Mass Effect 2 Runs at 30 FPS

[modeps]

http://evavhost.com/i/news/masseffect2.jpg

Those hoping to get a silky smooth 60 FPS in Mass Effect 2, your dreams have been dashed. Bioware's Jesse Houston has told VG247 (http://www.vg247.com/2009/08/21/bioware-mass-effect-2-will-run-at-30fps-no-weird-pauses-in-the-game/) that the game will run at a constant 30 FPS and experience no weird hitching that we saw in the first game.

“If you look at most good shooters, they lock down frame-rate at 30FPS: we’ve done the same thing. Bam. Everything’s 30FPS, streaming is fixed up,” said the associate producer for the game.

“If you remember in Mass 1, if you took a step backwards and you hit a weird stream and it’d pause for a moment. We’ve done a away with that. What you’re seeing here is pulled straight from the game.”

Not sure if "most good shooters" truly lock the framerate at 30FPS, but at least this should mean that we won't see some of the nasty hitching found in the first.

[laggerific]

Hmm...I'm assuming this is an issue for the console crowd. If I do end up with this game it will be on the PC. Speaking of framerate issues...Shadow Complex really bugged me during the cutscenes when it appeared to go below 30FPS, and the graphics aren't even close to the complexity of Gears of War. Silly consoles...

[Methos]

30 FPS for the console version is just fine. I'm aiming for 60 on the PC tho, I'll have the 5850 by then. I'll be getting both versions, as I have many different characters on the 360 and PC.

[Ebon Deth]

I want to know when was the exact time that "gamers" decided that "good games" ONLY run at 60 fps.

[prence]

I want to know when was the exact time that "gamers" decided that "good games" ONLY run at 60 fps.

When I spent "400 dollars" on my "next-gen console."

[beastrn]

"most good shooters"

ahahaha - something is seriously wrong if I'm playing an FPS below 60-300 fps. Perhaps he should have said "most good console shooters" but that of course would create a paradox as there are no good console shooters

Well.. except The Darkness

[Evil Avatar]

30 FPS for the console version is just fine.

Um... no. 30 fps is the fps that piss-poor PS3 ports of Xbox 360 games run at when the developers don't want to take the time to optimize the game for the hardware. It is about 1/2 what a game should be running at.

You shoot for 60 fps so that when the action gets intense on screen that you don't notice the dips down to 30 fps. If you start at 30 and then the game hits an action spot, you will visually 'see' the slowdown to the sub-30 spots.

Ugh.

[40minutekebab]

You shoot for 60 fps so that when the action gets intense on screen that you don't notice the dips down to 30 fps. If you start at 30 and then the game hits an action spot, you will visually 'see' the slowdown to the sub-30 spots.

I'm not sure about other companies, but I know at ours if you aim for 60fps, you always have at least 60fps. If you're aiming for 30, you always have at least 30fps. You don't 'shoot for 60fps' and then have moments that are 30fps. That just means you haven't optimized your game correctly.

[Mr.Green]

When I spent "400 dollars" on my "next-gen console."

Oh for fuck's sake.

Framerate ==============||= Eye Candy

It's that fucking simple. It's a compromise most devs take because they judge 30fps is satisfying. And for a slow paced game like Mass Effect, it is. It would run on a NASA computer and they would still push it as far as they can.

[laggerific]

Infamous is terrible with the inconsistent framerates...They should have locked it down...it's really disturbing when I'm in a low object/high framerate area to then move into any other area in the game. PC rules!

[Dag-Sabot]

I didn't think the human eye could perceive much above that to be noticeable.

[djwunder]

Great move by BioWare. This is great news. :)

[MasterEvilAce]

Um... no. 30 fps is the fps that piss-poor PS3 ports of Xbox 360 games run at when the developers don't want to take the time to optimize the game for the hardware. It is about 1/2 what a game should be running at.

You shoot for 60 fps so that when the action gets intense on screen that you don't notice the dips down to 30 fps. If you start at 30 and then the game hits an action spot, you will visually 'see' the slowdown to the sub-30 spots.

Ugh.

Actually, it's better to have a game run consistently at 30fps, than to have it run at 60fps, and dip down to 30. I certainly notice jerky framerates... not only visually but primarily through the feel of controls... you feel hitching. I would most certainly PREFER a constant 60fps over a constant 30... although if done right, 30fps is perfectly fine (GTA comes to mind)

[Valkyrist]

I didn't think the human eye could perceive much above that to be noticeable.

Now I've a degree in computer animation, but they did make me take several video editing classes. And I could swear I was taught some basics about framrates:

1. Anything over 90-120fps is basicly unnoticable to the human eye. The brain cannot process more information than that.
2. 60fps will look *slightly* choppy in fast-moving scenes.
3. 30fps is only good for slow or sweeping shots, and even then most people will notice some chop.
4. 15fps or lower on a moving shot may actually make a viewer feel uncomfortable, like being in the room with a strobe-light for too long.

I wouldn't necessarily quote me on that, it's just what I remember being told in school.

[Frogleg Special]

Well magic PC could have 120 fps (kidding)

And no overheating (seriously)

[StANTo]

Being an avid quake 3 player I always 'felt' and 'saw' the difference between 30, 60 and 120fps.

Surprised they aren't running at 25fps and claiming it's 'movie film speed'.

[Ebon Deth]

"most good shooters"

ahahaha - something is seriously wrong if I'm playing an FPS below 60-300 fps. Perhaps he should have said "most good console shooters" but that of course would create a paradox as there are no good console shooters

Well.. except The Darkness

1. Mass Effect is not first-person
2. It's an RPG with shooter elements. Not a shooter. 30FPS is fine.

[mrbrick]

Well this seems pretty cool I guess.
I thought the first ME engine was a bit on the weak side. Didn't seem optimized properly. Perhaps for the future bioware should consider a different engine than the unreal one. (is ME2 on unreal still?).

Bioware has never really seemed to be known for their buttery smooth engines.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Video games and frame rates always seemed tricky too me. I come from a film background where that stuff is very different. 24fps is buttery smooth as silk.

[mrbrick]

Being an avid quake 3 player I always 'felt' and 'saw' the difference between 30, 60 and 120fps.

Surprised they aren't running at 25fps and claiming it's 'movie film speed'.

25fps is PAL format. Europe.
24 (really 23.976) is Film format.

If a game rendered motion like a real camera this would be possible. But they don't so a 24fps would seem very stuttery. A films shutter gate spins 48 times per second- making 24 images. All that motion and everything inside can be exposed for fractions equal to 1/48th of a second or more. Not less. A game is a bit more like stop motion- but not quite. It has lots of extra post processing that happens to smooth everything out. (from what I understand anyways- i concede to the experts).

It be pretty cool if a game engine did that I think. But Id like to see it at 30fps. i have issues with 24.

[rubbishfoo]

I've always though that it wasn't so much the framerate being 30fps that bothered me.

When a game has a consistent framerate above what my eyes can see - there has never been a problem. One of the things that people notice is the change of framerate. Running down the hallway in a game @60fps, then turning the corner & the game dropping to 30fps is very noticeable. Dipping less than that makes it far more noticeable.

[Rafer]

Video games and frame rates always seemed tricky too me. I come from a film background where that stuff is very different. 24fps is buttery smooth as silk.

Movie studios have experimented with higher frame rates but it had a negative effect, films looked "too real", like something shot on video, and you lost that "dreamlike" movie look.

[laggerific]

I didn't think the human eye could perceive much above that to be noticeable.

I don't know about you, but I perceive everyday life much more fluidly than 30FPS. This is the theory behind the Auto Motion Plus features in TVs that interpolate up to 120Hz from the usual 24FPS seen in TV. The reason it looks so oddly real is that we aren't used to seeing motion pictures so close to the fluidity of real life. I also recall back in the CRT PC days that if something were set to 60Hz the flicker would cause my eyes to go batty. Not really empirical evidence, but my experience with FPS.

[spdiscus]

The first game was one of the few I've played where the frame rate (and pop-in) bugged me. This is good news.

[bean19]

I didn't think the human eye could perceive much above that to be noticeable.
This is correct. The human eye cannot.

What we can see is when a 30 FPS game dips down (even momentarily) below 30 FPS. That's why PC gamers try to get games running at 60+ FPS. If your computer runs it this well then whenever the PC is getting bogged down with explosions or a large number of AI using resources all at once, the video can DIP down to 30 FPS. If you are running at 30 FPS then the dips go below 30 FPS and you definitely see them.

What he may be saying is that the target is to keep the game always running at 30 FPS as the minimum. If that's the case, then great.

I don't care so long as it looks pretty.

[Syl]

Well magic PC could have 120 fps (kidding)

And no overheating (seriously)

I can run games at well over 120fps without any overheating. There's just no point to it because my monitor can only display 60hrz.

[net7runner]

25fps is PAL format. Europe.
24 (really 23.976) is Film format.

If a game rendered motion like a real camera this would be possible. But they don't so a 24fps would seem very stuttery. A films shutter gate spins 48 times per second- making 24 images. All that motion and everything inside can be exposed for fractions equal to 1/48th of a second or more. Not less. A game is a bit more like stop motion- but not quite. It has lots of extra post processing that happens to smooth everything out. (from what I understand anyways- i concede to the experts).

It be pretty cool if a game engine did that I think. But Id like to see it at 30fps. i have issues with 24.

Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to compare film and video-type displays.

In film projection, frame rate (fps) is different from flicker rate, both of which are important.

Films are shown by displaying alternating periods of image and darkness. During dark period, the film inside the projector is advanced one frame so that the next image phase will contain a new frame. If the flicker rate is fast enough, humans are unable to detect the dark phases and only perceive a single, moving image.

When a film is being projected there are 48 image phases and 48 dark phases per second (48hz). Traditional film runs at 24 frames per second, so every image is repeated twice. (image1, darkness, image1, darkess+move film, image2, darkness, image2, darkness + movefilm, image3, etc.)

Thus, even though film runs at such a "slow" fps, the high "fps" of the flickering smooths out fast motion that would otherwise look very stuttery (even though we're just seeing repeated images).

With TV sets, there is no flicker, only a scan rate. With LCD and modern computer screens, there isn't even a scan rate, only a pixel refresh rate. In either case, there is no flicker whatsoever, requiring much higher (48+) fps in order to get the smoothness we expect from film. Ironically, in order to get the "cinematic" feel from film you need to display 24 images per second. So either you run at high FPS and get film smoothness, or you run at low fps and get film cinematicness. Or you come up with a new display technology that brings back alternating light and dark periods (not happening).

[blackzc]

I didn't think the human eye could perceive much above that to be noticeable.

If your a tool maybe, i can tell the diff between 30 and 60 every time.

[Anenome]

The fovea of the human eye, the point of focus, can't see the difference between 30 and 60, but the areas around the fovea are very sensitive to movement.

You'll notice this if you switch an old monitor between say 60 and 85 hertz. Don't look directly at the monitor, look just beside it and try to notice it, and you will see the difference in flicker.

That said, it's a pity that even with this generation, companies are pushing the consoles so hard that they have to make these painful trade-offs between performance and quality.

Some have said graphics this generation are finally 'good enough', but this isn't really true. Devs would love to have more power, far more power.

[Anenome]

Forgot to mention one thing: With today's LCD screens, flicker is much less of an issue because each pixel element's color doesn't instantly disappear as the old monitor's did. Instead, they dim over time after being lit, resulting in a kind of ghost image. This ends up covering any flicker that would be there, which is why LCDs generally look absolutely fine at 60 hertz, but an old monitor at 60 hz was generally painful to look at.

[agentclam]

I remember a lot of seemingly unnecessary slowdown in ME1--considering how bland a lot of the environments were, at least. 30fps is all right, but I hope it's worth it. If there isn't a huge uptick in the pizzaz level from the first game, I'm going to be a bit disappointed.

[modeps]

Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to compare film and video-type displays.

In film projection, frame rate (fps) is different from flicker rate, both of which are important.

Films are shown by displaying alternating periods of image and darkness. During dark period, the film inside the projector is advanced one frame so that the next image phase will contain a new frame. If the flicker rate is fast enough, humans are unable to detect the dark phases and only perceive a single, moving image.

When a film is being projected there are 48 image phases and 48 dark phases per second (48hz). Traditional film runs at 24 frames per second, so every image is repeated twice. (image1, darkness, image1, darkess+move film, image2, darkness, image2, darkness + movefilm, image3, etc.)

Thus, even though film runs at such a "slow" fps, the high "fps" of the flickering smooths out fast motion that would otherwise look very stuttery (even though we're just seeing repeated images).

With TV sets, there is no flicker, only a scan rate. With LCD and modern computer screens, there isn't even a scan rate, only a pixel refresh rate. In either case, there is no flicker whatsoever, requiring much higher (48+) fps in order to get the smoothness we expect from film. Ironically, in order to get the "cinematic" feel from film you need to display 24 images per second. So either you run at high FPS and get film smoothness, or you run at low fps and get film cinematicness. Or you come up with a new display technology that brings back alternating light and dark periods (not happening).

I give your post 5 evil eyes.

[Grumsh]

Now I've a degree in computer animation, but they did make me take several video editing classes. And I could swear I was taught some basics about framrates:

1. Anything over 90-120fps is basicly unnoticable to the human eye. The brain cannot process more information than that.
2. 60fps will look *slightly* choppy in fast-moving scenes.
3. 30fps is only good for slow or sweeping shots, and even then most people will notice some chop.
4. 15fps or lower on a moving shot may actually make a viewer feel uncomfortable, like being in the room with a strobe-light for too long.

I wouldn't necessarily quote me on that, it's just what I remember being told in school.

Hmmmm I am not sure that sounds perfectly right. Your average action film (maybe I am being naive here since its a different medium) runs at only 24 frames per second and looks great on blue ray !

[pwnophobia]

Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to compare film and video-type displays.

In film projection, frame rate (fps) is different from flicker rate, both of which are important.

Films are shown by displaying alternating periods of image and darkness. During dark period, the film inside the projector is advanced one frame so that the next image phase will contain a new frame. If the flicker rate is fast enough, humans are unable to detect the dark phases and only perceive a single, moving image.

When a film is being projected there are 48 image phases and 48 dark phases per second (48hz). Traditional film runs at 24 frames per second, so every image is repeated twice. (image1, darkness, image1, darkess+move film, image2, darkness, image2, darkness + movefilm, image3, etc.)

Thus, even though film runs at such a "slow" fps, the high "fps" of the flickering smooths out fast motion that would otherwise look very stuttery (even though we're just seeing repeated images).

With TV sets, there is no flicker, only a scan rate. With LCD and modern computer screens, there isn't even a scan rate, only a pixel refresh rate. In either case, there is no flicker whatsoever, requiring much higher (48+) fps in order to get the smoothness we expect from film. Ironically, in order to get the "cinematic" feel from film you need to display 24 images per second. So either you run at high FPS and get film smoothness, or you run at low fps and get film cinematicness. Or you come up with a new display technology that brings back alternating light and dark periods (not happening).

/starts slow clap