Simviation Forums

With FSX, or any FS in general, one perennial subject is of coarse the issue around frame rates, with a 100 people out there having 100 opinions.

I keep reading whatever I can on the subject, and recently came across this interesting article on the web.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_c ... ns_see.htm

The author of this article makes reference to some military tests: I have read on this subject elsewhere as well.
" Tests with Air force pilots have shown, that they could identify the plane on a flashed picture that was flashed only for 1/220th of a second."

From the same author another interesting read on interlacing.
http://www.100fps.com/

Jan

That was a fascinating and very well explained article! It covered a lot of topics related to vision and frame rates in a pretty succinct and easy to grasp manner. I'm sure if those concepts are toyed around with, one could achieve a best case frame rate given whatever they are working with (monitor, gpu, software, etc.).

That all said, I've found that with simulators and games (anything 'immersive' and 'interactive' and animated in 'real time' on my computer), the balance or formula or goal comes down to this:

Trading between frame rate and resolution (detail?) until both are the highest I can get each in conjunction with each other to be enjoyable and functional.

Obviously, the higher the resolution or detail in the environment being depicted, the harder it is to achieve higher frame rates. A pretty slideshow can be unplayable simply because visual information is not relayed quickly enough. Conversely, the frame rate can be unlimited, but the visual information relayed so indistinct and lacking in detail as to be useless.

Ideally, if I had my druthers, the graphics of any software I use would be set to their maximum with an unlimited frame rate, but... well... maybe someday.

This is one of those questions that like you said everyone seems to have a different answer. Some say set your frame rates to unlimited others say set them to what ever your system can handle.
This is truly a system type of problem what works well on one may not work on another.
Myself I have looked at several different sources on the matter and so far have discovered that one answer seem to pop up more than any other no matter whether you are flying in a simulator or playing one of the latest games out there 30 FPS has come up more than any other number.
But as I stated it really depends on what your system is capable of handling. Several different things come into play such as the display itself your graphics card or on board graphics the amount of ram the card has and cpu type and speed and of coarse system ram comes into play as well.
One thing I can tell you is to ignore the minimum system requirements that come with most games they are all pretty much a joke. Most people have a good idea as to what there system can do or not do if you do not know than I strongly suggest you ask some one who has knowledge about these things.

Just out of habit, I LOCK all my Flight Sim frame rates to 25FPS Max for Smooth Flight.

Frame rate problems often occurred during FS2002/FS2004/FSX Multiplayer Flights, where Unlimited/High Frame Rates seemed to overload the Multiplayer Server, creating stuttering.
Every player was advised to lock their frame rates to 20 FPS to avoid the problem causing stuttering flights in other players aircraft.

Paul.... ....!