Will 60fps Someday Be Viewed Like 30fps?

[Moonface]

As time has progressed people have expected 60fps to be the minimum standard for games (even though developers still struggle to hit it consistently) and 30fps has become viewed as sluggish or even unplayable.

While I'm sure it's a long way away, I wondered whether some day 60fps might get viewed in the same way that 30fps does if a time comes where something higher than 60fps starts to become the norm or the expected target for games to hit, but I'm not someone who gets terribly hung up over fps so long as the game still feels good to play so I don't know if that would happen or not. Does anyone else here think 60fps would become the new 30fps one day or will 60fps always be the accepted minimum once games start to hit it with consistency?

[Maniakkid25]

I hope that we stick to 60 fps as the standard. While higher fps is great for control responsiveness, it doesn't do anything but put strain on processors and GPUs for barely a marked difference. Also, you just run into glitches if you aren't careful. See Doom Eternal with its gigantic jump skips, or Vanquish with its damage bug. 60 FPS is a happy medium between performance and responsiveness, and I'd much rather it say that way.

[Dragon Lord]

It is inevitable that some day 60 fps will be viewed as "unplayable trash" like 30 currently is. Once consoles can begin to actually hit 60 as a bare minimum with no issues, I'm sure the trend will slide to "120 fps is the bare minimum, 60fps is trash."

I mean, if you look around, you'll already see some PC players say that anything below 240 fps is unacceptable, so while it's not commonplace yet, there are people out there who already think 120/60 is an unforgivable sin.

Personally I couldn't care. Can you see a difference between 30 and 60? Yes. Does it ruin a game? Absolutely not. FPS whores always come out with, "Well! Play a game in 60 and then go back and play a game in 30 and tell me it doesn't ruin it!" Funny enough, I've done exactly that before when I would switch from playing Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin on PS4 (60 FPS) to Bloodborne (10-15 FPS kekW) and never had any issues.

When I see people say 30 is unplayable and they blame not being able to beat the game because of it, that's the time to pull out the "git gud" card seriously. If you can't play a game in 30 FPS, that's a player skill issue.

[Maniakkid25]

I mean, if you look around, you'll already see some PC players say that anything below 240 fps is unacceptable, so while it's not commonplace yet, there are people out there who already think 120/60 is an unforgivable sin.

These are the kinds of people that drive me up a wall, and not because they are graphics whores who need games to be as shiny as can be. No, it's because they don't realize that the human body is fundamentally ill-equipped for such a demanding frame rate.

The problem is fundamental to human physiology: the brain can only decode sensory information so fast. This is why "Persistence of Vision" is a thing, and why CRTs, you know, WORK?! Ask anyone informed what the frame rate of the human eye is, and they'll tell you "it depends", but usually maxes out at about 100 fps. That's less than half of the frame rate we are demanding, here!

This is 4K resolution all over again; people don't care if they can only resolve it under perfect conditions; if they don't have the shiniest thing possible, it's trash! It's fucking insanity is what it is! Plain and simple!

[Moonface]

I don't even get how 120 or even 240 fps doesn't just end up looking incredibly weird like when people try to bump up the fps of filmed media to anything above the standard 24fps I think that stuff is shot at? I've seen animation work with the frame rate bumped up and that looks jank too, so surely there's a point where even games would look weird right?

[ShiraNoMai]

I think it's less about how much shiny things can get and more "beeg number go up yay" and their brain confirmation bias-es the resulting hype when they associate the higher number with shiny.

[Dragon Lord]

I don't even get how 120 or even 240 fps doesn't just end up looking incredibly weird like when people try to bump up the fps of filmed media to anything above the standard 24fps I think that stuff is shot at? I've seen animation work with the frame rate bumped up and that looks jank too, so surely there's a point where even games would look weird right?

Don't worry, give it another year or two and 240hz will also be called bad. I mean, there's already a bunch of 520+ hz monitors releasing now, so now it's going to be, "Erm, anything below 16K 600FPS is for disgusting peasants."

[Eric]

I think so, but maybe not as bad as looking back at 30 fps. I've tried a few 120 fps games on my series x and my LG C1 and wow, I can totally tell the difference between 60 and 120, but it's no where near the jump that it feels from 30 to 60. If 120 is ever reached as a standard, I can see there being diminishing returns where you wouldn't be able to perceive much of a difference.

To answer the question though, I'm not sure! I wish I had a decent monitor with a refresh rate that can keep up with anything higher than 60!

[Moonface]

...but it's no where near the jump that it feels from 30 to 60. If 120 is ever reached as a standard, I can see there being diminishing returns where you wouldn't be able to perceive much of a difference.

Sounds similar to the diminishing returns of visual fidelity where the jumps were really big from 5th Gen to 6th but the jump from 6 to 7 and 7 to 8 don't feel as big by comparison.

With how slow progress has been to making 60fps the standard (I expected 90% of games on current consoles to be hitting it comfortably yet it feels like barely even a quarter of games actually hit it) I can't even guess when 120fps could become a standard, if ever. I don't think developers care enough to try and reach it considering how few of them are even achieving 60fps.