I still havent tried VR, but its statements like this that make me want to soooo much, but if I do then have to go back to my XB & TV I think I may just start sobbing so I keep waiting. Its like I want to but I daren't in case it ruins the game I do have and love.
Why is this btw? I remember a few years ago every time I went to the cinema it ran an advert something like '23 Frames Per Second' and I know the human eye / brain only processes so many FPS under normal circumstances and I play on 30 FPS on my XB all the time so how does more FPS than the eye can process make it better? Yes I know dont understand film making either, let alone game development, this thread is exposing all my flaws lol but just curious why it matters so much as long as its smooth, which films are and my XB is? Quicker processing / loading / fidelity even etc I can understand the attraction but not this FPS thing.'
Yes, I have trouble playing Elite on a screen since I started VR - don't get me wrong, VR has its downfalls, some tricks that are done in Elite are looking bad in VR (rotating particles, I am looking at you), and my screenshots are low resolution and lower quality than if I do them on a screen.
The 23 frames per seconds are fast enough that you can't see single images, so they kind of blend into one fluid motion. Fast movements, however, will look choppy, and you might get effects like stationary rotor blades or wheels turning backwards.
In a computer game, more frames are important for 2 reasons.
First, you usually have a lot of things going on, and if you turn quickly, it will become choppy with 30 fps. If you turn 180° in 1 second, it means you only get one frame every 6°. 6° is an angle you can easily see with the naked eye. Of course, games use tricks to blend between those frames, most (in)famous is motion blur.
Second, your frametime (the inverse of the fps, time per frame) adds to your reaction time between when you see something until when your reaction occurs. If you spot something, your reaction time of lets say 100 ms passes until you start to react, then on the following frame your reaction gets translated into an action in the game. With 30 FPS, that means 133 ms before you react, compared to the 117 with 60 FPS, or 108 with 120 FPS. The better your reaction time, the bigger the impact of low frames.
In VR, there is another reason why you need high framerates - it dictates how fast your shown picture reacts to your head movement (the tracking). Imagine having a picture that is off by 6° whenever you move your head in real life - it would get disorienting quite fast (a bit comparable to wearing glasses that have the wrong dioptries). And this is for rather slow movement of your head. Nowadays headsets interpolate between frames, but this will leave some artifacts on the screen. I wish I could play Elite in 120 fps on my headset, but I settled for 80, which I reach most of the time, and it never drops below half (= 40), which would cause the interpolation to fail, and create really choppy experience. (VR nausea comes from the sensory input from your eyes not matching the input from your inner ear, so your brain goes into caveman mode and the only logical explanation is that you ate something poisonous, and the proper way to remedy this is to throw up - the same reason just with the inputs switched why some people can't read in cars. It is better when you move on your own, even if it is just a button you press to move forward, because your brain anticipates the movement, and adjusts better.)
To get back on topic, one other thing you don't want in VR is getting moved ingame without your input - like the forced animations in Star Citizen, when you for example climb up a ladder. Again, input of your eyes and your inner ear don't match in these cases.
). They still use a hodge podge of 3rd party add-ons (SpeedTree for planetary flora, Kythera for AI etc). They're still using plenty of 3rd party and Cryengine tools (Track View etc).
