A couple of notes here reguarding FPS. A higher average FPS usually means a higher minimum fps. But most people would far rather control for themselves the options that trade quality for render speed. As an example, in Battlefield 2 (BF2), one can set a draw distance. Lowering it will cut down the number of polys the engine needs to handle, but it also cuts visibility. The difference between 60 and 100 FPS is generally the difference between waiting for vblank or not. The extra oomph increases slack time, so you miss fewer deadlines to draw on the screen. Otherwise, you get "tearing", where the upper half-ish region of the screen is drawn from one point in time, and the rest of the screen is drawn from the newer time frame. This is easily noticable when you look left or right, or up or down.
I shouldn't need to mention that the difference between 30 and 60 is great. I get BF2 to run at about 43 fps average and its noticable, especially during dust particle intensive artillery strikes. But some do cap the performance at 60. I think the original halflife did so with a variable called maxfps.
Developers have attempted a few scaling mechanisms, but it generally doesn't work out well for them. I can't remember the game they were considering this for, but one of the iD or former iD members was considering a dynamic poly culling system that would reduce the number of polys in a model based on performance and size on screen. I don't think it went well for them.
Justin Dugger
On 8/14/05, Jon Pruente [email protected] wrote:
Does having a frame rate faster than you can see really help the gameplay? I'd be inclined to think that by freeing up some CPU time the system would be more responsive to input and thus feel faster. How different is 100fps vs. 60fps? I've read the fps speed claims before, but not having personal experience, I dunno if it is really any better if your brain can't comprehend all those extra frames. I've been thinking lately that gamers are approaching the drag race effect: They get going so fast that they go by muscle memory and luck more than critical evaluation. I know there is some strategy to the actual game, but how many times do I watch people play and it's point the gun and spray a dozen shots instead of squeeze off one or two.