RoQuEr

LOL @ title. Let me rephrase that. Whats the minimum Frames per second required for a First person shooter to run smoothly? I know way back when, the target was 15 FPS. If this is all you need, why do I need the latest and greatest graphics card. The latest radeon can run quake 3 at 180 FPS, but who cares? Isn't that excessive anyways? Surely there is a limitation to what our eyes can recognize. I know film is 30 FPS, so I assume its something close to that.

Feneant

I find that when you are in heavy action and you get under 20, its noticeable... some people say that they can see a difference even at 30-50 and it's too low, but thats bs....

Lastblade

I like it 30+.... 60 and on is just smooth as butter.

Groucho

A couple things:

1. You don't want to exceed the refresh rate of your monitor unless you like tearing. This is usually 60 or 85 fps.

2. You want a fairly stable frame rate. A consistant 30 fps is better than jumping up and down between 30 & 60.

Outlaw

Off topic, but film (like the kind you see in the movie theater) is actually 24 frames per second, where video is 30 frames per second. when films are made into videos for viewing on your tv, they have to up it from 24 to 30 fps, usually by a 2-3 pull down. Its confusing but I just wanted to clear that up . Carry on.

menaz

What is tearing?

eedoon

Picture distortion (?) where the monitor didn't show the picture properly.
I think there's been a confusion between frames per second and refresh rate here...

fmian

Actually, tearing occurs when the frame rate by the graphics card is higher than what the screen can display.
60Hz is a reresh of 60 times a second. A tear sort of looks like you only get the image on half the screen before the next one comes up. Check out the Matrix Releaded trailer in quicktime to see what I mean. On an LCD screen anyway, some of the white flashes in the trailer last for less time than what the monitor can reproduce.
Film or video doesn't work on the same principle as frame rates that are being generated real time, as the video captured records blurring on most frames which makes it more difficult to see things jerky. It's a well known fact that 30fps on any game doesn't look as good as 60fps. I think there was a 3DFX demo a while back that showed 2 cubes spinning one after the other, at 30fps and then 60fps and there IS a noticeable difference.

To answer the original question though, anything above a consistant 25+fps is considered acceptable by most people, but the more hardcore gamers prefer having it 60+fps

khai

You will need a minimum of 30FPS to see things smoothly. People have different standards on that though. I am lenient on these things more than other people though.. Many people do not like anything less than 45-50fps.

The Radeon 9800 pro can run Quake 3 at 180 fps, but that's just quake 3. A game running on the quake 3 engine can be much more demanding than the game quake 3 itself.

Minimum fps count and average fps should not go together. Minumum fps is one thing and average fps is a totally different thing.