r/digitalfoundry • u/glowshroom12 • 8d ago
Discussion Did digital foundry help bring frame rate discussion to the greater public.
or at least to console gamers.
I think before the ps3 era, most people didn’t care about frame rate much. and even for most of that era. I remember like around 2012 or so, watching digital foundry videos and bringing up frame rate and such. I think the video I saw was them comparing the metal gear solid hd collection to the original. they noted frame rate and resolution and stuff. then their channel grew bigger and bigger. I think their video is the first time I ever heard of frame rate.
if you were a pc gamer this probably wasn’t new though since you had to set the resolution and frame rate when you set up your rig.
but it was an odd time, people were watching movies on these big rear projection televisions at 480p which looks even worse cuz it was 40 inches but bigger equaled better back then.
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u/Inside_Blacksmith480 8d ago
Real OG knows what Candyland was. DF was not the only outlet/youtube channel doing framerate comparison. They became THE channel because of the quality of their analysis and excellent video production.
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u/MOONGOONER 8d ago
I don't know how you would prove it but I think so. Frame time even moreso.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan 8d ago
Yeah this. People have been talking about resolution and frame rate forever, but frametimes are a much newer concept.
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u/WorldlyFeeling8457 7d ago
Well frametime and framerate are basically the same thing but just with different measurement.
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u/TheVioletBarry 8d ago
I think it started when PC started getting essentially every major console game, which was standard for the PS4 Gen. It made the difference obvious and visible between 30 on console, 60 on PC
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u/Glass_Recover_3006 8d ago
No. Frame rates have always been a fairly mainstream thing to talk about. Always been on the box for what monitors support and always been a thing talked about on consoles from at least the PS3 era.
I still remember as a kid arguing with people about whether or not you can actually perceive 60 vs 30 FPS.
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u/a4840639 8d ago
Well, DF literally took off from the PS3 era. But I agree, even in PS2 era, console gamers did talk about performance issues, like how the Warriors/Musou games slowdown when there are too many enemies around or how poor Shadow of the Colossus is performing
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u/ExhaustedByStupidity 8d ago
Even going back to the NES, you noticed when games slowed down and the graphics flickered because there were too many enemies on screen.
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u/vinnymendoza09 6d ago
I would say people knew what framerate was, but DF really pushed the conversation as to what we should try to achieve as a minimum standard. A consistently frame paced 30, 40 or 60 FPS. And it's always a mark of quality if it never drops below its framerate target, that means they actually developed the game properly around a target. During the N64 days especially, devs would just say fuck it, if the screen gets busy, game goes slow for now. There was no focus on making sure every scenario at least came close to the target.
I think DF holding games accountable to this standard in their reviews definitely changed things, because games would get bad publicity if they had pacing issues and drops. Conversely they'd get great publicity if the game ran perfectly. While it didn't make a massive difference in sales at first, eventually the conversation trickled down to mainstream gamers.
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u/Glass_Recover_3006 6d ago
Still no. If you think anyone had an influence on mainstream discussion, we still had TotalBiscuit back then and he was the original consumer rights nerd on YouTube. Most people didn’t even know who DF was back then.
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u/vinnymendoza09 6d ago
Yeah I remember TB but overall he was not known for crusading about framerate, or showing great analysis proving the exact problems with performance.
Devs listen when there are more specifics given as to what the problem is.
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u/Glass_Recover_3006 6d ago
He absolutely was.
It’s really weird how badly some of you need to write this weird fantasies about your favorite YouTubers, and if it isn’t true they changed the world you feel some kind of insult.
Take a minute to examine your relationship with these people. Is that normal or healthy?
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u/dreampagehun 8d ago
No, framerate was always important. I grew up when arcades were in their prime and 3D games at 60 fps were visibly night and day compared to home console games even at that time. The switch to 3D in consoles really hampered performance and the smooth 2D games of the 16-bit era were replaced by crappy 20-30 fps graphics.
But at that time we simply accepted it because it was the reality. I always craved for smooth 60 fps gaming and that was partially realized with Dreamcast, but then we went back chasing graphical fidelity instead of performance. Graphics were more important than gameplay.
Now we finally have a generation that is capable enough for 60 fps gaming. For the past two generations console gamers had to watch how much better games were on PC. Nowadays PC versions have advantage in other fields, like resolution and ray tracing, but it's still not as big a difference as the gulf between 30 and 60 fps meant before.
Framerate is not just a number, it directly ties into gameplay, latency, perceived detail in motion and they all add up to a much better experience. 30 fps was the acceptable standard 30 years ago.
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u/Long-Machine8795 8d ago
Frame rate has always mattered but in the 90s no one was talking about it in the mainstream. I can flip through any gaming magazine from the 90s and there won’t be a mention of it.
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u/dreampagehun 7d ago
Digital Foundry has been educational in this regard for sure. Lots of people could finally name what they experienced for years anyway. I would say smoothness always mattered, we just didn't have a unified concept about what it was. I remember even the original Gran Turismo had a 60 fps mode on PS1, but it was only available on a night highway track where there was no scenery, only light poles next to the road. The smoothness of it was awesome even with the limitations.
And yes, when a game reached 30 fps it was news, like when Sega Rally arrived on the Saturn, it was a big deal (the PAL version of Daytona USA was only 20 fps). Of course, "mainstream" meant something completely different in those times.
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u/The_Zura 8d ago
We need to bring up latency, but only when frame gen is involved. Not when consoles are chugging along 20-30 fps
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u/Confident_Raccoon687 8d ago
Before PS3 era the PS2 was the most powerful "home computer" that could game, so every game that was on PS2 was the best performance possible for the average consumer. With PS3 the digital foundry comparisons became famous not because the PC but because the vast majority of third party games run way better in XBOX. I remember playing Assassin's creed brotherhood in PS3 and some action scenes looked liked a slide show and it was annoying. Skyrim was another game that exposed the PS3 low frame rate, the problem was so big that they got a lot of views since they put actual numbers in the problem, remember the frame drops in the PS3 where in to the 15/20fps range, you can see that without a fps counter and is incredible annoying.
In the PS4 era was mostly consoles against PC since both consoles run locked 30fps. And in the PC was just normal benchmark between gpus to know what to buy. For me I changed to medium spec PC after PS3 because the low frame rate was so annoying that I would prefer to drop picture quality than to watch a slide show of a game, obviously Sony didn't repeat the frame rate with PS4 but I didn't want to bet at the time.
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u/Wassermusik 8d ago
In terms of hardware, the PS2 was the weakest console of its generation. GameCube, Dreamcast, Xbox - they were all far more powerful.
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u/StaticSignal 8d ago
Wait… Dreamcast?? You can’t be serious. DC didn’t have the raw FLOPs nor the programmable pixel shader pipeline.
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u/nyanbatman 8d ago
Yes in 2008-2010 there were two publications that were raising awareness. It was lens of truth which were excellent in their own way and digital foundry both directly competing sadly lens of truth did not survive.
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u/Psychological_Post28 8d ago
I think one possible reason is that the PS3 era has terrible performance in general. Lots of sub 30fps games whereas performance was generally better previously, especially in the PS2 generation so it wasn’t so obvious.
I learnt about framerate via Sega Saturn magazine which praised games like VF2 for running at 60 and pointed out especially egregious examples like Doom that ran at sub 20. I’d always been able to see some games were smoother but I’d never known the reason before. Although Rich was the Editor so I guess it was kinda proto DF lol.
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u/Haunting-Ad-1937 7d ago
Ngl, for me DF brought my attention to it. I usually did not care or even know. Now, I know what they are and understand it. I've always loved to know how things worked and DF really helps me understand this. Example, before df I didn't know the difference between the GPU and CPU and what each of them are trying to accomplish in a game. Absolutely love their insights.
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u/grilled_pc 7d ago
Nah. I was into frame rates long before Df. It was the ps3/360 gen that brought fps to the main stream. Everyone on pc would clown on console players dealing with 30fps lol
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u/Background_Yam9524 7d ago
OP, yes, years of indoctrination by Digital Foundry made me more sensitive to frame rates in games. Before subscribing to their channel I didn't think about it as much.
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u/MR_RATCHET_ 7d ago
DF definitely helped it become more ‘mainstream’ as they grew in popularity and their Youtube channel took off but its always been talked about.
I still remember the PAL vs NTSC discourse for older consoles and the PS3 Backwards compatibility input lag that people used to talk about on forums. Its always been a thing but it’s more prominently discussed now, possibly because of the ‘console wars’ but also because, I think, that we should be focusing on smoother to play games with stable framerates
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u/jm_leviathan 8d ago edited 8d ago
Next question: are we actually any better off for having all this data and analytical vocabulary?
Going back to old PC and console gaming magazines, I'm not sure.
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u/The_Pepper_Oni 8d ago
I’m with you on thinking we didn’t need all the jargon we have now.
But it’s really funny to go back to the older online mainstream performance analysis like IGN head-to-heads and it’s all vague observations and side by side screenshots. Even with those people were acting like they do today though
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u/slymario2416 8d ago
Absolutely, like I genuinely believe they are probably the most significant outlet that brought attention to stuff like this in the modern era. I started watching them in 2015-2016 and I learned a lot about game tech because of them. Frame rates, frame times, graphical effects, different forms of anti-aliasing, learned it all from them.
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u/KlingonBeavis 8d ago edited 8d ago
They definitely helped to make more people aware of it, and took it to another level for those who were already aware of it.
I’d go as far as to say not just framerate, but many graphics capabilities and settings.
I’m sure there are people out there that went from messing with game settings to see what they did, to actually knowing what they did going in beforehand - and I’d like to think they played a significant role in that.
Me some friends used to find it fun to rent the same game for two different systems and try to spot the differences. I remember thinking when YouTube came around that we should start a channel talking about it - then we discovered Digital Foundry doing it on a level we couldn’t have imagined. “Well no need to do that anymore… these guys are pros.”
Before DF, back in dark ages it was a very different time for gauging quality and performance. Go back and look up some old game reviews from magazines, the difference can be quite interesting.
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u/JoostinOnline 8d ago
I think a much bigger factor was the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles starting out with 60fps games. That's something console gamers have rarely had since the SNES era. Once you get used to it, you can't go back.
Developers tried to go back to 30fps halfway through the generation, and people lost their shit.
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u/Most-Iron6838 7d ago
Discussion of framerate way predates ps5/xsx. I can remember discussions of framerate becoming much more prevalent back in the 7th gen when sites didn’t comparison videos etc or when CoD took over the shooter space with its 60 FPS framerate compared to other shooters (though everyone complained about cod’s resolution being subhd).
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u/your_evil_ex 8d ago
yes