8 ms·

The reason they sell monitors at 144FPS and now 256FPs is because people can see and react that fast. Sure those are generally for video games. But pretending

The reason they sell monitors at 144FPS and now 256FPs is because people can see and react that fast. Sure those are generally for video games. But pretending <Xms is the end-all-be-all of human perception is arrogant.

stanlarroque 9y ago
I'm working on an AR headset and we made some experiments with the human eye. I barely can notice the difference for motion above 120 fps. But my associate is a retired fighter pilot and he can react to motion at ~280 fps.
- emj 9y ago
  How do you test that; can you measure how you react to motion at 120fps vs 280fps, or is it just a feeling?
  - stanlarroque 9y ago
    It's not a feeling, we do the measures. It's like measuring your reaction time, few experiments are on screen and some are analogs. At the end you have a measure in a unit of time, and you deduce the fps from that
  - valarauca1 9y ago
    In FPS there are people called "stat junkies" the name expresses its hobby well. You try to play for the best stats. Head shot ratio (how often you get head shots), KDR (kill death ratio). You could likely data mine from stat sites before before/after purchasing very high refresh rate monitors. OFC there maybe some bias to try harder once you drop >$400 on a hobby. In my own subjective experience 60 -> 144FPS was night and day. Roughtly ended up being a 50% pref improvement.
- mattkrause 9y ago
  There's got to be something else going on there. 280 frames/sec is about 3.5 ms/frame. Signals don't even leave the retina that fast, let alone propagate to brain areas linked to perception and action. Perhaps the higher frame rate makes the motion smoother, which allows the pilot to estimate and extrapolate an objects' motion more accurately, or something like that.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    Smooth motion is definitely a big factor. Just look at things in terms of how fast something on screen (eg. the cursor) is moving in terms of pixels per frame. Moving a cursor horizontally across a 4k display in a relatively slow one second is 64 pixels per frame at 60Hz, which is significantly wider than the cursor itself. At 144Hz it's about 26 pixels per frame, and at 280Hz it would be about 14 pixels per frame. Even if you have a low-persistence display, you need to have a pretty high refresh rate to draw smooth motion. Hardly anything needs to be animated all the way down at 1 pixel per frame, but hardly anything currently comes at all close to that ideal strobe-free smoothness.
  - GuyWIthLag 9y ago
    Actually, human eyes don't have a "frame rate" per se, or if you want there are different frame rates depending on the feature - and how far removed it is from the retina. Essentially, the retina itself can detect >300hz, then there's a bunch of processing as you go back the optic nerve that causes that number to drop for higher-level features.
    - mattkrause 9y ago
      Any chance you have a source for that? I'm legitimately curious, since I've never heard anything like that.
  - hvidgaard 9y ago
    The visual system do not work in frames (well, on a fundamental level I supose it does, with the indivitual photons and nerve impulses being the smallest unit, but that is not a limit in practice). The information the retina captures is streamed continuesly to the brain, so higher FPS provides a higher temporal resolution for the visual experience. I don't think a fighter pilot inheriently react faster because of the resolution, but he is trained to detect motion in his peripheral vision. Perhaps he notice the smooth motion more than people who rarely train that part of their visual system. It would be interested to see how a trained and experience hunter would compare, as they often use peripheral vision as well.
- mickronome 9y ago
  In my hardcore gaming days using a fantastic Hitachi CRT monitor I did some basic experiments with refresh rates. My subjective results were somewhere in between the values you have as an example. I stopped noticing significant difference somewhere north of 160Hz, and at 200Hz they were barely perceptible. Very interesting to hear that someone has actually been measuring this in a more controlled way than I did some 18 years ago. It's also quite interesting how reluctant people are to even acknowledge the existence of something they themselves haven't noticed. Almost everyone refuted my eye witness account simply because they had read/heard that they eye can only notice <some number between 20-60> frames per secobd, and thus I couldn't possibly see any difference in motion above that threshold.
majewsky 9y ago
I can't comment on 144 Hz. (When I got my current monitor, I had to choose between 4K and 144 Hz, and 4K was more important for me.) But the thing that's most visible to me personally when comparing 30 Hz vs. 60 Hz is not so much latency, but the smoothness of quick movements (e.g. when you turn the camera really fast). Mighty be different for a serious FPS gamer, though; I mostly play Minecraft, only.
- mangix 9y ago
  I overclock my 4k display from 60 to 65Hz. The difference is noticeable.
  - Moru 9y ago
    My Atari could switch between 50 and 60 Hz because of US/EU TV standards. The difference was very noticable especially if you didn't look directly on the screen. The flicker is very hard on the eyes at 50 Hz and much better already on 60 Hz. Later I had a CRT screen that could be run at 75 Hz with some tweaking and that was very nice. Next screen I buy will be something higher but right now I'm back at 60 Hz with an IPS screen and I'm not totally happy with the flickering. Haven't tried overclocking yet, thought the flatscreens were locked to a certain Hz.
aidenn0 9y ago
It's not sold, but a lot of research seems to indicate that for certain sensory inputs you can be trained to react to faster than you consciously can perceive. Baseball players reacting to pitches is often used as an example. Certainly high-level video game players could be in that category as well.
ksec 9y ago
In the old days, I was told 30fps were the holy grail of 3D Gaming, 2x frames wouldn't do it. You will need an additional 3dfx card ( Voodoo ) to do it!. All Magazine start pushing out this answer with benchmarks showing which card hit 30Fps or above. One or two years later, It turns out because human uses both our eyes for vision, we need double the frame rate, 60fps is the key and limit of human perception. All First Person Shooter should try and hit 60Fps. That was the era of Doom, Half Life, and Counter Strike. 60Fps settled for a long time. No one were discussing any thing more. ( Or we did but we stay at 60fps, Doom 3 even try to cap the frame rate at 60. ) We needed 120Fps or more for AR for an immersive experience, but i thought that was only for AR. The iPad Pro 's 120Hz screen, it really was similar to when i first saw and use Retina Screen. The wow factor. For a long time I thought 60Fps was enough. And the sluggish of Computer UI was all software problem. The conclusion is, we may, or may not be able to react to 120fps timing. But we do definitely feel the difference. And as a matter of fact, after knowing it is a frame rate problem, you can see how 120fps is still not quite enough. It is like the early days of Retina 330ppi Smartphone screen, It is not quite up to imperceivable difference yet. A lot of people may not agree this latency, slight sluggishness matters, ( The early days of Android users dont think it is problem ) but i like where all these direction are going, latency is now taking a front seat for optimization.
- Moru 9y ago
  For a helicopter simulation I was told 24 fps was the minimum to be able to handle hovering. Yes, once I had a computer able to handle 3D flight simulator at 30 fps I was finally able to hover! The mind needs the queues from the eyes since the balance is just too slow. And if it's a PC emulator there is no balance input at all to help you. Competitive games have long been running full speed, not locked to the screen refresh because of the latency in screens. You don't want to wait for the screen to display something that is already ancient history. (In Quake 2 you could jump higher if your computer could run more than 200 fps so it was popular to look down on the ground before jumping up on crates for a while.)
GuB-42 9y ago
The situation is a bit different with video games. Did you notice how movies always look smooth at 24 FPS while games tend to look horrible at the same frame rate? That's because unlike with real cameras, games render frames with a zero exposure time (no motion blur). You can also call it time aliasing. Modern 3D engines use tricks to alleviate the problem it is far from perfect. The result is that you need a much faster framerate than what is normally perceivable in order for fast-paced games to look smooth. As for latency, even at 60FPS, the resulting 16.7ms is well under human reaction time. It matter in competitive gaming because what matters is not your gaming experience but how faster you are than your opponent. Also note that VR has its own set of problems and requires even faster refresh rates and lower latencies. That's because the brain coordinates vision and head movement and any discrepancy feels weird.
- Shikadi 9y ago
  Speak for yourself, 24fps looks super jerky to me. I just get used to it since I don't have to control it (not to discredit your comment, what you said is accurate)

stanlarroque 9y ago

I'm working on an AR headset and we made some experiments with the human eye. I barely can notice the difference for motion above 120 fps. But my associate is a retired fighter pilot and he can react to motion at ~280 fps.

emj 9y ago
How do you test that; can you measure how you react to motion at 120fps vs 280fps, or is it just a feeling?
- stanlarroque 9y ago
  It's not a feeling, we do the measures. It's like measuring your reaction time, few experiments are on screen and some are analogs. At the end you have a measure in a unit of time, and you deduce the fps from that
- valarauca1 9y ago
  In FPS there are people called "stat junkies" the name expresses its hobby well. You try to play for the best stats. Head shot ratio (how often you get head shots), KDR (kill death ratio). You could likely data mine from stat sites before before/after purchasing very high refresh rate monitors. OFC there maybe some bias to try harder once you drop >$400 on a hobby. In my own subjective experience 60 -> 144FPS was night and day. Roughtly ended up being a 50% pref improvement.
mattkrause 9y ago
There's got to be something else going on there. 280 frames/sec is about 3.5 ms/frame. Signals don't even leave the retina that fast, let alone propagate to brain areas linked to perception and action. Perhaps the higher frame rate makes the motion smoother, which allows the pilot to estimate and extrapolate an objects' motion more accurately, or something like that.
- wtallis 9y ago
  Smooth motion is definitely a big factor. Just look at things in terms of how fast something on screen (eg. the cursor) is moving in terms of pixels per frame. Moving a cursor horizontally across a 4k display in a relatively slow one second is 64 pixels per frame at 60Hz, which is significantly wider than the cursor itself. At 144Hz it's about 26 pixels per frame, and at 280Hz it would be about 14 pixels per frame. Even if you have a low-persistence display, you need to have a pretty high refresh rate to draw smooth motion. Hardly anything needs to be animated all the way down at 1 pixel per frame, but hardly anything currently comes at all close to that ideal strobe-free smoothness.
- GuyWIthLag 9y ago
  Actually, human eyes don't have a "frame rate" per se, or if you want there are different frame rates depending on the feature - and how far removed it is from the retina. Essentially, the retina itself can detect >300hz, then there's a bunch of processing as you go back the optic nerve that causes that number to drop for higher-level features.
  - mattkrause 9y ago
    Any chance you have a source for that? I'm legitimately curious, since I've never heard anything like that.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  The visual system do not work in frames (well, on a fundamental level I supose it does, with the indivitual photons and nerve impulses being the smallest unit, but that is not a limit in practice). The information the retina captures is streamed continuesly to the brain, so higher FPS provides a higher temporal resolution for the visual experience. I don't think a fighter pilot inheriently react faster because of the resolution, but he is trained to detect motion in his peripheral vision. Perhaps he notice the smooth motion more than people who rarely train that part of their visual system. It would be interested to see how a trained and experience hunter would compare, as they often use peripheral vision as well.
mickronome 9y ago
In my hardcore gaming days using a fantastic Hitachi CRT monitor I did some basic experiments with refresh rates. My subjective results were somewhere in between the values you have as an example. I stopped noticing significant difference somewhere north of 160Hz, and at 200Hz they were barely perceptible. Very interesting to hear that someone has actually been measuring this in a more controlled way than I did some 18 years ago. It's also quite interesting how reluctant people are to even acknowledge the existence of something they themselves haven't noticed. Almost everyone refuted my eye witness account simply because they had read/heard that they eye can only notice <some number between 20-60> frames per secobd, and thus I couldn't possibly see any difference in motion above that threshold.

majewsky 9y ago

I can't comment on 144 Hz. (When I got my current monitor, I had to choose between 4K and 144 Hz, and 4K was more important for me.) But the thing that's most visible to me personally when comparing 30 Hz vs. 60 Hz is not so much latency, but the smoothness of quick movements (e.g. when you turn the camera really fast). Mighty be different for a serious FPS gamer, though; I mostly play Minecraft, only.

mangix 9y ago
I overclock my 4k display from 60 to 65Hz. The difference is noticeable.
- Moru 9y ago
  My Atari could switch between 50 and 60 Hz because of US/EU TV standards. The difference was very noticable especially if you didn't look directly on the screen. The flicker is very hard on the eyes at 50 Hz and much better already on 60 Hz. Later I had a CRT screen that could be run at 75 Hz with some tweaking and that was very nice. Next screen I buy will be something higher but right now I'm back at 60 Hz with an IPS screen and I'm not totally happy with the flickering. Haven't tried overclocking yet, thought the flatscreens were locked to a certain Hz.

aidenn0 9y ago

It's not sold, but a lot of research seems to indicate that for certain sensory inputs you can be trained to react to faster than you consciously can perceive. Baseball players reacting to pitches is often used as an example. Certainly high-level video game players could be in that category as well.

ksec 9y ago

In the old days, I was told 30fps were the holy grail of 3D Gaming, 2x frames wouldn't do it. You will need an additional 3dfx card ( Voodoo ) to do it!. All Magazine start pushing out this answer with benchmarks showing which card hit 30Fps or above. One or two years later, It turns out because human uses both our eyes for vision, we need double the frame rate, 60fps is the key and limit of human perception. All First Person Shooter should try and hit 60Fps. That was the era of Doom, Half Life, and Counter Strike. 60Fps settled for a long time. No one were discussing any thing more. ( Or we did but we stay at 60fps, Doom 3 even try to cap the frame rate at 60. ) We needed 120Fps or more for AR for an immersive experience, but i thought that was only for AR. The iPad Pro 's 120Hz screen, it really was similar to when i first saw and use Retina Screen. The wow factor. For a long time I thought 60Fps was enough. And the sluggish of Computer UI was all software problem. The conclusion is, we may, or may not be able to react to 120fps timing. But we do definitely feel the difference. And as a matter of fact, after knowing it is a frame rate problem, you can see how 120fps is still not quite enough. It is like the early days of Retina 330ppi Smartphone screen, It is not quite up to imperceivable difference yet. A lot of people may not agree this latency, slight sluggishness matters, ( The early days of Android users dont think it is problem ) but i like where all these direction are going, latency is now taking a front seat for optimization.

Moru 9y ago
For a helicopter simulation I was told 24 fps was the minimum to be able to handle hovering. Yes, once I had a computer able to handle 3D flight simulator at 30 fps I was finally able to hover! The mind needs the queues from the eyes since the balance is just too slow. And if it's a PC emulator there is no balance input at all to help you. Competitive games have long been running full speed, not locked to the screen refresh because of the latency in screens. You don't want to wait for the screen to display something that is already ancient history. (In Quake 2 you could jump higher if your computer could run more than 200 fps so it was popular to look down on the ground before jumping up on crates for a while.)

GuB-42 9y ago

The situation is a bit different with video games. Did you notice how movies always look smooth at 24 FPS while games tend to look horrible at the same frame rate? That's because unlike with real cameras, games render frames with a zero exposure time (no motion blur). You can also call it time aliasing. Modern 3D engines use tricks to alleviate the problem it is far from perfect. The result is that you need a much faster framerate than what is normally perceivable in order for fast-paced games to look smooth. As for latency, even at 60FPS, the resulting 16.7ms is well under human reaction time. It matter in competitive gaming because what matters is not your gaming experience but how faster you are than your opponent. Also note that VR has its own set of problems and requires even faster refresh rates and lower latencies. That's because the brain coordinates vision and head movement and any discrepancy feels weird.

Shikadi 9y ago
Speak for yourself, 24fps looks super jerky to me. I just get used to it since I don't have to control it (not to discredit your comment, what you said is accurate)