Guide to graphic display settings for game players (5) (The gamer's graphics & Display Settings Guide)

Guide to graphic display settings for game players (5)

Translated by koroush Ghazi

Fourth level graphics settings-frames per second (FPS)

Graphic settings

After previewing how your system processes graphics, this chapter will look at common but important windows and graphics settings and display settings used by your game. For the next few pages, let's take a look at "frames per second", "resolution", "update rate", "response time", "Vertical synchronization", and "Three Buffering ", "" and "Al filtering ". I think I understand this before I start to study this guide, and I still don't fully understand them.

This guide is designed for most people, from entry level to professional level, so remember that what I often state is a fact that should be regarded as bloody. This is intentionally done to ensure that everyone understands the same settings on the same page. But don't be afraid. I also include more advanced information that you may never have explained.

In this regard, I will try to explain each setting in a simple language, but I will explain it in sufficient detail without skipping any setting. This is a subtle balance, and it is much more difficult than it sounds. The underlying Working Mechanism of some settings may be complicated and confusing. Different scenarios may involve many technical considerations. I try to avoid these problems from being restrained. If you want more details, I suggest you study the links provided to you, especially the "further reading" chapter at the end of this Guide. For most people, the information provided here is sufficient for you to understand the game and solve problems.

 

 

 

 

Frames per second

Frames per second, often referred to as framerate or FPS, are the most common items in the game and the most complex and misunderstood items. Most people know that higher FPS is better, but there are many misunderstandings that need to be clarified. Understanding frame rate is the key to understanding the remaining settings in this chapter, so do not skip this description.

A computer image is composed of many small independent points, namely pixels, the number of these points is determined by the resolution you selected. For more information, see the resolution chapter. When you observe from a reasonable distance, your brain will be able to distinguish all these points and combine these points to recognize that this is a complete image. This separate static image is called a frame, as we see in the "graphic processing" chapter, A 3D game is like a complete system composed of a frame factory, and your video card generates many new frames every second.

However, these frames are still static images, just like photos. In order to make the computer display smoothly on the screen, the static frame must be displayed one by one. Just like movies and TVs: The slides of static images are slightly different from those in front of each other to display natural movements. The reason for this is that your eyes have a property called "persistence of vision"-they will be retained for a while after the image disappears. This mechanism is also the absolute reason for the success of watching TV movies and computer display.

First, let's solve the first misunderstanding: the flickering phenomenon on some computer screens is actually irrelevant to FPS, which has a relationship with the refresh rate. FPS and refresh rate are two separate and independent items. It is very likely that a screen with a Hz update rate only has 20 FPS, or (nominal) a screen with a 60Hz update rate has FPS. It is possible that your game only has 5 FPS, but it won't flash at all. We will continue to discuss this issue in the "refresh rate and response time" chapter, but now we need to remember that FPS and refresh rate are not the same thing at all, A low FPS does not cause any flashes.

Measure Frame Rate

It is difficult to judge and measure FPS with naked eyes. Fortunately, when your game is running, you can easily measure the actual number of frames per second. Most games have a built-in FPS counter. Even if they do not, you can use the free fraps tool to test 3D games or applications.ProgramFPS. This tool does not significantly affect frame rates and is precise in all games.

If people are interested in their actual FPS, most people will ask: "is my FPS high enough ?", Most replies to this question are: "Any higher than 30 FPS is a waste", or "you need at least 30 FPS to run the game smoothly ". These arbitrary replies show obfuscation and misunderstanding of FPS. Next I will try to clarify them.

Minimum FPS

Accurate to all, it is the minimum FPS-at this point, if the FPs of the game becomes very low, your eyes and brain will notice that the animation on the screen is no longer smooth; the screen will become a combination of a series of static images, just like a slide. However, the actual minimum number of frames that make the game smooth does not have a scientific value to set; this is because everyone's eyes have different feelings and are also related to the game type.

In my experience, if there is no stuck or choppy rendering, it takes about 25 frames per second to get a smooth image. However, this is just the first aspect and is not a definite answer. There are many important things worth considering about the lowest acceptable frame rate:

Frame Rate Variability:If the FPs of the game changes frequently, especially when the performance is low at a certain time point, it is likely that the current scenario does not have enough FPS. In order to get a smooth impression, FPS needs to be stable so that you still get a reasonable smooth effect at the lowest point. For example, the gaming console generally uses a Fixed Frame Rate of 30 FPS, which means that these consoles can only draw up to 30 frames per second. This is indeed a little low for the maximum frame rate, but becauseMinimumFPS is often disabled, so FPS changes are very small. 30fps is enough for smooth animation. Unfortunately, most games do not allow you to lock FPS to a fixed rate.

Game type:For games with fast movements and avid actions, quake or counterstrike, especially games similar to the first-person shooting of the Death Race, requires a higher frame rate (for example, a minimum of 40 FPS) to ensure that you can feel smooth and responsive. Because a large number of actions mean that the content of each independent frame is significantly different from that of the previous frame, this type of game would become more obvious at low FPS. On the contrary, slow games such as RTS or RPG can have only a small minimum frame rate. As an example of the limit, if you are staring at a wall in the game, the FPS can be reduced to 5 or even 1, but it will not feel significantly different. Therefore, the speed of the game will affect the perception of smoothness and change the minimum FPS demand of the game.

Control latency:Unlike movies or TVs, you actually operate on a camera in a game, but you actually see it through the eyes of your role. The lower your FPS, the more latencies your mouse and keyboard input will feel on the screen, which will increase your perception of insufficient impact on the frame rate. Especially at 15fps or lower, no matter how you choose the mouse/keyboard sensitivity, the game will have a significant delay, no matter how your eyes perceive the ability, you will feel the frame rate is not enough. You can refer to "Vertical synchronization and three Buffering" to query the solution to this problem, but of course, the real solution is to change your settings to improve your FPS, knowing that you don't feel any obvious latency. The simple fact is that the control latency caused by low FPS is well solved, and the improvement of your video card enables the rendered image to be synchronized with your input command. The more the game depends on the response speed, the more obvious the latency will be.

The focus of the above discussion is that no scientific value can be set for the minimum FPS. Your eyes and brain cannot tell a clear demarcation point at all. Why is the 23fps picture stuck, but 24fps is smooth. What's more complicated is that all the above factors need to be considered. If you feel that the game looks smooth, it means that your minimum FPS is sufficient, but it is subjective not to expect others to agree with you.

Maximum FPS

The most likely FPS beyond the human eye is not perceived by the human eye, which is essentially inaccurate. For more details, please refer to this article and this article. They are used to refute this point of view. In fact, regular comments such as "the human eye cannot see a picture of 24 (or 25 or 30 or 60) FPS" are completely false, this is due to misunderstanding that FPS is the same as PC games for television or movies. It also proves that it is necessary to explain in detail how to adjust the lower frame rate.

Movies and TVs use 24, 25, or 30fps, depending on what part of the world you are in. However, there are three major differences between Movie TV and PC games:

1. Movie TV uses Motion Blur, So you pause the movie scene in your DVD player at a certain point in time. Most of the scenes are composed of fuzzy objects. What's more, TV movie images do not even have clear outlines. However, in a PC game, if you take screenshots at a certain time point, you will find that everything is sharp and clear, regardless of how fast you move. Let's take a look at the comparison of the two screenshots above: the picture on the left is from the movie "Alien. predator "captures an image of the rapid movements of aliens, while the right side is in the game" Alien. predator 2. Therefore, the continuous blur of 24 frames in a movie is smoother than the 24 or even 30 independent frames in the same fast-moving PC game. So why does the game not use dynamic blurring? Well, most games are actually starting to use blur effects. This can indeed help reduce the impact of low frame rate on vision, but on the contrary, the game almost never uses dynamic blur. The following explains why this cannot work. Of course, the PC graphics card will produce a very sharp profile, so only special effects such as HDR and anti-sawtooth can make it smoother, But the irony is that, these technologies are often the culprit in reducing FPS.

2. Controlling responsiveness is once again involved in the differences between movies and games. In a movie or TV, the video views are not under your control; they are usually static or steady cameras. However, in the game, you control the observation window, which means that in a fast mobile game with 24 or even 30 FPS, you feel a huge delay due to lack of responsiveness. Changes in the response speed caused by changes in the frame rate can also help emphasize the content to be described below.

3. the game won't lock a Fixed Frame Rate to run, but TV and movie do the same. Although some games can run at 30 FPS or 60 FPS, almost no games can be displayed at 24 or 30 FPS-their FPS is often changing, sometimes it is even obvious. On the contrary, movies and TVs often display unchanged frames per second and remain unchanged. Therefore, the variable frame rate in the game will increase the influence of the frame rate to make them look more obvious. Take the "oblibion" game as an example. If you walk out of a 60 FPS indoor environment to a 25 FPS outdoor area, you will notice the difference, this is partly because the changes in response are controlled, and partly because your eyes are aware of the changes in frame rate.

One way to demonstrate that the human eye can actually tell the difference of over 30 FPS is to use a mini program with Andreas Gustafsson (which has obtained my permission to use here) developed by FPS compare (11 KB. After downloading, you can directly decompress fpscompare.exe to use it. Read the commands in readme.txt and note that the tool is still in Beta status. You may need to force disable vertical synchronization in your graphics card control panel, but if it still does not work, you can use an earlier basic version: FPS compare (old) (small KB ).

FPS compare renders the same scene in a separate screen at the same time, but each side is rendered at different frame rates. When running a new FPS compare program, I suggest pressing f2 to change the scenario closer to the game. As you stare at the center of the screen, you should find that the left screen (larger than 60fps) looks smoother than the right screen (larger than 30fps. Although these differences are not the main difference for your eyes, many people will still pay attention to at least some differences-these can refute the paradox that the human eyes cannot perceive a smooth difference greater than 30 FPS.

Just like what I linkedArticleAs discussed, tested humans can tell the difference of 200 frames per second. There is no actual theoretical limit on how many frames the eyes can separate. In nature, human eyes do not make a series of static frames into animations, but use a set of fixed analog motion data streams. In particular, we will quickly feel the dynamic comparison, no matter how short it is. If there is a short interval between visual data and there is a correlation between them, then our eyes can also be said that the brain will connect them, sometimes it is even just a subconscious connection-it relies entirely on the content of the input data.

In my experience, it is enough for most practical operations to return to the question of how many FPS is sufficient. Even a game of 25 or 30 FPS can be fully applied to a medium-pace game-if the game has dynamic blur and soft shadow, do not change the frame rate significantly, A stable frame rate should be maintained to avoid "card" (see "graphic processing ). If there is something that can be applied in all the games, the perfect thing is to maintain a fixed frame rate. Unfortunately, this is actually impossible because the hardware environments used on different systems are different.

 

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