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SvennoJ on 13 January 2019
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CGI-Quality said:
SvennoJ said:

It's not more lifelike, it's more dream like, what movies should be. You can do a lot more with exposure and lighting with 24 fps. You can suggest a lot more with 24 fps. You can hide a lot less with 48 fps or 60 fps. Games choose to hide things in the dark to suggest more than there is. That works for movies as well, however a lower frame rate is just as effective.

Games also use all kinds of filters to make it look more 'realistic', especially motion blur. That pretty much contradicts the whole higher frame rate is better. Games try so hard to simulate (bad) cameras, it's not even funny anymore. Bloom, blur, lens flares, chromatic aberration, depth of field,  camera shake, fake HDR, film grain.  Yet without it they look sterile and fake.

Some of those effects sometimes help games look more realistic (of course, this depends on the genre/scenario) and most of them do not hide the frame rate. Motion blur is the only active feature that truly masks objects that are moving, and even then, it is more effective at lower frame rates. Turning many of those features off, in my experience, doesn't leave a feeling of a sterile production, but then, that again depends on a number of external factors. 

The variation of preference for lower vs higher frame rates is simply preferential. 

Why do those effects make it look more realistic? Does it really make them look more realistic, or simply more like what you are used to seeing from a camera on a screen? Many of those effects do not make sense in VR at all. Depth of field, useless. Motion blur, nope you can follow things with your eyes. Lens flares, film grain, bloom, chromatic aberration (already comes with the lenses unfortunately) all does not make any sense. Fake HDR breaks immersion and well camera shake, a definite no. VR aims for realism, yet can't use all the techniques that make games look more realistic!

Frame rate of course does make sense in VR as it's you turning your head yourself. Any stutter is bad. However the animation can still run at lower frame rates. It will be interesting to see how games will develop in VR once resolution goes up. Are they going to look more fake or will there be a new bag of tricks to add 'realism'.

My favorite movies run between 8 and 18 fps. Although those are averages and different elements are animated at different frame rates

Nausicaa = 56078/(116*60+27.05) = 8.03
Laputa = 69262/(124*60+4.22) = 9.30
Totoro = 48743/(86*60+20.14) = 9.41
Hotaru = 54660/(88*60+26.19) = 10.30
Kiki = 67317/(102*60+46.12) = 10.92
Omohide = 73719/(118*60+49.05) = 10.34
Porco = 58443/(93*60+18.19) = 10.44
Umi = 25530/(72*60) = 5.91
PomPoko = 82289/(118*60+59.01) = 11.53
Mimi = 64491/(111*60+0.12) = 9.68
OYM = 8053/(6*60+48.21) = 19.73
Mononoke = 144043/(133*60+24.22) = 18.00

Traditional animation uses key frames with exaggerated expressions and movements to enhance the animation. Variable frame rate and frame interpolation messes that up completely. For Monsters university they tried to calculate the hair physics. Turned out, based on filling in the movement between key frames, that wouldn't work at all. Impossible G-forces screwing with the calculations. It's an art to give the brain just enough to fill in the blanks in the way the director wants you to. Perhaps that's why games are still not considered art :) Not enough control over content delivery.