Can You Tell The Difference Between 30fps and 60fps?

[luisliu]

My sole obvious gameplay experience with an actual 30-60 fps comparison was playing The Last of Us Remastered in both settings. I started playing at 60 fps and noticed how smooth the animations and background visual transitions were compared to the PS3 version. Then I went back to 30 fps in Remastered Edition just to see how it affected the visuals. The shadows were dramatically smoother in 30 fps and the game looked noticeably better overall, however the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps was just as noticeable. Nevertheless, I got used to it in about 5 minutes and never felt the urge to go back to 60. I think neither the better visuals provided by 30 fps limit nor the smoother animations in 60 fps are significant variables in overall game experience.

I should add that it's not very easy to make a clear distinction between 30 and 60 when watching videos, compared to actually playing a game where visuals respond to your inputs and they are used by the brain to analyse input and output interactions. It gets ironcially harder if you watch them again and again because, I think, the brain makes a short term perception memory of the visuals and does not require to reevaluate the recurrent pictures. It would also depend on how perceptive your brain is at that moment. On the other hand, I think even people who have a hard time to make a distiction between the two fps standards can tell the difference in quick background transitions like the ones we observe all the time in Mirror's Edge, and of course the difference is less noticeable when you concentrate on the main character that deplaces relatively slowly wrt the camera.