Fps?

[whitey6272]

After reading a few threads seems most people talk of 30-40 FPS (if FPS is the number in the top left corner), online racing with many cars a rarely go below 90, does this mean i have good spec PC or am i playing it at its lowest settings?:shrug:

PC spec:

AMD athlon 3000+ 64
1gb ram
200gb HD
ATI radeon 9800 PRO
think thats all the important things?

Oh and a 2mb broadband connection

[Jakg]

After reading a few threads seems most people talk of 30-40 FPS (if FPS is the number in the top left corner), online racing with many cars a rarely go below 90, does this mean i have good spec PC or am i playing it at its lowest settings?:shrug:

PC spec:

AMD athlon 3000+ 64
1gb ram
200gb HD
ATI radeon 9800 PRO
think thats all the important things?

Oh and a 2mb broadband connectionracing on 40 is actually quite hard, i thought 80 was the norm.

[the_angry_angel]

Its a reasonably good system. You might want to start playing with settings to see if it will go any higher in terms of quality.

Switching on AA and AF might also provide some more information.

[Tony Pearce]

It's really based on CPU speed. I clear over 200FPS here with a 4.2G intel P4 socket 478. Thats with 4x AA and 8x AF

[whitey6272]

It's really based on CPU speed. I clear over 200FPS here with a 4.2G intel P4 socket 478. Thats with 4x AA and 8x AF

You may aswell be speaking russian mate, that makes no sense to me at all:pillepall

Whats AA and AF and yea il have a play with my settings cheers fellas

[Kostek]

racing on 40 is actually quite hard

13fps is more than enough :D Less than 6 makes a problem, lol


btw, critical value for smooth, fluent vision is 10fps (you can check in any human physiology handbook)


@whitey6272:
i wish i had your machine ;)

[AndroidXP]

btw, critical value for smooth, fluent vision is 10fps (you can check in any human physiology handbook)
My advice: don't trust "any human physiology handbook". ;)

With 10fps there's absolutely nothing smooth and fluent. People also often assume that a critical value is ~25fps, simply because TV uses the same. What they do not take into account is that a video and a frame based game are two completely different things.

On a video, every "frame" is not a perfect snapshot of the current surroundings, but instead it's a photo with the exposure time of roughly 1/25th second. What does that mean? For example: if a camera is statically mounted on a tennis court and films the ball going left/right/left/right/... then if you single step through each frame, the ball will be blurred, depending on the direction of travel. Instead of a clear ball, you will see a ball line, and on the next frame, this "ball line" will be continued where it stopped on the previous frame. This greatly smoothens out the percieved motion and makes videos pleasantly viewable.

If you do the same in a PC game, you will not see a ball line, instead each frame will have a perfecly sharp ball, that does in no way connect to the ball on the previous frame (if the speed of the ball is high enough, or if the frames are too low). So in such a game, there is no smoothing blur, therefore making the ball motion look very jagged and rough, eventhough both devices are running at 25fps.


Another example for those naysayers that the human eye cannot see > 60 fps, etc: I'm not sure if ALL people experience this, but alteast people who regularely work at the PC should - can you stand a monitor refresh rate of 60Hz? Personally, I feel sick after a few seconds of watching it, and if I look a bit away from the monitor, I can very clearly see it flicker on and off. That means that you can indeed sense a frequency of 60+ Hz (= 60+ fps). For me even 75Hz feels weird although much better. 85+ is completely OK for me.

You may aswell be speaking russian mate, that makes no sense to me at all

Whats AA and AF and yea il have a play with my settings cheers fellasAA is AntiAliasing, that tries to smooth out pixel steps.
Imagine a black line going through the light blue sky. If that line is not perfectly horizontal but a bit inclined, then the resulting line will not be smooth but will have the shape of stairs. AA tries to counter that by smoothing the image a bit on places with sharp contrast differences.

AF is Anisotropic Filtering.
It basically makes textures that are displayed at an angle (for example the floor in FPS games) appear sharper.

[Kostek]

My advice: don't trust "any human physiology handbook". ;)

I trusted one and passed an exam with it ;)
It says (in general) that if a separate light stimuli reach eye more than 10 times a second, you see it as a continous light.

I'm not saying you are wrong, because you're not (I also find 60Hz refresh rate annoying and tiring) but on the other hand I can easily play having 12-14fps and I have nothing to complain about. A LFS Comics for most of ppl, but not for me.

How to explain that?

But on the yet another hand, maybe "if you don't have what you like, you like what you have" works here, lol

[AndroidXP]

How to explain that?Because your brain adapts to the low information update rate and kinda interpolates the missing data so you're still able to drive "fine".

The question is, are you restricted to such low frame rates all the time or is it only occasionally? Or a bit differently: have you ever experienced LFS gameplay with high framerates?

From my experience many people who thought they manage fine on their phenomenal 15 fps were astonished how much of a difference the jump to 40+ fps makes.

You also have to consider, that at 15 fps the visual information is at the worst case delayed by 66.6... milliseconds, which is quite enormous if you think about it (at 200 km/h thats 3.7 meters).
It says (in general) that if a separate light stimuli reach eye more than 10 times a second, you see it as a continous light.I'm no expert at this and don't know the exact definition of 'continous light' (nor if I understood that paragraph correctly at all), but if some light source dares to blink at me with 10Hz, then this is in no way seen as continous. Continously annoying maybe, but nothing else.

Maybe it was measured in a dark room with some sort of a flashlight shining at your eyes, but that would be totally useless and unrealistic, because in such a situation your eye has no chance to recover from the extreme amount of "stress" fast enough and the dreaded "light spot" starts to occur (although only a mild form of it). And if that funny spot occours it could mask the blinking of the light.

You know, I just pulled ^ this ^ out of my a**, but that's the only way I can imagine someone seeing 10Hz blinking as continous light :shrug:

[Barroso]

there is no way you can jerk your wheel left and right with 10fps and call it playable.

[Jakg]

It's really based on CPU speed. I clear over 200FPS here with a 4.2G intel P4 socket 478. Thats with 4x AA and 8x AF4.2 ghz socket 478? what bout your graphics card? i find i can get 200 fps, but only in the menus...

[Kostek]

Because your brain adapts to the low information update rate and kinda interpolates the missing data so you're still able to drive "fine".
Quite a satisfying explanation :)
The question is, are you restricted to such low frame rates all the time or is it only occasionally? Or a bit differently: have you ever experienced LFS gameplay with high framerates?
I don't think I've ever had more than 16fps in S2. Neither I had a chance to play LFS on a machine better than my own.
I'm no expert at this and don't know the exact definition of 'continous light'
By continous I mean one, you wouldn't cosider a blinking one, not even think about :D
but if some light source dares to blink at me with 10Hz, (...) Continously annoying maybe, but nothing else.
ROTFL :thumb:
Maybe it was measured (...)
I have no idea how it was measured. Your dark room theory is possible. It wouldn't represent reality with satisfying accuracy then. In general, scientific research, especially in biology, does not, because it virtually cannot, fully represent real live observations.

Nevertheless, it's a fact provided by a good book.


Quite an offtopic we have here... ;)

[AndroidXP]

I find i can get 200 fps, but only in the menus...How that? IIRC, fps in the menus is limited to 40. Scawen did that a while ago to limit stress on the CPU when you don't really need "the max".

[mrodgers]

I use to run LFS S1 demo on a Celeron 667. I had around 10-15 FPS. At the time I thought 10 was as low as I'd want to go to be playable. I never saw more than 15. Now on my faster machine (as many of you have read is broken) I see 35-45 FPS. Occasionally I will dip down below 20 in some areas (SO Long front stretch, AS Nat. chicane) and I can tell you it is a BIG difference! If you are use to low FPS, then perhaps that's why you may think it is ok. But once you see good 35+ frames and you dip down to even 25, you will see a difference. I didn't realize how much control I was missing because of the less than 20 FPS back then on my old PC. I also notice it now in NR2003 as I have more experience with that sim on the old Celeron. I use to play at 12 FPS. Now I have 60+ and steady 30+ if I max everything. But with everything maxed, I will dip below 30 and I notice it. It's not only on the screen you notice it, but also in your controller as it will lag also. I use to be one of those guys who said, "BS, you don't need that high FPS to play, I do it all the time." Well, that was because I was use to it and your driving and times will be affected by FPS dropping into the 25 or lower realm.

[Jakg]

How that? IIRC, fps in the menus is limited to 40. Scawen did that a while ago to limit stress on the CPU when you don't really need "the max".wewl thats what the ATi frame rate thingy ses!

[AndroidXP]

Soo, you still trust ATi software? :D :razz:

Just kidding, not that it matters anyway. Fraps says 40 - maybe the ATi thing measures the render time of a frame and gives you the theoretical FPS, not taking into account that LFS limits it? Whatever...

[Jakg]

Soo, you still trust ATi software? :D :razz:

Just kidding, not that it matters anyway. Fraps says 40 - maybe the ATi thing measures the render time of a frame and gives you the theoretical FPS, not taking into account that LFS limits it? Whatever...could be, i just love the ATi tray-y programmy thing! it's great! i can finally use the full power f my card with AA and AF!

[filur]

I just read a few fps topics, and my best guess is vision doesnt work in a way that discussing how many fps we see is relevant.

android made a great example tho, the exposure time makes a huge difference in how "easy on the eyes" a movie or tv is, interlacing adds even more, and the infinitely fast exposure time of a normal 3d render on your screen is very different.

But my guess is that the "smoother" aspect of that scenario would result in less needed "processing" of what you're looking at, which would logically be more relaxing, where as the super-sharp super-bright computer monitor, when you're also trying to have depth perception in something that has no depth, is more stressfull, i mean if you could somehow relax your eyes in a tv-watching way, 25hz interlaced or 50hz progressive would'nt be so unpleasant.

I think vision is very adaptive and has very little to do with fps, but there are some scenarios that are not so suitable :)

[XCNuse]

racing on 40 is actually quite hard, i thought 80 was the norm.
?!??!! .. you must be one of those bratty kids that always has the latest greatest stuff then..

and 40 is not bad at all.. 30 .. thats getting harder, but its still easy.. before i got the gfx card i have no i was racing with an average of 45 fps all the time.. and i promise you its not bad at all.. (obviously it isnt what 60 fps and above looks like, but once you go higher than 60 or so fps, it makes no difference to a human eye)

[AndroidXP]

Well, I wouldn't say it doesn't make a difference at > 60 fps for all people, but yeah, the majority couldn't tell it apart. It's just different between people, some are more sensitive to it, some less. Same with hearing, some hear the dreaded TV buzz and know from one or two rooms away when the TV is on (without any sound playing), some don't.

For me it's:
<30 AAARGH
<40 Meh, ok
>40 pretty good, everything's well
>60 perfect
>120 haha, my monitor runs at 85Hz only :rolleyes:

[Jakg]

?!??!! .. you must be one of those bratty kids that always has the latest greatest stuff then..i get my dd's chuckouts, until fairly recently i had a 1.3 GHZ Duron & a Radeon 9100 Pro!

[Lible]

For me my 40-50 is alright (Absolute maximum, Vsync enabled) I cant figure out, what difference do you see between 40 and 60... Tough, human eye has limited fps to about 40. :razz:

[AndroidXP]

How can you notice 60Hz montior flickering then? :rolleyes:

[mrbogeyman]

IMO anything over 35-40 is easily very playable.

I have a similar-ish system, here is my benchmark:
No:User: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=1&sortinv=1)Ver: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=10&sortinv=1)CPU: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=2&sortinv=1)RAM: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=3&sortinv=1) Graphics card: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=4&sortinv=1)AA: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=5&sortinv=1)AF: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=6&sortinv=1)Avg FPS: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=7&sortinv=1) Min: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=8&sortinv=1)Max: (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/?c=COMPLETEMAX&version=215&sort=9&sortinv=1)
31 bogey 0.5Q A64 3000+ 1024 GF 6800 (128) -- 42.1 39 27 64

sorrys it is a bit muddled but in the right order.

check out http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/ to compare your speed. obviously it is dependant on your GFX settings. the charts on that site are only for MAX and MIN settings.

[whitey6272]

how do i turn AA and AF on then?

[Jakg]

How that? IIRC, fps in the menus is limited to 40. Scawen did that a while ago to limit stress on the CPU when you don't really need "the max".now it says 40 fps after i updated my drivers!

[mrbogeyman]

you have an ATI card so im not sure. for LFS you need to use your GFX card profiler to set it up for the LFS.exe

maybe an ATI user can tell u how.

[george_tsiros]

It's mostly the graphics card. Any decent cpu (>1GHz if AMD, >1.5GHz if intel) can play the game just fine, as long as the graphics card is up to the job.

I can play it just fine, 640x480x16 with most detail settings to low/off, on my laptop which has a 3100+ sempron (s754) but a completely worthless vid card. On my main desktop pc, i have a slower CPU but a rather good graphics card, and i can play at like 10 times the frame rate . so the game is gfx card-bound. Meaning, the graphics card is more important in this game. And, now that i think about it, for most modern games that holds true, too.

[AndroidXP]

No offense, but you don't have a clue. This game is completely CPU dependent.

The only deciding factor for the GFX card is that it must be able to do HVS, which any card > GF2/GF4MX can do. The card on your laptop probably wasn't able to do HVS, slowing you down big time.

CPU is #1 in all cases but the one when your GFX card is so crappy it cannot even do HVS. Just think about it: this game is all about physics. Physics are calculated by the CPU and have nothing to do with the GFX card. The latter one is responsible for high polygon counts / large textures / complex shaders, neither of them is used in LFS.

An example: Take a 6600GT and a decent CPU and run the LFS benchmark @ 1024x768 without AA/AF. Now run the same benchmark @ 1600x1200 with 8xAA/16xAF. The fps will stay pretty much the same. That means, that your graphics card has a very high power reserve but is held down by something different. And that is the CPU.

Now, HVS is so important because originally the CPU had to process all the vertex data (basically the coordinate info of all polygons, etc.) and let the GFX card do the texturing. With HVS, the graphics card itself processes this data, giving the CPU much more time to do physics.

(PS: HVS stands for Hardware Vertex Shading)

[george_tsiros]

maybe the game is indeed cpu bound, but that is because the rendering to be done is very very simple. Simpler than other titles out there, at least. That's why even a worthless card like mine (5700LE overclocked to more than double the original frequencies for both core and memory) can cope.

dropping my athlon's (mobile, barton core) core frequency from 2.2GHz to 1.1GHz, LFS dropped my fps from 100 to 85.

a 25% decrease for HALF the processing speed?
85fps at 1.1GHz and you say it is cpu bound?

Well, ok, if you use a 600MHz p3, the game is indeed cpu bound and the fps will drop to... say... 40? still perfectly playable.

At that point (1.1GHz) i turned on 4xAA and 8xAF. the fps from 85 dropped to 40. And at THAT point, turning my athlon back to 2.2GHz restored the fps to 41fps. gee.

So we have:
half the CPU, 100fps->85fps
More graphics, 85fps->40fps
Original CPU, 40fps->41fps

cpu bound... gpu bound... :scratchch
depends on the setup i guess. By definition anyway, the game runs as fast as the slowest of the two allows (fast gpu slow cpu-> generaly games go fast, but since LFS is simple graphicaly speaking, most gfx cards can go really well.)

and i do take offence, so please go shove a hardware vertex shader pipeline into your preferred body orifice: Hardware Vertex Shaders is most probably not what you wanted to talk about, at this point, considering the rendering engine in LFS gives you the option to not use the programmable vertex pipeline that your graphics card might have. So that is not reason for slowdowns. You are referring to hardware Transform and Lighting, which is indeed the deciding factor for many modern games' performance. If a card doesn't have it, (pre-geforce or lappy vid) then D3D8.1 (don't remember the exact version) uses software for it, which drops the fps a LOT. Some games do not run without it (Homeworld2 comes to mind).

but what do i know. Me haves no clue. :shrug:

[AndroidXP]

I bet you were alone on the track when you tested this. The point is, you have to run the LFS benchmark (http://lfsbench.iron.eu.org/) to post any "results" regarding GFX/CPU performance. Why? Because for each AI and even in multiplayer for each other racer, you have to do physics calculations too. These are the one that bog down your system, not the physics of your car when you're alone on the track.

Of course your fps dropped from 85 to 40, a 5700LE isn't exactly... good. The GFX card determines how much bells 'n whistles you're able to turn on (read: how high you can go with resolution + AA/AF). And of course if you go too high, it's the GFX card that starts limiting you.

I won't bother discussing this any further before you made the same tests with the LFS benchmark mentioned above. Then you can come back and see how wrong you actually were/are.


E: Also argumenting that HVS is not important because you can turn it off... :doh:

[Avenger556]

strange, i had to switch off all mirrors to make ~25-30 fps with a quite normal machine (p4 1800, 512 ram, geforce mx440-64mb)