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The link Yushire provided was someone who was well informed on the medical side of the fence but not so well informed (or possibly out of date) on the technological side of things.

Motion Blur - When the author said it would be a waste to implement motion blur in games they were flat out wrong. Their reasoning given was that objects would have no position since they would be blurred but this is a fundamental lack of understanding of the way a game actually works.

Conceptually a game is literally nothing more than big list of numbers (ie variables) which are translated by the hardware from frame to frame into a picture of what is happening. What is drawn doesn't impact the list of variables it is merely based on that list. So you can have a box at position (30,40,10) (ie an ordered triplet of (x,y,z))and draw it with a motion blur coming from the direction of (20,40,10). As far as the computer is concerned the box is at location (30,40,10) and any possible collision is based on that location alone...but when the frame is drawn it appears blurred...there is no problem for a computer here.

Yushire's first link with the video illustrates this well with the ball that has motion blur at 24 FPS looking identical to the 60 FPS.


USAF Pilots - This is a study I am familiar with (and I actually posted about it back in late January in the topic "Why is is so important games run at 60fps?". What the author of the article is saying about the implications of the study are extremely misleading. In the test pilots were seated in a pitch black room and a plane was flashed from a projector and they were asked to identify the aircraft based on what they saw. It is important to know that with aircraft identification you are looking at the shape and outline of the craft and specific detail is not required.

Now the author did mention correctly that they were able to identify the plane due to the afterimage which is truly what is important here. The rods of the eye are overexposed in this situation because th subject has been sitting in pitch blackness. The afterimage is "burned" into the eyes of the pilot allowing them a prolonged look at the shape of the craft and allowing them to identify it.

There is no evidence to suggest that when our eyes are not overexposed (as they usually are not) to the extreme we could perceive things with that little time to view an image and the lack of supporting evidence is not for a lack of trying.

In effect the minimum amount of time for you to notice something new in your vision depends largely on how much your viewing subject appears to have changed. In the case of the pilot it is the starkest transition possible (ie pitch black to bright light) and far from the actual conditions of how you use your eyes on a daily basis or while gaming for that matter.

Video Games - While movies use the standard 24 FPS they have the benefit of very good motion blur..complements of the serendipitous way cameras work as the article Yushire linked to explains. But like everything in our world this effect can be explained mathematically and that is how motion blur is implemented into a game properly. This article is actually a bit old as I'm sure many of you noticed and games have now been implementing motion blurring for a few years with good results...granted some poorly implemented attempts will look horrible but when done right it looks very smooth even at lower frame rates.

Other information - There is a study that has been shown on the science channel several times now that talks about the human perception of time and whether or not time slows down for you when under stress. The way they tested this was to give folks a wristband with a numerical display meant to show the wearer numbers like the following:

When the device was activated it displayed a random double digit number (such as 42) but it did so by alternating between the contrasts. I put together an example of what I am talking about so everyone follows. The alternating rate varied by subject from 22-28 swaps per second with the vast majority of people seeing a completely solid unflickering block at or before 24. In all cases the subjects had their setting dialed up to a solid block before the test.

The subjects were then lifted several hundred feet into the air and dropped into a net, while falling they were asked to attempt to read the display and most of the subjects were routinely able to get the first number (of the two digits) correct and often chose a very similar looking number for the second digit. Note that even with the added perceptual boost of adrenaline which boosts their rate of perception they still had a tough time making out the numbers.

That is best example of real world conditions being tested that I'm aware of and under all such real world conditions the human eye is strictly limited to the mid to high 20's.

We have to be careful because in many instances the author of this article is discussing the theoretical limit to what a human can perceive while we are discussing real world conditions that are present for the playing of a video game. The theoretical max as I mentioned in the best case scenario of high contrasting from black to white was 1/220th of a second (at least that is the best demonstrated so far). This is quite impressive but it is a best case scenario.

The real test of value however is the eye's ability to detect detailed changes in high speed and as I've said there is nothing to support the claims of infinity that this author suggest and in fact quite a bit to suggest the opposite.

 

I question the intentions of the author - I wanted to point out why I think that the author either doesn't fully understand or is misleading the reader with his article. In both parts of the article he asks for the reader to consider how the real world appears more detailed and precise than what you see on your monitor. The problem of course with this request is that it does nothing to prove a deficiency with the frame rate of your monitor or television, its actually a problem with the color range available and the restrictions of resolutions.

I don't understand how someone who says they worked closely with this technology could not understand this difference and not understand that frame rate would have nothing to do with this lack of vivid color and detail. Make of that what you will.



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