i mean, idk if that was a thing on a specific version of the cube, but in F-Zero GX, there was this fire field track that had some huge jumps, undulations and some of the trademark boost/halfpipe/noodle bits, and added the whole thing with half-circle flares all around the track for good measure… and if you were in the mix at the end, i.e. not dominating by a few seconds, you could get the cube to slow down for a fraction when finishing the race:
we couldn’t believe back then that we have, finally, found a sign that this game reached the limit of what was possible, and ended up re-running the track for fifteen to twenty times, with different drivers, sharing the pad between the four of us, and celebrated each fractional slowdown when we managed to catch it.
I still remember the time i’ve spent with this game fondly, and it speaks for itself when it runs so good that you go hunting for the edge cases, and celebrate if you can find a seam of the world that makes you acknowledge anew how unbelievable technically good it is.
that’s funny, that was the first way i played them and when i tried out the setting to revert to 30fps i thought it seemed super broken and choppy
curious to try a 144hz monitor one of these days; I’ll probably end up saying the same thing about being able to see individual arrows in the cursor trails i leave at 60
i use a 144Hz monitor and it weirdly makes 60 FPS look kinda choppy lol
but honestly i really believe that intentionally lower framerates are very good and important as a tool for developers. the crushing of all the nuance of what varying rates can do as affectation to a simple fast=good is just not correct
all remakes should have this if they are deviating from the original presentation!!! but even then, a framecapped 30 FPS port to the next-gen platform is not the same as a 30 FPS PS3 game that is rubbing up against the limits of the console. i don’t think it’s the same!
i’ve never played TLOU and i may never play TLOU but i do have opinions on framerates golly gee
The beauty of 3D animations is that they can indefinitely tween. Nobody has the craft to really build nice keyframes, and animations running from mocap, especially with heavy blending like Naughty Dog pioneered, are seeking smoothness over all other virtues.
I hold back on increasing resolution in 3D because it reveals the sparse edges of textures and object density that lower resolutions could smear together. But I don’t see any suggestion of motion that traditional animation works towards when seeing more of a 3D animation.
Even the game code is written under an assumption of an idealized framerate, offering simulated slice-steps of an underlying mathematically smooth reality.
There’s a neat technique I most recently saw in Xanadu Next where they cut the framerate to mimic a film running slow-motion from regular-speed source. It’s pretty effective in conveying impact when they use it this way, similar to the Metal Gear Solid use of motion blur and slow-mo simultaneously (I think in MGS they fully interpolate in slow-mo, though).
you don’t feel benny hill music starting up when playing uncharted 1 on PS4? shit doesn’t feel right. it’s not as bad on TLOU remastered, but i can’t say i prefer 60 FPS.
the thing is, a lot of TLOU is watching. i might want the higher framerate while i’m actually controlling, but i’d probably sacrifice it because as far as i understand TLOU is a better narrative experience than it is a mechanical object.
idk, i can’t be the only one that finds the 60 FPS a bit garish in the ps4 version. is it because i’ve only watched the game and not played it?
To my eyes, it looks correct to the presentation they’re going for. Uncharted 1, more than the sequels, is going for a semi-cartoony presentation and that might be what you’re seeing. It can’t be reconciled cleanly with the art direction of the following games, as Naughty Dog grew more comfortable with modern texturing techniques and their facial animations and chose to bump towards more human-like proportions and gestures.
I think the resolution bump is a bit too much in these games – I’d prefer a a smaller bump with stronger antialiasing, but Naughty Dog’s clean, un-noisy materials handle an upscale well.
re: xanadu next it seems like at least you agree that intentionally limiting framerate can be a powerful tool in some (maybe for you very rare) contexts, and i guess my take is i think high framerate obsession tramples that a little. just as you cringe at an upscale revealing too much unintended, so i genuinely cringe at the “soap opera effect” introduced when taking TLOU from ~30 to 60 FPS.
i find myself really wanting to play TLOU pt. 2 for some reason! i haven’t even played the first one outside of the introductory sequence, which i found a bit not my taste but obviously extremely well-executed - but the second one seems like such a miserable experience and i for some reason am drawn to that.
i brought this up because i found myself feeling that soap opera effect constantly while watching tim’s review for TLOU remastered. i think there can be some value in it (intentionally limiting framerate for aesthetic effect), is all - and i’m grateful at least ND allowed for a 30 FPS lock re: TLOU remastered.
I played TLOU at 60FPS for a little last night and I did notice the smoothness of it, but I quickly accepted it. I play a lot of PC games at 144hz so maybe I’m keyed to doing that already and it’s only when there are framerate dips, from 144, 60, 30, or whatever, that things start to feel strange to me. The jump from 30 to 60 is still realistic to me and doesn’t come anywhere near uncanny valley stuff.
Although high-framerate video and film is still strange to me, like an Ang Lee movie. Though I suspect if there was more of it going on people would just adapt to it and not really care.
I think it’s a useful cinematic technique, definitely. I can understand a case that it affects presentation but a) I don’t think control response in a videogame, just in the nature of the medium, can ever not take precedence, even in the most intentional examples like a Team Ico game, and b) I don’t think any mocap-driven game is working towards these goals. Even Team Ico, again, has very specific keyframes but they interpolate freely between them. Or another paragon of stylish animation, Monster Hunter, is designed to hold poses and stretch and wiggle monster flesh – and it adapts beautifully, in my eyes, to 60fps, revealing depth that was already present in the animations.
I’m trying to think of where the cinematic frame rate idea came from (besides neogaf). It’s almost always just a target to hit when you can’t hit the refresh rate of the display. I remember The Order 1886 had 21:9 letterboxing as well.
I wish documentary films were more often shot at 60 FPS because 24 FPS tracking shots look hitchy to me.
i think there’s a little more to the phenomenon than simply getting used to it. smoother motion captures the eye more easily, and this can interfere with the cinematic techniques employed by present day directors. i noticed for instance when watching parts of a Lord of the Rings movie on a TV with motion smoothing, stuff like CGI-heavy battle scenes tended to look fine, but a scene with two characters speaking dramatically in the foreground while other people ran around in the background completely lost its intended effect because the activity in the background, which probably originally looked choppy or blurry, ended up stealing the focus.
Running Trails In the Sky uncapped with v-sync and the monitor cranked to 85hz is really nice! Camera movement is very smooth. Most character actions / fight animations are animated sprites that look like 30 or so. I find the disconnect to be fairly pleasant and videogamey.
I’m sure you’re right and I was being reductive. But I think a movie that was shot with the aesthetic of high FPS, with all considerations for motion blur and focus and what else, would be different and less ugly than taking a 24fps movie and adding in extra frames like motion smoothing does. Cause yeah I cannot stand motion smoothing at all, but the Hobbit at 48fps kind of became alright looking near the end of the movie.
my entire argument is just that high framerates are not always better. honestly doesn’t seem that contentious! yet i am reinforced in the notion that more fps=good is axiomatic for most people, and i guess i find that kind of disappointing. it means most developers will never use these tools because there would be too much backlash from the vast majority for whom more fps=good without exception