPS is a cinematic experience

This argument is much less common admittedly but that because even console peasants to often realize that is dumb. And it usually goes something like this: “The reason why games are at 30 FPS on consoles is because the games here are more story-based and the framerate makes them appear more cinematic“

If this was the case, every single game that focuses mainly at the story would run at 30 FPS. Doesn‘t matter if it would be released on consoles, PC or even mobiles. But you can see games that run at 30 FPS on consoles running at an unlimited framerate on PC. Why? Well, because the cinematic argument is just plain not true.