It' s over. TOCA 3 is 30fps.

I was gonna wait for more reviews to actually confirm it. But why bother, it' s probably true anyway. IGN said TOCA wonderfully maintains 30fps even online. I mean, if i wanted another 30fps racing game i would just play FORZA!, which has achieved graphics TOCA 3 can' t even come close to. TOCA 3 was supposed to be my last big hurrah before the Xbox went the way of the Dreamcast. Sadly, this isn' t so. Hmmm, wait, maybe Black or Dreamfall can take it' s place now.

That really sucks, considering Toca 2 was 60fps.

No racing game should be running at anything less than 60fps on hardware at Dreamcast level and beyond. Hell, Sega' s Model 2 board did 60fps on all it' s games and Namco' s older PS One based hardware did it on most.

Exactly the reason I returned PGR3. With PGR2 I accepted it as maybe they couldn' t get enough power out of the Xbox to do it, but with PGR3 it was unacceptable. With the kind of power devs have access to it simply comes down to sloppy programming and rushing games out for release.

I was gonna wait for more reviews to actually confirm it

Hardly any reviews on mainstream site even bother to mention framerates anymore. It' s as though they think people don' t really care anymore.

I guess journalism isn' t what it used to be. Thank god for the likes of Kikizo and games TM magazine.

Forza was crap for me - the gameplay sux at 30fps.I think that next installment could kick some serious ass.

Hehe, the standard line used by review sites now when a game is 30fps is, " rock solid framerate" , or " consistent framerate" . If you see something like that then it' s sure to be around the 30fps mark. Once in a while, a game comes along at 60fps and the common description is something like, " silky-smooth framerate" or " silky smooth 60fps" . I' ve encountered a review before where a 60fps game was described as having a framerate as smooth as a knife cutting through hot butter!

Come to think of it, i think this is Codemasters' first ever racing game not to run at 60fps? Hehe, i think i might just get ToCa 2, i was actually planning to already get ToCa 2 a few months ago, it was just ToCa 3 that was making me wait.

Interestingly though Kyo.k, you returned PGR3? i was kinda thinking that maybe because it had motion blur, that it would be quite acceptable to the eyes, even for a 30fps racing game?

It was acceptably smooth, but noticeably worse than 60fps. Compared to Ridge Racer 6, or even the arcade version of Daytona USA (1994) I didn' t think it was smooth enough, especially for a next-gen game.

I did spend close to 18 hours playing through it though, and it was a lot of fun. But really I expected more framerate wise, which is why I prefered Ridge Racer (Plus the whole artistic flair it has).

I don' t find 30fps bad for things like Resi 4 and Halo, and if Halo 3 didn' t do 60 then altough I would be dissapointed, I wouldn' t mind so much. Ultimately fast moving games like fighters and racing games are better suited to high framerates, whereas on titles like Resi 4 it isn' t so important if it' s smooth enough.

Anyway, I wouldn' t even consider another racing game unless it was 60fps. Having said that I see no reason other than lazy development, why all games cannot run at 60fps. I willing to bet that Far Cry on 360 won' t be 60 even though the machine can easiliy handle it. My PC can do it at 1024x768 no probs, and the 360' s way more powerfull than my PC.

Hopefully developers realise that 60fps is the way to go and stop making up crap like " you can' t notice more than 30" , because you can, very easily.

Whats up with western developers thinking 30fps fpr racers (and in some cases FPS' s) is acceptable?

Classic case is PGr3, yuk, the game jerks when after playing the supersmooth RR6.. Even my 8 year old nephew noticed the smoothness difference.

Exactly. Bizzare Creations simply rushed out the game in time for the 360' s already rushed out launch.

They did say they were going for 60fps, but at the last minute stated that they didn' t have enough time with final dev kits to achieve this. I think they had about two months tops. And in order to optimise the game you would have to re-write a lot of code to take advantage of the 3 CPU cores which devs didn' t have access to fully in unfinished kits.

I think as the average mainstream gamer doesn' t really care about this, then devs will continue to settle for sub-standard framerates.

jars, don' t put away ur xbox just yet, painkiller hell wars is coming out on the 28 of this month, if that interests u.

Hehe, i' m not putting it away anytime soon. I' m just saying that after getting ToCa 3, that would be the last game i' d ever want to get of all the games yet to come on the Xbox.

Painkiller Hell Wars eh? i' ll check it out. I' ll also see how good Black and Dreamfall are.

hmmmm gears of war is also 30fps, and thats the best looking 360 title i know of.

...You better start saving for the ps3 then, with 120fps!

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

hmmmm gears of war is also 30fps, and thats the best looking 360 title i know of.

How do you know?

thats its the best looking title? the e3 vids where jerk-o-vision, also ild rather less game details and effects @60fps than more @30fps.

That I perosnally know of. I dont have a 360 so i am not into all the upcoming games for it, i cant possibley know of every game being made for all consoles. But i think the unreal engine 3 looks sweet. Fight Night round 3 is also easy on the eye.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

GoW is a different kind of game - Halo 2 was 30fps and it wasn' t a problem , but in racers it seems like cars are less responsive for me (still I liked PGR2).


Another genre that is totally unplayable for me in 30fps - fighting games.

For me FPS' s at 60fps would be so sweet, but since it' s not a norm, on any console, then it' s acceptable at 30fps. Especially if it looks like GOW or Halo 2. I think the only 60fps first-person shooter i can remember is Outrigger, by Yu Suzuki, for the Dreamcast.

Yeah, definitely pure racing games and fighting games should be 60fps. For me though something like GTA doesn' t have to be. RPG' s at 60fps are unheard of though, so it doesn' t matter.

I SPOKE TOO SOON!!!!

http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78120&highlight=framerate

I knew it!! I knew Codemasters wouldn' t let me down! In this world where framerate takes second place to sales, Codemasters is one of the few companies that always mentions, " all at a rock solid 60fps" in their features list.

Excellent! More companies should be doing this. Maybe then we' ll be closer to a world where every game runs at 60fps, as it should be.

For me FPS' s at 60fps would be so sweet, but since it' s not a norm, on any console, then it' s acceptable at 30fps. Especially if it looks like GOW or Halo 2. I think the only 60fps first-person shooter i can remember is Outrigger, by Yu Suzuki, for the Dreamcast.

Metroid Prime - one of the best looking current gen games and solid 60fps.

I think the priority for games should be 60fps and then some - not for all the games - like you said RPG games and some other are just as good in 30.

I think it' s just stupid that games for 360 are in 30 fps now since most of them barely touches it' s power.

I think it' s a lame excuse to say " it' s new and hard" - that doesn' t explain the framerate drops.

Optimise our games you lazy fuckin bastards !

Prime is an great example.

You can still have a great-looking FPS and @ 60fps, Ok the drawdisance isnt that great in Prime (given the nature of the games levels) but it still pushes out great details and spot-FX while mantaining constant 60fps.

Nintendo really do Have the highest ' Seal of Quality' Anyway, Even most DS games runs no less than 60fps..


I mean how imbarrising was it when after playing PGR3 i went and played MK:DS and the first thing i said was

' OMG! HOW SMOOTH IS THIS!!'

MK:DS beats the living c^%^ outta PGR3 anyway so no suprize.

Hehe, i forgot about Metroid Prime. Cool game.

BTW, i predict that the next Gotham Racing game will be 60fps because... they have no where else to go!! i mean they added so much graphical glitter, achieved photorealism, have nothing more to improve upon, and keep getting hurt when Adam Doree asks them why they didn' t make it 60fps (Adam' s getting close! he will pierce their hearts i' m sure of it!)

It' s as if Kikizo is there to ask them, " so what' s your excuse this time huh? huh Bizarre?? huh?" . :P

Oh but let' s not bash Bizarre.. they are after all, the Polyphony Digital of the Xbox.

They better do it next time. The standard of 60fps was set a long time ago, around 1994 in the arcades.

I expect nothing but 60fps since the DC' s launch and expect nothing less today. Not unreasonable when compared with the kind of power they have to play with now.

Oh but let' s not bash Bizarre.. they are after all, the Polyphony Digital of the Xbox.

No the Polyphony of Xbox were D.I.C.E for Rallisport Challenge 2 :)

PGR2 may look good but it' s still too far from GT games when it comes to gameplay (not to mention the coding skills - those freaks made GT4 look like that on PS2 and in 60fps - how sick is that?:) )

I expect nothing but 60fps since the DC' s launch and expect nothing less today. Not unreasonable when compared with the kind of power they have to play with now.

Yeah - they should just stop this visual race and make 60fps a fuckin standard - and then add the detail and shit.

But we all know that European and US Devs are lazy fuckin bastards

It' s good to see that people here share my view that 60fps should be the standard nowadays, and 30fps is unacceptable particularly for a racing game. What I never understand is why some people get very angry when you suggest that games should be 60fps. Can' t they see how much better 60fps racers look (eg. Toca 2 and 3) compared to 30fps racers (Forza)? Meh...

Btw, I emailed the author of the IGN review to point out his mistake in saying that Toca 3 is 30fps.. because it will surely put some people off buying the game. Hopefully he will consider amending his review.

As much as I agree that framerate' s are important these days, I' m still stumped as to why someone would actually return PGR3 on this basis. For a driving game fan, although lacking the depth, having imho stupid ' cone challenges' and the gameplay being practicully unchanged since the last xbox incarnation it still seems a harsh reaction to a game of such overwhelming visual splendor espcially as it shines as a consoles initial launch title. It needed to be easy on your eye, and early titles of any generation don' t get the most out of a consoles abilities. I' d imagine PGR2 to be something pretty special now. Give them a chance to get used to the new architecture. Initial ps3 titles wont be anywhere near 120fps. These things take time!!

Rallysport 1 / 2 - what an overlooked arcade rally racer, great fun multiplayer too!

Well you' re right- I wouldn' t skip a title cause of this - but it is dissapointing

Good to know someone else played the best Xbox racers too :)

Yeah, 30 fps is teh lamez0rz. I don' t mind 30 fps for RPGs and single player games that much. Actually it doesn' t bother me at all that PGR3 is 30 fps. What I don' t like is my fps at 30fps. If you play Halo 2 on xbox 360 you normally get 60+ fps and you have a big avantage when you play the xbox 1 nubs. Since TVs don' t support more than 60 there really isn' t much point in going higher. There is no way I play games below 60 fps on PC. I usually adjust the settings for around 90 fps. For UT2k4 I adjust them for 120+ fps, the game is just so fast if you don' t have that many fps you' ll be dead before you see the guy that shot you. Of course you have to have a monitor that supports it.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

framerates are always interesting discussions, its a bit like audio compression, some people can tell the difference and others can' t, in terms of above 30-35 frames a second humans eyesight reaches its peak interpretation. Anything higher than this just feels more fluid. For example the average cinema shows films at 24 fps, which is why they appear to flicker a bit. Obviously higher is better, but tbh 60 is super-fluid and unless your planning some sort of cyborg-esque implant any higher framerates will be wasted on humans!

i agree. Anything above 60fps would still look like 60fps. i think. Heck, REALITY looks like 60fps!

Yeah but those PC games are not more fluid - these tend to go faster with more frames - that' s strange I think , since it' s still 120 frames per second right?
That means the optimal fluidity is reached at about 60 and the rest has to speed up to be able to perform more frames in that very second.

That means it' s stupid - since the game was made with specific dynamics in mind - Who' d want to play Halo 2 with master Chief moving like Ferrari F50?

What' s more, when you play guys who have high end machines and have 120 fps and you have 60 - they are faster.

The way I see it - it' s just dumb.I never understood PC gamers :)

No they don' t go faster with more fps, everything goes the same speed it is just smoother.
It is just a nub myth that the human eye is only capable of seeing 60fps.
The military ran tests on pilots displaying images of different aircraft at 1/300ths of a second (300 fps only for one frame) and the pilots could identify the aircraft.
I don' t remember the article link and I' m too lazy to look it up but the human eye is capable of much more than you think.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Makes ya wonder if technology will ever get us over these framerate issues ;).. No matter how monstrously powerful a console is, slowdown & pop-ups still appear to be quite prevalent in certain games.

Terry Bogard - currently the most Unhelpful member of the Kikizo forums.

It won' t happen until the technology is so powerful that game developers can make things as detailed as they want. Which won' t happen for a very long time.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Well look back at Fighting Vipers 2 on Dreamcast, that had 60fps, as did Daytona USA 2001. Would you know the difference between that and PGR3?! Unlikely.

The human eye generally can' t register anything over about 37fps, so things don' t even need to be 60fps. The occasional person can tell the difference, but that' s usually down to how ingame effects work, ...in that with a higher framerate like 60fps, more subtle effects can be added that you wouldn' t be able to see in a game running at 30fps.

Anything over 30 is fine for a game, it just needs to never drop lower than that. I think that 120fps is stupid, and just another figure that Sony are keen to throw about. I' ll take a steady 60fps and be quite happy, even though we won' t see even that in early PS3 titles, maybe in one or two.

very similar thoughts there Majik heheh

Well the sony 120 fps thing is stupid, it is just a marketing gimmik. TVs don' t even support 120 fps so it won' t happen on PS3. Saying the human eye can' t tell register anything over 37 fps is a straight up lie. *cough nub cough*
here is an article on fps http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.aspx
and another http://unreal.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=8643

kthxbye

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Since the human eye is limited as to how many images it can perceive per second, it ought to be unnecessary to play with more than 60 FPS. However, a higher FPS is preferable since the objects you see on screen will be more precise. If the graphics card generates 100 FPS for instance, an object that is situated at a given place at a given time will be more accurately depicted even though the screen only updates at 72 Hz.

Which is what Gangsta was saying about playing against people online who have higher framerates.

Now, in movies, explosions are usually shot at speeds in excess of 100fps (because they' re instantaneous), which is what i was saying about effects in games running at higher framerates.

Maybe 120fps is enough, maybe you will get headaches after 3 hours. Seeing framewise is simply not the way how the eye\brain system works. It works with a continuous flow of light\information. (Similar to the effects of cameras' flashlights (" red eyes" ): flashing is simply not the way how we see). So there are still questions. Maybe you need as much as 4000fps, maybe less, maybe more.

The fact is that the human eye perceives the typical cinema film motion as being fluid at about 18fps, because of its blurring. This also applies to games, in that it' s unlikely you' ll notice a difference between 30 and 60 fps, apart from where effects are concerned.

If you had a movie with 50 very sharp and crisp images per second, your eye would make out lots of details from time to time and you had the feeling, that the movie is stuttering.

72+ fps is referred to as the ' illusion of reality' , but that will only apply to games when the visuals are of photographic quality.

35-37 fps has been shown to be the concious threshold for depicting motion on a TV screen. After all, if TV looks smooth at 30fps, then that must be a hard-coded, physiological limit right?

There' s a big difference in the way that TVs' (be it SD or HD) and monitors display images. Inherent to a TV is blur, the picture is interlaced, meaning that 30 fps on a TV will look no different than 60 EXCEPT where effects are concerned (sparks, explosions, strobe lighting etc...). That' s why motion blur is coded into the software.

Like when something' s running at 90 fps, and somethings running at a steady 30 fps, it doesn' t feel like the 30 fps is only a 3rd as fast. Displays/TVs' render frames dynamically, so everything runs at the same speed, but more frames are packed into each timeframe (hence the literal term " ninety frames per second" ). And it certainly doesn' t mean you register 90 fps conciously.

Now jtype is a games technology lecturer and i' m a games development student, ...you are going to teach us are you?!

Oh, and loco your airforce pilots NEVER registered a plane displayed for 1/300th of a second at all, it was 1/220th of a second and the test' s weren' t conclusive. Play a game and it' s different though, and it' s not like your framerates can even exceed your refresh rate anyway.

No they don' t go faster with more fps, everything goes the same speed it is just smoother.
It is just a nub myth that the human eye is only capable of seeing 60fps.

Didn' t you say that : " you normally get 60+ (on 360) fps and you have a big avantage when you play the xbox 1 nubs"

Or :
" For UT2k4 I adjust them for 120+ fps, the game is just so fast if you don' t have that many fps you' ll be dead before you see the guy that shot you. Of course you have to have a monitor that supports it."

Strange ...

The military ran tests on pilots displaying images of different aircraft at 1/300ths of a second (300 fps only for one frame) and the pilots could identify the aircraft.

Cool but that could be nothing but your fantasy.



.

Makes ya wonder if technology will ever get us over these framerate issues ;).. No matter how monstrously powerful a console is, slowdown & pop-ups still appear to be quite prevalent in certain games.

Yeah this sucks

It won' t happen until the technology is so powerful that game developers can make things as detailed as they want. Which won' t happen for a very long time.

Yeah and each generation there are more Framerate problems in games .

The human eye generally can' t register anything over about 37fps, so things don' t even need to be 60fps. The occasional person can tell the difference, but that' s usually down to how ingame effects work, ...in that with a higher framerate like 60fps, more subtle effects can be added that you wouldn' t be able to see in a game running at 30fps.

There' s a huge difference between 50 fps and 60 - check tekken 3 or soul calibur 2 in PAL 50Hz and in NTSC (60Hz) - everyone will notice.

saying that my eye can' t notice the difference between 30 fps and 60 is crazy - play forza and then GT4 - the dynamic and responsive controlls of GT4 will blow you away.

Anything over 30 is fine for a game, it just needs to never drop lower than that. I think that 120fps is stupid, and just another figure that Sony are keen to throw about. I' ll take a steady 60fps and be quite happy, even though we won' t see even that in early PS3 titles, maybe in one or two.

I agree - but we may be severly mistaken , I once didn' t know that 60 FPS are such a huge change.Maybe there' s more to it than we think - none of us have enough understanding of it to say if it' s real or not I guess.

The fact is that the human eye perceives the typical cinema film motion as being fluid at about 18fps, because of its blurring. This also applies to games, in that it' s unlikely you' ll notice a difference between 30 and 60 fps, apart from where effects are concerned.

it' s 24 for movies - it' s more for TV shows and these do look smoother.

Effects have nothing to do with it.It' s like anime - when you have 10 frames per move and 20 - everyone will notice the difference.

35-37 fps has been shown to be the concious threshold for depicting motion on a TV screen. After all, if TV looks smooth at 30fps, then that must be a hard-coded, physiological limit right?

Not really :) since PAL games are 25 instead of 30 and don' t look choppy.

The military ran tests on pilots displaying images of different aircraft at 1/300ths of a second

Does that mean that in one second, 300 planes were flashed one after another on the screen and the pilots were able to identify each one?

The difference is in the Hz Gangsta, 50 for PAL and 60 for NTSC. The resresh rate (measured in Hz is not the framerate). NTSC is smoother because they run at a higher refresh rate, meaning the picture is updated more times per frame.

And what i said was...

The fact is that the human eye perceives the typical cinema film motion as being fluid at about 18fps, because of its blurring.

Yes they' re displayed at 24 fps, but that wasn' t my point. I wasn' t saying that it' s actuallt 18, i was saying that the human eye percieves the image to be fliud motion when the frame count hits about 18.

The only people in this forum who ACTUALLY have to deal with producing stuff at any kind of framerate are myself and jtype and we both agree that many people here are under misconceptions. We have people talking about TVs' and we have people talking about PC monitors, and both work differently.

As for PAL and NTSC, ...while NTSC may run at 30 fps and a frequency of 60Hz, it only has 525 scanlines, whereas PAL runs at 25 fps and 50Hz but has 625 scanlines which results in a better picture quality.

The difference between formats is mainly of scanlines, framerate, frequency, and color. PAL systems tend to look sharper with better resolution, while NTSC systems tend to have less flicker since they run at a higher framerate. Playing a PAL game on an NTSC TV might result in the screen rolling or the colors being decidedly off.

Not that it matters.

Does that mean that in one second, 300 planes were flashed one after another on the screen and the pilots were able to identify each one?

LOL

No, a sinle plane was flashed onto a screen at 1/220ths of a second and the pilot was able to identify the plane. It is also inconclusive.