Killzone 2 framerate can drop as low as 20fps

[mike_intellivision]

twesterm said:

Khuutra said:

twesterm said:

Khuutra said:

twesterm said:
20 isn't good, but as long as it's a smooth 20 and not a drop of something like 26 to 20 it's barely going to be noticeable.

20 is just barely pushing past the edge but the real thing that kills games are framerate spikes. As long as it's a constant 20-ish with the -ish being on the higher side of 20, it's not a huge deal.

I tend to agree with this, but part of me tends to think that the higher end of it is going to be in the 50s, which could be jarring.

Does the game ever go above 30?  If it does they're just wasting their time and processing power.

I actually don't know, as I've never played the game and wouldnt be able to measure it that closely anyway. Anecdotally, from the way people talk about smoothness, it would seem that it does?

If it never went above 30fps, it would really put the whole "better graphics" question in an entirely different light, factoring framerate.

 

Going above 30 on TV there's a slight difference, but there's no point in it being that the trade off totally isn't worth it.  Most games aren't going to notice the difference between a game that runs at 30fps on a TV and another that runs at 60fps on a TV.

Also, if you don't cap your framerate and you're running at lets say a nice 50-60fps and then it suddenly drops to something like 25 it is going to be painfulyl noticeable.  When you cap at 30, dipping down to 25 is absolutely no problem, but going from something like even 40 to 25 will be really noticeable and look and feel like ass.

So there are two reasons why having an uncapped fps on a TV is a bad idea:

1. Most people aren't going to notice the difference between a smooth 30 and a smooth 60
2. You're in a much higher danger of noticing frame rate drops.  It's much harder to maintain 50-60fps than it is 25-30fps.

The other reason you don't want to do this is because all that processing power it takes to maintain that really high framerate most people aren't going to notice could be much better spent on *anything* else. 

Would you rather have a feature that most people aren't going to notice or an extra explosion (random example) that everyone is going to notice?

 

It is funny how we talk about these framerates.

 

For years, the standard for TVs and movies was 30 fps. That is what VHS at SP taped in VHS at EP which is what I usually use is 10 fps). That is what professional editting equipment used HH:MM:SS:FF.

Now we are going twice -- to something that produces great pictures but that can be difficult to maintain or for the average person to really notice (since they were trained at 30 fps).

I agree that keeping things simiplier is better. I know that playing the Wii on Mario Kart that when you have multiple players or go on line with two that the frame rate slows (at least on my machines). Considering that I am using a 27-inch SD sharp TV (that pre-dates HD), I can imagine how less impressive that -- or any massive slow down -- looks on a larger/better/clearer set.

 

Mike from Morgantown