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[Kazza]

I just saw this interesting tweet from DF's John Linneman:








And a history of 60 fps Xbox launch titles for comparison:




Wasn't that super impressive looking Gamecube Star Wars launch game 60 fps? Wind Waker, Luigi's Mansion and Mario Sunshine were all only 30, so Nintendo weren't setting a great standard there. The Dreamcast seemed to have it's fair share of 60 fps titles, although, like the Gamecube, many of the big first party IPs were stuck at 30 (Shenmue, Sonic Adventure etc).

Overall, it seemed to be a relatively good gen for 60 fps 3D console games, with PS2 being the most consistent, despite being the weakest (except for the Dreamcast). Maybe the devs of the time were just super keen to jump back to 60 fps gameplay after having to sacrifice it for the sake of running 3D engines on the previous (much weaker, very early 3D) gen. Of course, 30 fps (actually 20-30) would become the norm once again with the advent of HD on the next gen of consoles.

What do you think, GAF? Did D dark10x call this right? Is the PS2 still the reigning 60 fps 3D champ?

 

[martino]

he's wrong because he said system not consoles. /jk

 

[Skifi28]

I expect a lot more games to have an optional 60fps mode given the CPU. Not sure why only the launch games matter, I'd argue that how many 60fps release later is a lot more important.

 

[cireza]

Dreamcast had a ton of 60fps games.

 

[thelastword]

PS2 had strengths the other consoles didn't. It was a poly pushing beast with insane bandwidth, that's why it got run so many 60fps games like a dream....

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Hmm press X to doubt. I remember some games having 60 fps elements (like menus that ran at 60fps for some reason) but PS2 was largely designed to run games at 240p/60fps or 480i, and a lot of those games were in 480i. The display would still technically be 60 fps but interlaced. Am I mixing my terms up? There are games with a dedicated 240p mode (like Espgaluda), too, of course.

 

[Rentahamster]

Sorta makes sense. In the HD era, we went from 480p to 1080p which quadruples the amount of pixels a system needs to push. Faced with that challenge, quadrupling the resolution while halving the framerate seems like it would have been an attractive compromise in order to get things working.

 

[Damigos]

I hope PS5 will have more 60fps titles than 30 fps ones.

 

[Miles708]

I remember reading in some old article, I thiiink a retrospective about Devil May Cry (but I'm not sure), that because of the PS2's internal architecture, many games actually REQUIRED 60fps to function properly and make all the correct calculations.

I'm sorry if I'm not more precise, it's been years and I really can't track down the article or website, but it always struck me as an extremely interesting tidbit of information.

 

[SoraNoKuni]

60FPS is a must in certain games. I hope more devs make you choose between Eyecandy 30FPS and 60FPS perfomance mode, I still remember watching a friend playing DS3 on PS4P after I completed the game on my PC, It was atrocious, I couldn't even believe he was ok with that, but PS4 exclusives that run in 30FPS were really good and I didn't have any problem.

 

[The Shepard]

Sorta makes sense. In the HD era, we went from 480p to 1080p which quadruples the amount of pixels a system needs to push.

720p mostly with crappy frame rates. Cod was 60fps but with sub 720p resolution.

 

[SkylineRKR]

PS360 gen was terrible. Painful IQ, load times, installations, low framerates on average. At some point it was accepted that games were released at 640p and 25 fps or so. There were many of them.

Dreamcast is probably king. A lot of 60fps games there. Sonic Adventure was rushed, could easily achieve it as the better looking SA2 proved. The travesty that was SR2 does target 60fps when you use the code. Most of the launch software, like ,SC, Showtime, Powerstone, Air force Delta, NFL 2k, Ready to rumble, HotD2 etc were all 60fps. Hydro thunder wasn't, but it ran exactly like the coin op. I also loved the ports of Soul Reaver on it. And Rayman 2 was amazing.

 

[JohnSpartanLee]

Not in PAL regions.

 

[CrysisFreak]

This is the power of Ken Kutaragi!

 

[SkylineRKR]

Not in PAL regions.

This was such a letdown, I imported a PS2 as I had a chipped PS1 and was used to NTSC.

Sega added a lot of 60hz options in their Dreamcast games. And those who didn't, you could easily boot with a burned Codebreaker disc or cough up a stupid price for the DC-X (those were the only discs that could boot the likes of Sega Rally 2 in 60hz). I played all DC games at 60 and I had a PAL DC. The bad thing was that the option wasn't mentioned on the casing. You had to check it out in stores or read about it. But I would just use a boot disc, then.

Sega was also one of the few that added 60hz to their PS2 output.

 

[Soodanim]

Not in PAL regions.

I was so glad when I found out HD meant leaving 50hz behind, I double checked so much.

Back on my portable CRT I played Resident Evil Outbreak in black and white because that’s all it supported in the 60hz mode. That’s how much I preferred it, even then as a young teenager. I think it might have been PAL letterboxed, too.

For the uninitiated, PAL letterboxing was where the original 480 line image was placed into PAL’s, 576 line image, which if not corrected in the port meant a squashed image

 

[Grinchy]

IMO it all comes down to the way games were marketed over time. Maybe as screenshots became more important for selling your game's visuals, more effort went into pushing textures and effects than caring about how it runs.

Obviously every PS3 and 360 game could have run 60fps if they scaled the visuals back. But when your competitor is showing screenshots that look way better than your game, it's hard to sell framerate to kids looking at the IGN article.

 

[cireza]

Am I mixing my terms up?

Interlaced simply means that the picture is drawn in two times, even lines then odd lines. You can still get 60fps with interlaced of course.

In progressive the same picture is actually drawn twice, as you don't have the odd lines, the TV draws even lines and even lines again. Scanlines are the result of odd lines not being drawn, leaving a black line. You get a more "present" picture, much softer to the eye.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Interlaced simply means that the picture is drawn in two times, even lines then odd lines. You can still get 60fps with interlaced of course.

In progressive the same picture is actually drawn twice, as you don't have the odd lines, the TV draws even lines and even lines again. Scanlines are the result of odd lines not being drawn, leaving a black line. You get a more "present" picture, much softer to the eye.

That's what I'm getting at. Whether interlaced or progressive, a CRT is still outputting 60 "frames", even if the game console is using two frames to draw half of the same image (interlaced).

 

[JohnSpartanLee]

For the uninitiated, PAL letterboxing was where the original 480 line image was placed into PAL’s, 576 line image, which if not corrected in the port meant a squashed image

NTSC:

PAL:

It also ran 17% slower. No wonder I don't have many fond memories of the PS2.

 

[UnNamed]

Wii had lot of 60fps games too.

 

[cireza]

That's what I'm getting at. Whether interlaced or progressive, a CRT is still outputting 60 "frames", even if the game console is using two frames to draw half of the same image (interlaced).

Looks like you are right. I did not remember it was as shitty as this actually.

 

[cireza]

It also ran 17% slower. No wonder I don't have many fond memories of the PS2.

While SEGA was optimizing pretty much all their games on Saturn, and offering 50/60 toggle on Dreamcast. PS2 was a huge step back in visual comfort for any Dreamcast gamer. Just as PS1 was compared to optimized Saturn games as well.

 

[Soodanim]

NTSC:

PAL:

It also ran 17% slower. No wonder I don't have many fond memories of the PS2.

The only superiority of PAL that I can think of is a slowed down version of a Master System Sonic stage’s music.
PAL


NTSC

 

[cireza]

The only superiority of PAL that I can think of is a slowed down version of a Master System Sonic stage’s music.

I always preferred Phantasy Star IV in PAL. The tunes felt much nicer. Many late games had PAL optimization on MegaDrive to simply address the music speed.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Looks like you are right. I did not remember it was as shitty as this actually.

Saturn and Dreamcast both pushed 60 fps (as well as 480p, especially the DC). Goodness I miss SEGA. They were arrogant but loved pushing tech.

If we want to talk about "the reigning king of 60 fps 3d games" then I will happily hook up a Dreamcast to a VGA 480p monitor and watch the jaws drop.

 

[cireza]

I will happily hook up a Dreamcast to a VGA 480p monitor

That's basically how my Dreamcast is plugged, I use the VGA signal through an Akura Box and get a fantastic HDMI picture. Progressive, 480 lines, 60fps. Amazing console.

 

[squarealex]

Yeah, field rendering save a lot space of VRAM & performance. Console calculated 640x240i pixels in interlaced and output this like a basic 480i. That's why many games on PS2 is on 60fps.

The best thing about this, the image is sharp and clean... (SoulCalibur 2 on PS2 for example is the most sharpen version on CRT 480i)
The worst thing is the jaggies...

Many games at launch have the problem of jaggies. (RRV, DOA2, TTT1 JP, VF4, REZ, Crash:WOTC) and maybe Sony devkit or idk, but new thing appeard to "AA" the jaggies. result the pictures is more smooth / blur even why many moves and keep the field rendering. (TTT1 US vs TTT1 JP is a good example, or VF4 vs VF4 Evo).

Somes games have settings to enable "smooth AA" or disable this (Tekken 4/5, FF12, Silent Hill 3), but I recommed to keep enabled on LCD screen.
Even, LCD is not the best way to play PS2 games... This console is made for CRT TV

 

[-Arcadia-]

That is actually lovely. Even more respect for the PS2.

I'd be interested to see him do Nintendo systems. It seems like a lot of their stuff was high frame rate over the past three generations, which is something I've really liked, and no small accomplishment on weaker hardware, with still really impressive games.

 

[Romulus]

PS2 had strengths the other consoles didn't. It was a poly pushing beast with insane bandwidth, that's why it got run so many 60fps games like a dream....

Theres no evidence that any console during that generation was more capable at polygons pushing than the others. We had another thread about and all the evidence came down to developers speculation.

In terms of bandwidth and 60fps, can you name some games than ran at 60fps on ps2 that did not on the other machines? This should be easy to find considering ps2 was the lead platform that generation 95% of the time and many times at 480i(ps2) vs 480p(xbox and gamecube).

 

[Laconian Sword]

While SEGA was optimizing pretty much all their games on Saturn, and offering 50/60 toggle on Dreamcast. PS2 was a huge step back in visual comfort for any Dreamcast gamer. Just as PS1 was compared to optimized Saturn games as well.

Any time I mention that I was never impressed by the PS2's graphics at the time and that they looked muddy/blurry to me, I always get blank looks. Not enough people have played a Dreamcast to compare.

I preferred the PowerVR 'look' even before that gen and actually had a Matrox m3D in my PC. Loved the vibrancy and crispness even if the performance was lacking.

 

[I Love Rock 'n' Roll]

The PS2 is the best console ever... for so many reasons.

 

[Walter Matthau]

edit

 

[Barnabot]

I hope PS5 will have more 60fps titles than 30 fps ones.

right now devs are shouting a "hell nah" in ray tracing mode.

 

[BattleScar]

Game design priorities have changed.

Since Gen 6, there has been a much bigger desire to push visual fidelity to its absolute limits with the available hardware.
That means you reduce framerates.

There is always a tradeoff. Framerate or visual quality. Back on the PS2, 60fps was considered to be a priority. Now the priority is who can make a game more photorealistic.

 

[IbelieveInGenerations]

60fps is overrated

I want 30fps. This is true love

 

[SilentUser]

Wow I had no idea! Nice to know.

 

[Rudius]

I remember reading in some old article, I thiiink a retrospective about Devil May Cry (but I'm not sure), that because of the PS2's internal architecture, many games actually REQUIRED 60fps to function properly and make all the correct calculations.

I'm sorry if I'm not more precise, it's been years and I really can't track down the article or website, but it always struck me as an extremely interesting tidbit of information.

From 3:38:

 

[Miles708]

From 3:38:

Awesome, thank you!
It's fascinating.

 

[CobraXT]

PS2 have such a weird hardware , it have the most 60 fps games but the colors always
looked washed out to me

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I think you gotta compare more than just launch games to get the full picture, tho since PS2 had so many damn games on it, the chances are his statement still holds true.

Can we count 2D systems in this too? SNES and MegaDrive in particular, the vast majority of their library was 60 FPS. Maybe do one for 3D systems and one for 2D systems if that's the case.

 

[HE1NZ]

Majority of PS2 games are 480i. Almost impossible to run these games without input lag and interlacing artifacts. Also, very few PS2 games can actually keep 60 fps throughout. It's just the static camera games for the most part. I prefer Xbox Original + PS3 for remasters combo.

 

[MeatSafeMurderer]

even if the game console is using two frames to draw half of the same image (interlaced).

Well...kind of. You see in 60FPS games no two fields are from the same frame. To give you an idea of how it works...

30FPS
Field 1 - Frame 1
Field 2 - Frame 1
Field 1 - Frame 2
Field 2 - Frame 2

60FPS
Field 1 - Frame 1
Field 2 - Frame 2
Field 1 - Frame 3
Field 2 - Frame 4

 

[K.N.W.]

Yeah, field rendering save a lot space of VRAM & performance. Console calculated 640x240i pixels in interlaced and output this like a basic 480i. That's why many games on PS2 is on 60fps.

The best thing about this, the image is sharp and clean... (SoulCalibur 2 on PS2 for example is the most sharpen version on CRT 480i)
The worst thing is the jaggies...

It's all correct, but Soul Calibur was indeed rendered in progressive mode internally, then downscaled to 480I, that's why it looks so crisp. And many other 60 fps games do that too, but you're right many games use field rendering (interlaced resolution) to keep framerates up. If I might add up more, games almost never used that 640x480i/p resolution: they were usually 550/500~ on the horizontal axis, and around 400~ for the vertical one, sometimes even interlaced. This lead to a worsening of the aliasing situation: games were rendered in an almost squared aspect ratio, then stretched to fill the 4:3 screen, increasing jaggies' tangibility.
Now, regarding Soul Calibur 2....
Xbox did look better with its 720P mode

 

[psorcerer]

What do you think, GAF?

The PS2 times had better tech people.
PS2 was vastly harder to program for than PS3 yet devs cried like a babies and called mommy.
You cannot win with such a scam material.

Game development is a hugest entertainment business in 2020, yet the compensation rates are among the worst in the IT industry. Rivaling only the last mile internet providers.

 

[Fart Knight]

Wow and I cant name a single one.

 

[SirTerry-T]

Any time I mention that I was never impressed by the PS2's graphics at the time and that they looked muddy/blurry to me, I always get blank looks. Not enough people have played a Dreamcast to compare.

I preferred the PowerVR 'look' even before that gen and actually had a Matrox m3D in my PC. Loved the vibrancy and crispness even if the performance was lacking.

Yep, the pixel quality on that Power VR hardware was gorgeous, even "problem" colours like blues and reds always looked great.
You are right about the PS2 look too. They colours never looked quite crisp or saturated enough.

 

[gamerguywashere]

I was playing Borderlands presequel and enjoying the depth of field blur that isn't in B2 on Switch when I got a Diablo3 invite.

Going from playable to 60fps...it was what finding jesus would feel like, if he were real.


I don't understand what would be so hard about a 60fps option in the game menu. PC version always has 50+ graphics options...I just want one badass 60fps game option.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I think it all depends on the game itself, you can manage with 30fps if it's 3rd person view, slower paced, but racing/shooters or at least any MP mode on any game should do 60fps mode with a small graphics/resolution downgrade.

 

[V4skunk]

Gamecube out performed PS2.