rec.autos.simulators

I was just thinking why GPL was limited to 36fps in the first place,
but now with new powerful processors ready to be available on the
market why not run GPL at 60fps? That would be nice.
What do you guys think?

 Jima

With the new Voodoo5 coming out in a few months there will be a motion
blur feature, but I think software has to support it.

Take a little test: Set the monitor at a refresh rate of 60 and look at it for
15 seconds. Then turn the monitor on 85 Hz and enjoy the flicker-free image.

--
Olav K. Malmin
remove spam when replying

There was a demo somewhere that divided the screen into 4 and had 15, 30,
60 and 120Hz versions of the same animation.  You could DEFINITELY tell the
difference, the 120Hz one looked by far the smoothest.

Another point, if GPL is updating the view 36 times a second, and the
monitor is refreshing 85 times a second then the monitor is going to be
redrawing the same frame 2 or 3 times.

% I was just thinking why GPL was limited to 36fps in the first place,
% but now with new powerful processors ready to be available on the
% market why not run GPL at 60fps? That would be nice.
% What do you guys think?

Here is why:

Subject: Re: GPL 36 fps limit, why?
Date: 06 Jun 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.autos.simulators

GPL's base unit of time is a tick which corresponds to 1/36th of a
second, and everything in the game runs at some multiple or fraction of
this unit (i.e. the player's physics are updated 8 times a tick or at
288Hz).  Hence the 36fps limit ensures that everything is properly in
sync and the 'world' can be safely redrawn each tick.

Eric

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

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%  Jima

Deja Vu all over again......

Subject: Re: GPL about to come off the shelf...
Date: 20 May 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.autos.simulators

% Documented examples please. And i'm not talking about Joe Smoe,
spending money
% on a new TNT & V2 Sli wanting to find some difference and/or
justification in
% his spend.

% I've still not seen a shred of prrof that 30fps via 60fps is an
advanatge or
% what. nad i'm talking a constant 30fps, not subject to dropout and
peaks at
% lower than 30fps. (which obviously higher average frame rates help u
with).

In the effort to conserve bandwidth (and tempers), instead of continuing
to rehash old turf-war battles go to the following URL's and read what
others have to say on this topic.
http://www.firingsquad.com/features/faceoff/6-fps/default.asp

http://www.sony-europe.com/tve/trinitron/100hz.html

http://www.ping.be/powervr/fps_discus.htm

http://www.robinsonresearch.com/MOVIES/part_IB.htm

from http://www.student.hk-r.se/~pt93mm/thesis/domain_paper.html
The qualifier 'Real-time' narrows the domain further. By this term
we do not mean to imply that the system will have to deal with hard
deadlines
that are critical to the functionality of the application. Instead, the
term is used to point out that we are talking about animation. This
simply means that the frames must be produced at a speed that tricks the
human eye to perceive flicker-free, or at least almost flicker-free
motion. In practice, 'flicker-free' means 20 - 30 frames per second,
"almost flicker-free" might be around 10 frames per second. Occasional
frame rate drops to less than 10 frames per second might or might not be
acceptable, depending on the application.
--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Anyways, the more the FPS went up, the easier it was to play the game. The
smoother it was. Both offline and online. Anyways, getting into some tech
stuff. Most television programs run at 30-32fps, while motion picture box
office movies run at around 35fps. While faster fps may seem to improve
quality, also gotta figure in the fact that they probably shoot those
feature films in alot higher resolutions, as compared to your typical
nightly sitcoms on tv.

Here's one big argument alot of gamers make in favor of skyhigh FPS. It's to
do with lag and horsepower. In my opinion, most likely a horsepower issue.
Let's say I'm getting 40fps in whatever game, and this is offline benchmark.
Well, online, with the background internet related tasks running to keep me
online, my FPS will drop. So let's say it gets cut down to 20fps. Well, that
will be noticeably slower. Obviously. One guy I met, whose nickname escapes
me, lol, he had just picked himself up a custom P3 450mhz with SLI Voodoo
2's, cranking out 110fps offline in Quake2. Some of us questions is apparent
"overkill" for going all-out to be a "fps god", hehe. Well, he said it was
because of the issue with the FPS drops when playing online, and even the
apparent loss of FPS from lag, etc. Which, actually makes some sense, hehe.
I know there is a command line switch in Quake2, called "cl_maxfps XX",
where XX is the number of FPS you want to set it to. The game had that
defaulted to "90". Well, I'd say 75% of Q2 players then, and more than half
now, hehe, probably won't ever see FPS rates like that. So they claim it can
cause lag, cause the game server is trying to put out the data fast enough
to keep up with your 90FPS setting. That setting it lower, would cause both
your computer, and the server, to work less hard. And it makes sense, if
someone is only getting 30fps, why should he leave it at the default of 90
and possibly risk wasting all this bandwidth, if what they say is true.

Also gotta consider one other thing. And this I've seen in some of the
racing sims. With a "busy" screen, your fps will drop. With N3, i can
sometimes see it stutter when there's a full field of cars in view, with
several in rear view, and racing 2/3 wide, all those car textures have to be
rendered. Running on a track alone, you'll get your max fps, but with alot
of AI/Human cars all around you, well, your fps will drop a bit as it has to
render those guys too, and account for their movement around the screen, or
field of view. I seen that alot in Q2, when you get like 6 people in a small
room, everyone firing like mad to kill the bad guys, explosions, rockets,
debris, bodyparts, all that stuff flying around the room, well, your fps
drops like a rock sometimes, hehe. And some people intentionally do the
opposite and say "My minimum in the Crusher benchmark demo is 30", well hey,
if the lowest he goes on a very busy screen, that's great. Probably would be
60 or better if he was in that same room by himself, with nothing going on,
hehe.

Ok, flip side of this, horsepower. Is it really more to do with the video
card?? Or could it be connection speeds, and CPU speeds that factor in
more?? 36 FPS in GPL would be nice enough, providing you can keep it
constant, that's with other cars on the screen, basically a busy screen or
setting, if it can resist dropping below 32, taht would be no big deal. But
if you're limited to 36 and as a result, when things get busy, your fps
drops to like 15, that sucks then, lol.

Anyways, just some info and ideas, feel free to comment or whatever,
brainpower is a wonderful thing when we all use it together to come up with
ideas/solutions, etc.

Destin

--
Kirk Lane


ICQ: 28171652
BRT #187

"Yeah you won't find me
I'm going MIA
Tonight I'm leaving
Going MIA
Getting lost in you again
Is better than being known"
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Here we go again...

% Here we go again...

Long time no see, Randy..... must be the slow... err excuse me, must be
the extremely fast frame rate that my poor human eyes couldn't see as
you flashed by.... <G>

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=