They also have to support PAL if they're shipping outside of the US. Then there's 1080i and 480p or whatever the HD resolutions are. You have to make sure that the game doesn't crash on those.

It's not a matter of the silicon driving it, the developer has to support it.

And no, their input is not locked to 1/frame. Unless they choose to do so in their game (or possibly previous 2 generations, but current ones are not explicitly locked).

Best solution is to just develop for PCs
j/k.
No, what you said at the end is perfectly accurate. Keep the FPS constant (not just a constant average, don't let the min/max vary by more than a couple frames. people can tell!) and don't let objects move too fast. Or if they do, add some motion trail (blurring generally looks stupid if the rest of the world is crisp) so there is *something* To fill the gap.

AND GAMES**T!

^%#@^&*@^#%@!

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grumble,grumble.

Most console games lock their framerates

They also have a vastly different output medium. NTSC is roughly 640x240, 60 fps. Since it's interlaced that winds up being 640x480 at 30. The amount of silicon needed to drive that is pretty trivial nowadays. And there's absolutely no advantage in rendering faster since the display device is utterly incapable of doing anything with it. Their input is also locked to 1/frame, and the hardware is unlikely to do anything other than that.

The PC is wildly different -- the output device (your monitor) is often capable of much higher refresh rates and the input sampling can vastly exceed 1/frame (PS/2 mice are more limited unless you tweak things).

I wish people would stop comparing computer rendered images to film/video though. They're simply not comparable. When you film/tape something in real life you don't "lose" information between frames. If the object is moving fast enough that you can't precisely capture it on a single frame then you get motion blur. Our brains are extremely capable of seeing a blurred object in successive frames and sorting it out as the proper object that's moving very, very fast. For computer generated images the same is not true -- each frame is drawn disctinctly with no blur whatsoever (shortly before 3Dfx went under they came out with the "T-buffer" to handle this issue... screenshots looked like ass, but it's not something designed for static images. I never saw it in reality, but the theory behind it is sound), so if an object is moving faster than your frame rate it will appear to stutter across the screen. You can simply ensure that nothing will move that fast, but if the user's system gets bogged down to a really low fps then there may not be anything you can do to prevent it.

omg its so easy to get you tards to argue over nothing plz stop feeding me im full

Yeah I'm pretty sure heat haze in general doesn't need a DX9 capable card. I mean it's just particles with a refraction shader applied right? Refraction was possible even on the Geforce 2.
In theory you don't need a DX9 capable card to do *anything*. I mean, ray tracing has been around for a couple decades now. The question is do you want it in real time or not? You can do it in software but it's a lot slower.

Most console games lock their framerates.
It's just easier to deal with if you have a consistent target.

Some games lock for 60, some for 30. Some even scale down to 20 in highly detailed areas. It's just the nature of things.

You can have a smooth and enjoyable experience at 20 fps if the camera isn't moving too fast. Though the higher the differential the higher the frame rate needs to be to remain smooth.

And you thought the bastards that limited your camera turn speed to 2 rpm were doing it just to frustrate you...

I'd like to see a day where everything is locked at 60 (or better, 83 where I can't see it flickering) and spare cycles are spent pre-calculating things for the next frame.

Uhh...that I stand by my original comments?

That...just because I am more susceptible to framerate and refresh than you, that you have written off my comments?

That I, too, am paying on a 22" monitor (Viewsonic P225fb?)

Shaking my head,
Ray

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But, what is ultimately important in life?
http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=ray_marden
I love you, mom.

"Pay attention grunts who didn't pay attention in class and all you FNGs. WebDemon did his homework. Didn't everyone wonder why all the performance charts had 30fps in the middle of the chart and 60fps as the max, and a smooth gameplay is defined as above 30fps while choppy play occurs when fps drop below 30?"

What a load of bollox, on so many levels...

"choppy" is going to be defined based on how many frames a single animation needs to complete as apposed to how many available frames there are as defined by the hardware...

You could make a game totally UN choppy at less than 30fps. Providing the animations in question ran less than the available frames.

Quake 1 is probably a pretty good example of this, most of the movement in q1 is not 2 frame heavy. Hence you are able to run at a low(ish) "cl_maxfps" without compromising the experience a huge amount.

As for your point "wonder why all the performance charts had 30fps in the middle of the chart and 60fps as the max"

Well that’s rather obvious. 60FPS is a enforced FPS limit (at least in the single player game), again much like the Q1 single player game (that also had a limit frame rate in single player assuming unedited config) so, half of 60, 30... That’s why it’s in the middle. Nothing sinister there.

Its all down to animations vs. frame availability. Something that also defines a “choppy” experience in my personal opinion is a wildly fluctuating frame rate. Consider this, it obvious the human eye is capable of taking in hundreds up on hundreds of frames per second, so why does a mere 25, suffice for me when watching television in the uk? Again obvious, its due to the consistency of the experience. My eye views the image, tunes in to the frequency that’s its running at, and because that frequency remains constant it remains as a pleasurable experience…

I guess that is 1 good argument for hard coding the frame limit in a game, choose a number that out numbers your animations, then when the hardware catches up, people will have one of the smoothest experiences on the eye possible. Just like watching a TV.

Obviously how complicated doom 3 animations are, that’s another conversation… and one I just don’t know anything about.

and no, I haven’t spell checked this post, or really thought about it to much, just wanted to point out some things that in my mind are just obvious facts.

I can't believe people are still debating how many frames per second the human eye can recognize...

the greater wrong of the right --
http://www.skinnypuppy.com/

what a fucking moron

_____________________________________________
Give me slack. Or kill me.

The damn gun is shooting blue light and it doesn't even act as a light source.

Keeping being unimpressed by the DOOM3 engine,

Don't blame the engine for the properties of a light source. Since you want lighting from muzzle flashes to illuminate surrounding areas then use the included SDK to add it and stop your whining.

1st online doom review

http://www.telefragged.com/reviews/doom3/

Ray, I never use V-Synch and never see tearing, and my eyes have exceptional retinas and my brain seems to be way faster than most people in my computer engineering class. It may be because I have an awesome monitor (22" iiyama) that can handle the faster refresh rates. I think you are exagerating to get your point across...which got lost somewhere in the shuffle...so, uh what was your point?

TV 30fps NTSC (25fps PAL)
Film 24fps

For it to look fluid you'll need at least 30fps

Pay attention grunts who didn't pay attention in class and all you FNGs. WebDemon did his homework. Didn't everyone wonder why all the performance charts had 30fps in the middle of the chart and 60fps as the max, and a smooth gameplay is defined as above 30fps while choppy play occurs when fps drop below 30?

Come on people, do you really need to be reminded not to feed the troll?

Sorry...didn't know what I was thinking.

>Removes trolls from being displayed in IE using neat software downloaded from Norton web site.

The muzzle flash doesn't give off much light, your flashlight is more like a floodlight in comparison...

I was using the wrong terminology and screwed everyone up. The conclusion of all of it is that the extra video memory required to power a second monitor (at 1280x1024) made the game run extremely sluggish. I have to disable the monitor whenever I want to play the game now:(

-BT

I could select 'Ultra' quality on my GeForce4 w/128MB if I wanted, the performance would be pathetic though. Those video card memory 'requirement' are nothing more then recommendation.

DirectX9c, latest nVidia driver and still no luck with muzzle flash.

Actually I thought it was ultra high? High quality works on 256 meg cards (actually, ultra high WILL work, just has a few hiccups here and there swapping out textures).

This is from the DOOM3 hardware guide at www.hardocp.com.

"qigtrouble77, do you have 512MB of RAM on your videocard? Because that's what you need for Very High quality [as stated by iD, I didn't make this up]."

I screwed up, I meant 'High Quality".