I was reading this thread earlier and had a little play around on the deck.

Looking straight ahead in light seas I recorded 30fps as the bow goes up and down. Then panning around to the left the fps increases to 40 as there is only sea and sky, back down to 30 as you pass the watchman at the rear right and upto 60 as you view the conning tower. finally looking right at the other watchman back to 30.

But with all that fluctuation in fps I didn't actually notice any difference in 'smoothness'.

And you really should not. Your FPS is in the spectrum that is detected as smooth to the human eye.

@AVGWarhawk:
I confirm, theres a big difference between 80fps and 30. A game is not like a movie, in the game we have a sort of "stroboscopic" frames (no panning), so if you want see it completely smooth, the games must work at least 40 fps. In a game every frame is "freezed", no blurred like in a movie when the action is faster.
Anyway SH4 is a "slow" game and we don't need higher fps, a combat flight simulator is very different, it require at least 60 fps, because the airplane move so fast!
I'm not "fixated" with higher fps, but I like so much to play SH4 with a beautiful videocard. :up:

Agreed. There are some difference in gaming and movie FPS but in all reality I'm not an expert on this subject. Just things I have read about it, etc. I'm sure we are missing some vital information on it. Have we really looked at refresh rate for out displays concerning this? Not really. For the most part I have noticed that 20 FPS or higher renders a smooth game and the cursor is also smooth...concerning SH4 that is.

Here is an article that is pretty good on the subject.

//http://cs.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=8643

The article also delves into the players ability to perceive FPS and the physical state the player is in at the time. Anyway, back to the original question at hand...have I become a FPS nut? Yes, I'm spending more time tweaking than playing. I'm busy looking at faster vidcards to get my FPS fix...as it were.....

Well my point was that Im using a 22" widescreen monitor on 1080i. Why am I using an HD projection video card? Have you seen SH4 in HD? High Def cards have the best antialiasing and best AF of any chipset out there. Not to mention the progressive format, which is not only power demanding but also memory hungry. So yes, maybe I do have 'over the top' equipment. But the original post was in relation to fps, and "enjoying the game the way it looks". If you want to enjoy the game the way it looks, why not make it look as real is it can get? Why not make 3000 yards actually look like 3000 yards by using focus elements that are not present in the game?

Why upgrade?

Of course a card like the X1300 renders differently...its rendering in a standard VGA format(or DVI to VGA)...which is not as demanding. You can achieve great gameplay but you miss out on the world of high definition. It's a preference, and if you have the money...theres no turnin back.

I understand what you mean TDK and I do agree up to a point.

:hmm: I don't know what the human brain is capable of but if it's 20 to 25 FPS then so be it.


However....

With all the great Mod's out there.. and in this case I mean the graphic's Mod enhancements like the sun mod’s, ocean mod’s, smoke mod’s, vessel enhancement mod’s and so on. The strain on the whole package.. Mobo, VD card, RAM and so on is getting greater as well.

On that regard a FPS of about 20 to 25 isn’t high enough to cope with the fluxes presented when you look through the periscope or are in CAM-mode when a ship blows up (yes I’ like to watch when that happens :yep: ) or you witness a air assault on a enemy taskforce which you are about to engage. (don’t know if this is incorporated in the game as I haven’t seen it yet) but it’s unlikely that your FPS is going to stay at 25FPS.

In my opinion a significant drop in FPS on those bases (having to watch something blow up with a stuttering screen) is not :nope: the way I want to play the game wouldn’t do right to the Dev’s either. Therefore having a decent FPS should be strived for (depending on your machine) so you can enjoy the full capacity of the game and Mod’s.

I play the game with an FPS between 60 and 100 but when I watch a ship blow up my FPS drops to 40…so I have a lot to spare. (with time compression at max it drops way down to 5 or 6) so I can imagine what the frame rate’s going to be with 20 to 25 FPS when she blows.


Within 1 maybe 2 years max, most of the gaming community is going to need a new PC with DX10 already over the horizon. So be sure as to keep updated what’s new in the stores and specially what the reviews are of the products when you go and buy a new PC.

Having the top of the line VD-card (which is the most expensive) and a crap Mobo is not a good idea, not to mention the frustration you're gonna get when you did so:damn: . The VD-card will never reach its max capacity and also FSB is a good thing to look at together with some good RAM.

My PC is 2 years old now and I’m still able to play most games, I have to lower the graph settings now but it’s still good.:rock:

Paying a couple of Euro’s, Dollars, Pounds or whatever more can give you that much more but also and most importantly can prolong the time you can use a PC gaming wise so in the end you “saves” money.:smug:

I have the ATi Radeon X800 Pro TVD with ATi Drv. 7.6

I have been playing games since I was 5, in 1985, on various TV's and monitors.

Some movies and TV shows display 24-30fps. The reason this looks free from jerkiness is because there is motion blur on each frame. Computer monitors don't have this when rendering games.

25fps is percieved as quite noticably jerky and phoney. It doesn't affect precision terribly, but it does appearance.

35 is a similar story.

45 is still phoney jerky looking to detract quite a bit from the immersion and believability. I'm quite dissatisfied with it.

60 starts to feel fairly smooth and stuttering is not apparent as long as things don't move quickly. Moving the mouse to turn your view around in a game will reveal obvious fake/stuttering artifacting. I consider 60+ to be just fine for most gaming, but not perfect.

85 is pretty much perfect. It's not hard to notice the difference between 85 and 120, but 85 is high enough not to obviously point it out in any way. I.e. I would have to move the view around somewhat quickly and visually inspect it to really make notice of it.

I've met people who seem completely unable to notice any artifacting. I don't know why they can't see it. Even myself didn't 'get' the FPS vision thing because I was used to everything being like that with games back in the heyday. It was only after seeing how it could look like that the difference became so very apparent.

Yes, some strange people seek social status and esteem through comparing favourably FPS-wise to others. But I won't believe that as long as it's below 120fps.

If I got 30FPS in SH4 on average, I'd lose most immersion. It'd be quite dissappointing. Worse yet, any kind of event or extra strain (harbor, explosion) would bring it down to 5-15, which does in no way look like a real explosion etc.

Couldn't agree more on that...
With my v-sync enabled, if I don't have the graphics set quite right I'll get slow spots where the fps drops from 60 to 30... There's a big difference. Once you get used to 60, you won't believe anyone that try's to convince you 25fps is smooth.

And here I thought running at 10fps was good.:lol: Any ideas how I can tweak my graphics in the bios? My specs are in my sig.

Fearless, your problem is your vid card, and using an integrated sound chip eats some cpu cycles too. Well... your cpu is not a beauty contestant either :p, but is not the main problem. Im using a 2000 xp along with a 6600gt, and Im getting around 25fps, not bad I think.

My current system (will be upgrading in a month or so):

Intel Core 2 Duo e6300 @1.8 GHz
Kingston 2GB 800 MHz DDR2 Dual Channel RAM
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3
Leadtek WinFast PX7900GS TDH 256MB DDR3
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 500GB SATA-II
LG GSA-H42LRBB
Creative X-Fi MX Xtreme Audio


SH4 runs superb, everything turned on/maxed out except for fog, which i don't like. Don't know what fps I have, and I don't care as long as the game looks great and plays smooth.

The only game I've tested to see what fps I'm getting was F.E.A.R., becqause it came with a built in fps test program (I got 69 fps max peak, 48 fps average).

I had the 6200OC card. The game was unplayable. I got a better vid card and have 25+ FPS. My other components are 3200+ and 2 gig RAM. Look into a better card if you can.