Games for 2009... And BEYOND!

[shinygerbil]

By the way,

Dark Souls II

[bert_the_turtle]

Frankly, I can't tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS in your example.

In such artificial testing scenarios, I can tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS very clearly, and the difference between 120 FPS with regular backlight and 120 FPS with the backlight pulsed to the refresh rate (LightBoost). But that's where it ends. There is no visible motion blur left, so no way I'd be able to tell the difference between 120 FPS+LightBoost and 240FPS+Lightboost. Well, telling the difference may be possible, but caring about it enough to get the twice as powerful PC required to achieve it? Not for me, not until game developers have really run out of things to waste CPU and GPU power on, anyway. And we'll hit the hard limit of how many numbers a reasonably sized box can crunch before that happens.

Essentially, the benefits of high refresh go down with the inverse of the refresh rate. Cost goes up linearly. It's hard to imagine that leading to a sweet spot by any measure upwards of 200 FPS (per eye).

[xander]

Frankly, I can't tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS in your example.

In such artificial testing scenarios, I can tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS very clearly, and the difference between 120 FPS with regular backlight and 120 FPS with the backlight pulsed to the refresh rate (LightBoost). But that's where it ends. There is no visible motion blur left, so no way I'd be able to tell the difference between 120 FPS+LightBoost and 240FPS+Lightboost. Well, telling the difference may be possible, but caring about it enough to get the twice as powerful PC required to achieve it? Not for me, not until game developers have really run out of things to waste CPU and GPU power on, anyway. And we'll hit the hard limit of how many numbers a reasonably sized box can crunch before that happens.

Essentially, the benefits of high refresh go down with the inverse of the refresh rate. Cost goes up linearly. It's hard to imagine that leading to a sweet spot by any measure upwards of 200 FPS (per eye).

Of course, if leave in the rest of the text which you chose not to quote, you'll notice that I allowed for the fact that I may be less able to see the difference than others, and offered an order of magnitude increase to 600 FPS as being (almost certainly) beyond the perception of any person. The point being that there is limit to human perception vis-a-vis framerates, and processing power is better used on other things (physics modeling, for instance).

xander

[NeatNit]

The problem I was trying to "fix" can best be seen here (fine under default settings): http://www.testufo.com/#test=blurtrail
Ignore the intended purpose of this test.

If you have a CRT or a LightBoost (or equivalent) screen, and you follow this line with your eyes, then it would appear exactly as it's supposed to appear: a single, thin line moving across the screen. But what if you keep your eyes static while the line moves past?

In real life, an object moving past your vision would be blurred. For example, if you're in a car driving past a fence, and you're looking at something behind the fence, then the fence blurs past so as to become partially transparent to you. But, if you were to follow the fence with your eyes, you could examine it in great detail (providing you're not going so fast as to be unable to focus on it for enough time).

On a computer screen, even at 120fps with LightBoost, you can only have one or the other. Either the fence is drawn blurred out + transparent to allow you to look beyond it, or it's drawn frame-by-frame as a static fence to allow you to track it with your eyes. In that case, when you look behind the fence, it just flashes annoyingly. You can't have both.

My intention was to have a framerate so high, so far beyond human perception of motion, that by rendering every frame as a static image, it would still allow you to look beyond the fence and it would blur past your vision.

[xander]

My intention was to have a framerate so high, so far beyond human perception of motion, that by rendering every frame as a static image, it would still allow you to look beyond the fence and it would blur past your vision.

I don't think that anyone misunderstands your intention. I just think that your expectations regarding human perception are a bit high. While I personally can't tell the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS in the example you give, I am more than happy to believe that others probably can (I am terribly remiss both in keeping my lens prescription up to date and in keeping the lenses of my glasses clean, so everything probably looks a bit blurrier to me than to you). That being said, my intuition is that 60 FPS is getting near the ballpark of human perception---particularly outside of laboratory conditions, when a user/player is probably not specifically looking for the kinds of artifacts that you are describing. Given an order-of-magnitude fudge factor, I am confident that you would hit the limit of human perception with near universality---call it 600 FPS. After that point, there is no reason to keep throwing resources at framerate, and it seems more logical to create more detailed graphics (though, again, we are getting close to the limits of human perception), better physics simulations (PDEs are hard, so I doubt that we will ever cease needing more powerful computers to give us better simulations), and so on.

xander

[NeatNit]

Another solution might be a completely new monitor technology that creates real motion instead of working with frames, but that has an obvious flaw (besides, you know, not existing yet): it can't be compatible with any of our existing content and the majority of our existing technology.

[microchip08]

So, I picked up Rogue Legacy in the Steam Summer Sale.

It's a rather addictive "roguelite" platformer, with an interesting twist: each successive character has some kind of trait: one might be colourblind, another might have giantism, another myopia, and so forth. The gimmick on some of the wears off after a while (there's a limit to the number of times playing in greyscale is funny), but it's a fun game that I'd recommend you pick up next time there's a sale.

[Feud]

Picked up "First Strike" on Android (iOS also available).

Visually, it is like a slightly cartoon-esqe 3d version of Defcon. Light strategy, goal to win by destroying the rest of the world through nuclesr fire (though, there is a way you can achieve world peace).

A bit pricey for a mobile game, but good gun, especially given how much I played Defcon.

[JASPer.Gamer.9.0]

You can blame Icepick for The Beast! He's all types of crazy!

Hah! Is there anything else lurking in the source of this level of barmy?

No comment!

Icepick, do u no that you made around 7x posts as Chris!!!???!!!???!!!

No comment!

Icepick, do u no that you made around 7x posts as Chris!!!???!!!???!!!

You should congrat yourself!

[xyzyxx]

The Talos Principle. Play it.

[shinygerbil]

I watched the trailer and I'm intrigued....but is it really worth that almost-AAA price tag?

[microchip08]

I watched the trailer and I'm intrigued....but is it really worth that almost-AAA price tag?

Looks like there's a demo.

[xyzyxx]

I watched the trailer and I'm intrigued....but is it really worth that almost-AAA price tag?

If you're into puzzle games in the vein of Portal, the game is worth double its price tag. The puzzles are fucking brilliant, the graphics are fucking gorgeous, the narrative is fucking deep. It lacks any of the humor in Portal though.

[knoest26]

For those of you with an Oculus Rift, this is an amazing game for it:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341006172
It's currently still in the greenlight section but there's a free demo on the oculus sharing site. The only downside to it right now is the lack of players really, servers tend to only hold a few players