Tom's Hardware of Finland

[BustedAstromech]

‘70% of TVs sold support FreeSync’ is still 10 years away from ‘70% of players have TVs which support FreeSync’.

The current Xbox support depends upon the game implementing adaptive sync (rather than forced support) and my belief is that next-gen systems will not require support either.

[disestablished]

I think the key will be the standard consoles supporting it. Right now, XboneX is a luxury, lowest selling console.

[notbov]

everything will support adaptive sync because it’s part of HDMI 2.1 spec

now you just have to convince everyone to buy TVs again

[BustedAstromech]

er, I’m just saying that we still won’t see console games targeting framerates between 30 and 60fps because there won’t be a large enough proportion of consumers with the necessary displays. I’m not arguing that it won’t be a common feature, but it will be of limited use because big games are quite good at staying within their rendering budgets.

It’s analogous to new consoles still shipping with physical media because while a large proportion of the audience can switch to digital downloads it’s not enough.

[notbov]

I don’t disagree with that but I would like to think that consoles will go back to not having visible quality/framerate toggles and instead the console will read what the TV does and devs can launch modes thusly

I also like to think that consumers care about 60 and up fps but here we are

[Broco]

Maybe those internal budget enforcement processes will start to erode, though, the more the proportion of adaptive sync TVs increases and nobody can really notice the difference anymore on any TV in the studio. I guess if the starting point is 30fps target, that means a darker transitional stage where dips to 20fps become more common for a while, though.

[notbov]

the adaptive sync range of many displays typically cut out at or around 30 fps, so odds are good with TVs, we’ll see 24hz be the bottom of the range and everything below that will look as it does now

[BustedAstromech]

My bet is that it will be a conscious decision by studio leaders once they see enough adoption; no reason to break a production process honed over decades through slacking! It’s easy enough to monitor performance of a game in development and keep a heads-up on, ‘this scene always runs below 30fps, where can we claw back a few ms?’

[Broco]

My industry experience is that slacking on non-100%-essential performance metrics is like a geologic force, occasionally interrupted by short-lived heroic efforts. But that may be the difference between videogame culture+process vs mainstream culture+process.

[BustedAstromech]

Yeah, performance is an area where people do. not. slack. in AAA. That’s why they don’t let me touch code now that I work at a big place…

[BustedAstromech]

I got yelled at a few times for gear that creates explosions because nobody shares my opinion that massive explosions are underlined if they cause the framerate to dip.

Bangai-O on the 360 suffers from a smooth framerate, I think.

[Felix]

Some people, I tell you

[BustedAstromech]

philistines!

[Felix]

metal slug announcer voice FRAAAME SHOT!!

[Broco]

In case you haven’t seen this, this article changed my thinking about framerate:

Why over sixty years of animation history still remains obscure

Though the most skilled Japanese animators make use of certain aspects of full animation, a new set of tricks was necessary for limited. One of the most essential tricks was framerate modulation. This is a fan jargon term prone to a lot of confusion as it can describe anything from merely animating two characters on two different framerates to animating a single character on multiple different framerates in a single arc of motion. The latter is the more common usage when describing anime, though the term 中抜き (‘disintermediation’) is perhaps more fitting. Yasuo Otsuka and Makoto Nagasawa began experimenting with framerate during the heyday of Toei Doga (though traditional animators like Yasuji Mori played with framerate in a more minor capacity as early as Hakujaden) and their experiments bore fruit during the transition to television. Rather than animate steadily on the 3s, Japanese animation ranges from 1s to 4s at the drop of a hat. The idea is that by producing more drawings for slower arcs of motion and fewer for the fast parts, the eye is tricked into inferring movement that wasn’t actually there. This is impressionistic motion, more representative of how the eye sees movement in real life than the ideal form found in traditional animation. Think of it as anime’s jazz to Hollywood’s classical. Of course American animation is extremely varied in its timing as well but varying the framerate between extremes, as opposed to varying the spacing and composition of forms under a stable framerate, most strongly characterizes anime (though as with most innovations of this type you can find earlier examples elsewhere, as in Bill Nolan’s Oswald cartoons). In general, manipulation of framerate has become an important tool for Japanese animators, such as how Yoshihiko Umakoshi in Mushishi animated the mystical Mushi on a smoother rate than the humans in order to evoke their alien strangeness, or how Takeshi Koike alternates lighting-fast syncopations with slowmo to give his work the slick texture of a graphic novel.

Speaking in abstract terms, Japanese and American animation tend to have their own distinct sense of beauty. Anime is often wrought, deliberate, and charged with a kind of anxiety that demands a visceral reaction, whereas American cartoons strive to appear effortless and graceful, as perfect without an audience as with, full of balance and poise even in the extremes of caricature.

[Felix]

geez I wonder if I should wait a whole other generation to get a 4K projector

my 720p guy is still going strong and I don’t really need to watch Glow in 4K

[Felix]

given how much the appeal of console exclusives has dropped as my working relationship with Nvidia has improved over the past few years I’m also gonna be avoiding getting a PS5 for as long as possible I think but who knows

[Broco]

The way it works for me is that Hidetaka Miyazaki decides whether or not I should get a particular console. I await his next command

[Felix]

fairly sure my power supply just blew but Amazon had same day shipping on the exact same 450w silverstone ITX model I got six years ago with the case so that’s a relief

Turns out you can’t run 400w of components on 450w (the 12v is fine shut up I don’t need “600w” for this GPU) and expect it to last forever

Now just hoping it doesn’t somehow turn out to be the board once I spend an hour taking the whole thing apart tonight

Every time I go into this case I swear it’s going to be the last time and it never is

[disestablished]

Uh, why didn’t you buy a few more watts?