Reason not to go with 120 FPS?

[grilldor]

Hi, im building this nice full screen website, as3-only (flash not used). Ive been developing with a framerate of 60. Things looked smooth and all (using the new TweenLite 10), sometime with the occasional drop when the background would crossfade a fullscreen bitmap.

Couple minutes ago I boosted the FPS to 120, just to see and MAN, it was crazy smooth. Now I really dont see why i wouldnt keep the fps at this level? I mean, people with good enough computers will have a crazy experience, while the others will just... have a slower one anyways.

The only difference I see is that the bitmap crossfade is still as slow as before, so its more noticable, but the rest is crazy smoother.

So, is there a good reason I should go with a slower framerate?

[nakedkafka]

my assumption would be that slower computers would have difficulty with the higher FR.

[atomic]

Have you tried it online? :eek:

[kkbbcute]

The question should be "Why would you even want such a high framerate, considering that the human eye can't tell anything higher than 30 fps or so anyway."

Since a lower fps generally gives better performance and better playback over a range of computers, I would prefer to go with something around 25 fps.

[senocular]

plus for slower machines, since Flash takes what it can get, you 'll end up bringing their systems' to a crawl. I've definitely avoided sites for that very reason myself.

[grilldor]

@atomic : this is tested in IE7
@kkbbcute : 25 FPS is waaaaay too slow!! If you have seen a super smooth flash website you know what im talking about

In IE7, 120 FPS = 60 FPS in the browser. There IS a MAJOR difference between setting the fps at 60 or 120 inside the code.

And please, cut that 30 FPS crap, really! :p The FPS we need to perceive fluidity is dependent on the situation. A movie that runs at 24 fps and feel fine is because there is a good amount of blurring and you watch movies in the dark most likely!

You certainly have played a game in your life at some point. Have you tried running it at 30 fps? 60fps? MAJOR difference. Because the game most likely has no motion blur, you need to up the framerate radically to make it fluid.

Now, 100% flash websites are like games, they are really sharp, and thus need to refresh faster to make them fluid...

Anyway, am I missing something? How are the other ones doing it if the solution is not to max the framerate? Its not like im writing sluggish code... really

[atomic]

If you know it all and are satisfied with what you're seeing, why even ask our opinions?
In the end, you're the boss and the one that decides!

[grilldor]

oh well, I just wanted to see what others did to make things smoother. If there was some tricks yknow... I also wanted to know what were the counter-effects of having such a high framerate :eek:

[CyanBlue]

I think the only trick is to buy a computer that's blazing fast to handle the 120 fps...

Just out of curiosity, what is the actual fps you are getting when you set it to 120 fps???

[kkbbcute]

Actually I think that a game at 30fps and 60fps provides no real difference unless you are in some competitive multiplayer environment. Anyway back to my point, would you rather have a website that looks nice on 5% of the world computers and lags on all the others, or have a compromise and go for around 30fps?

I personally have a quad core PC and don't really care about being able to handle the fps, but when I go onto computers on lets say, my local library, some flash sites run so slowly that I can't even click on a button properly.

On the other hand, you could buy a $10000 computer, should solve any fps problems:rolleyes:

[grilldor]

@CyanBlue : in ie7, i get ~64fps (not 100% of the time, as I said previously, the background kills it when it crossfades)

I didint know that having a high framerate killed slower computers. I thought the fps was just a upper limit suitable for animations and such. Am I reading you right?

Oh and im not looking to reach 120fps, I just found out that this setting gave me nice looking results.

[kkbbcute]

A high framerate really does kill a slower computer. The framerate just goes down to whatever the CPU can render at any one moment, so you end up watching a 120fps swf at 30fps anyway if your cpu can't handle it, and it gives the entire swf a 'lag' feel to it.

I make flash sites for some random competition called Thinkquest, so I've encountered these problems before.

[grilldor]

The framerate just goes down to whatever the CPU can render at any one moment, so you end up watching a 120fps swf at 30fps anyway if your cpu can't handle it, and it gives the entire swf a 'lag' feel to it.


Exactly, then how is capping the framerate to 30 gonna help this situation?

I admit it may feel a bit more consistent. But sometimes, its just one action that drags everything down. Does it justify slowing down the whole movie for this intermittent action?

[kkbbcute]

Its just for the sole reason of consistentcy, you don't your site to render at different speeds on different computers, you want all your users to have the same experience.

P.S. I think we should stop spamming the thread and let otherr people give their two cents