There's always a lot of talk in C:SI about improving framerate. I've also heard a lot of comments about how after a certain framerate, the human eye can no longer see any difference and so improving framerate past this has no point. Usually the number stated is 24 or 30 fps, because those are the framerates of movie projectors and televisions (NTSC), respectively. While the reasoning makes sense to me, it definitely seems like I can tell a difference between 30 fps and higher rates. I decided to see what information I could dig up about this, and found this interesting article. The article explains how blurred images and other techniques are used to make 24-fps movies appears smooth, and so these are actually not the limit that we can detect. According to the article, the question is actually extremely hard to answer, but it's pretty clear that it's at least 100 fps, and probably much higher than that.
The article also touches on the aspect of monitor refresh rates. Basically, your monitor can only redraw the screen a certain number of times per second, and that's probably lower than the framerate your eye can detect. It also mentions that it might actually appear worse if you have more fps than your monitor refresh rate can support, because it has to sync the frames by repeating some.
Ping time is also something that is often stated as making a difference in duels. I have personally tried fighting with ping times of over 2000 ms, and that definitely makes a difference. But what about more normal variations? I usually get a "ping sim" of about 70-90 ms. That is the time it takes an empty message to travel from my computer to the Second Life server running the sim I'm in, and then get sent back. What does this mean for dueling? From my experience during times of extremely high pings, I know that the way SL works is that when I press a key to slash, my client does not immediately start displaying the slash animation. That message must first reach the server, then a message is sent to both people telling their clients to display the animation. What this means is that if both of us have equal ping times, we should both see my slash at exactly the same time.
Usually people have different ping times, though. I've heard people in Europe saying they usually have pings around 150 ms. If I were fighting them with my 70 ms ping, that would mean that they see the animations 80 ms after I do, including their own attacks. Is 80 ms significant, though? According to Wikipedia, the reaction time for humans is between 150 ms and 300 ms, so it doesn't seem like that would really make a difference. But then again, it doesn't matter how quickly a person reacts, it will still be delayed by 80 ms in this example. But...will that delay in their reaction matter since their opponent can only react at 150-300 ms? I'm confused.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Interesting comments and articles. I've often thought that fps above roughly 35 just meant I wasn't using my computer hardware to it's full advantage. Since the difference between 35 and say 60 doesn't really amount to a difference in game performance (sure, I can notice a difference visually but does it affect the way I perform? Not really), might as well crank up the graphic settings to get the most of 35 fps.
Regarding ping - I'm not a psychologist and I can't quote articles for you, but I think the personal anecdotes of a lot of FPS gamers would agree: anybody who has some competative experience with first person shooters will tell you that a difference of 100ms is significant. Does C:SI require the same level of precision? Does the SL platform even allow it? No idea.
Colin,
I haven't seen you around much. :(
Just from my own experience I think there is a difference between say, 30 and 50 fps that can be seen and a ping difference of 100 can make a difference in higher level fights. I think it matters less with newer combatants.
As far as reaction time and ping, I think you need to add the reaction time on top of ping for both people, so the difference would remain the same. Their reaction time begins when they see the attack.
Yeah, there would definitely be a difference in reaction times with different pings. I'm still not convinced a difference of <100 ms would really affect the outcome of a duel, though.
And no, you haven't seen me around much. Hopefully I'll log on this weekend :D
This is all very interesting information! Thanks for posting it. I've certainly learned a bit from it.
Post a Comment