Why does 30 fps on PC not look as smooth as 30 fps on console?

My PC is getting on a bit and due for a complete rebuild but I am holding out until next year when the new AMD/NVIDIA graphics cards are out as well as AMD's Ryzen 4000 CPUs.

Anyway, I can play most games at 60 fps on the highest settings still at 1440p on my GTX 1080 Ti (which at over three years old as perhaps been the best GPU I have ever owned in terms of value) but some games require me to cap them to get what I deem to be a "smooth" console-like experience.

I have a 165 Hz G-SYNC display but, maybe it is me, but I find that when a game dips below 60 fps that I can immediately feel and see a difference. Above 60 fps is absolutely but while G-SYNC can remove stutter, it cannot make a low framerate feel like 60+ fps. This is worse if the framerate variation in a game is large, say, going from 45 fps to 125 fps. I find it offputting which is why I sometimes use framerate caps for these games.

60 fps caps work great and even dips to 57-59 fps are not that noticeable.

However, some games such as Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order need to be capped at 30 fps to remove in-engine stuttering but at that framerate that game can look awful in motion, although I can eventually adjust to it. Recently, I tried capping Horizon Zero Dawn to 30 fps and it almost gave me a headache playing it even though I use a controller. Yet the same game on my TV at 30 fps on my PS4 Pro looks fantastic and noticeably smoother. Why is that?

I have noticed that 30 fps caps in PC games never feel as smooth a locked 30 fps in console games. Is there something on PC that prevents a game from looking as smooth? I mean my monitor is 165 Hz which is higher than my TV's 60 Hz so in theory the PC should look better even running at 30 fps, right?

 

Simple, with all the fancy pc hardware you got spoiled. When a crappy console, 30fps and a 21ms response tv is all you got its smooth all right.

 

try setting your monitor to 30hz , i think that's the problem
when you play on PS 30fps , your tv or monitor gets set to the same 30hz to compensate from the usual 59hz
i think when you cap your 165 hz monitor to 30 hz , it will look smoother

 

also , you sit way further from a tv , so your eyes don't do as much work

 

Most new monitors don't support 30Hz, mine doesn't even support a custom resolution with 30hz. Not even using freesync as my monitor will only go down to 48Hz when using this. I remember an older monitor I had when setting 30Hz it forces ycbcr and didn't support RGB at 30Hz not to mention the screen looked hideous and this was on a £700 monitor.

Also, your TV doesn't get set to 30Hz when playing console games that have a 30fps cap. Console use a lot of tricks and optimisations in order for 30fps games to appear smoother like frame interpolation, different buffering techniques, and more aggressive motion blurs and frame pacing.

what? Never has a sentence on here made so little sense. So you're telling me that if I sit closer whilst playing a 30fps console game it won't look as smooth as if I sit further back????

 

Horizon Zero Dawn has serious frametime issues. Make sure it's not the game. Capping to 30FPS here on my G-Sync monitor with any game that does not inherently stutter gives solid 33.33ms frametimes with no variance.

 

This and you're also playing with thecontroller which is optimized around that, i believe if you play on console with keyboard and mouse around the 30FPS it will be just as awful as on PC.

 

30fps with gsync still looks like ass, so its not this.

 

Both Nvidia and AMD should include in their controllers some option to try to play games at 30 smooth frames like those of a console, since for new generation games the PC will be unable to maintain a constant 60 frames even with the new generation of gpus.

 

it alot easy to get "smooth" 30 out one config aka console vs pc cause no 1 pc is same config. that gona be one main reason why 30 on consoles look "better" atlest imo

30fps is trash and if 30fps on consoles didnt run as smooth as it does compared to pc I would never be able to play console game. which one main reason why I want 60fps a min rate on consoles

 

Face-palm. Seriously?

 

Simple: Games on console are designed for 30 fps, camera movement, controller input, game UI, etc, and also the game runs internally at 30 Hz, so te game feels "ok" at 30 fps, whereas PC games can run at arbitrary framerates so you can't really set the engine to run at a fixed, low framerate. You can use something such as RivaTuner, but is still not as correct as 30 fps game implementation is.

Also, consoles have some sort of frame smoothing or interpolation that makes 30 fps very easy on the eye, although if you get used to 60 fps constantly, you won't stand console 30 fps, no matter how soft it is.

 

I think you should search for "forza horizon 3 lag stutter fix" on youtube.

There's some pretty neat stuff ppl figured out to get it to run smooth, maybe some tricks work for other games as well?

Some guys suggested setting up a custom resolution under windows for 1440p 60hz. Apparently a native resolution of a 1440p screen doesnt work with console ports, but a custom resolution does for some reason.

Wish you good luck mate.

 

30 fps on console is a controlled environment and the norm, it's a constant and therefor you eventually get used to it. Your TV may also be interpolating 30hz into 60hz, which is a tech that's been around for a good 10 years now especially since 4k 60fps was new and not all TV's could run 60hz content natively without interpolating frames @ 30hz or when 60fps content was unavailable to a wide audience.
30 fps on PC may not feel nearly as smooth due in part because of input latency which increases as fps goes down, and due to frame pacing issues / frame time being inconsistent (often due to drivers or the game engine). E.G. you might get two frames 10ms apart but then the 3rd frame takes 20ms longer. If it repeats with regularity, your input will have a random delay on it and hence it will not look smooth and consistent like a 24fps movie. This is somewhat like what micro-stutter feels to the user, though they are two different animals. Now this isn't always the case, but if the game engine isn't happy with how things are being limited, it CAN happen and sometimes does. Some games tolerate it fine, others do not. Sometimes setting the option in the game INI if you can't do it in-game VS setting it on the driver (or vice-versa) can remedy this IF this is the cause.
I hope this helps.

 

I don't know the "science" of this but, some observations I've made lately, while trying to make Horizon Zero Dawn playable:

1. I used to think 60 FPS was smooth as silk...until I got a 144Hz monitor and played games on it that can run 120+ FPS. Now 60 FPS is like 24 FPS used to look to me, borderline unplayable intolerable.

2. Playing with a controller at 30 FPS does not "feel" too bad. Using KB+Mouse at 30 FPS is "unplayable". I guess because when you turn with a controller it is at a specific, preset, slow'ish, robotic movement speed. Using a mouse is like your actual neck/eyes turning where you just snap to the spot you want to look and 30 FPS fights that kind of movement. Sadly I can not stomach using a controller in any game that requires a lot of looking around or aiming. It's fine for flight/racing games or like Silent Hill with "lock on" targeting.

3. Watching a 30 FPS video looks perfectly smooth to me, but playing a game at 30 FPS is terrible.

Also, I guess a TV screen uses interpolation and a monitor does not? Anyway, yeah. Bare minimum 60 FPS or bust. 120+ to actually look smooth to me these days.

 

Motion blur is the 'magic' that makes 24fps in the cinema look 'smooth' to us humans. It's all smoke and mirrors. I myself always disable motion blur and have to deal with all the micro stutters coming to light. Without motion blur you see all the truth.

 

frametimes

 

Wait for Cyberpunk 2077 to be released, you'll see people cry.

 

i think we have discussed something like this here https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/how-to-get-30-fps-console.431761/

the thing is that most of the time the rendering in consoles is practically just eye tricks like doubling the game speed in some games by code then rendering it back like normal 30fps plus motion blur will look like it's very smooth just like sonic generations in this video.



while on PC you get the true framerate

 

also noticeable when its high but animations/effects seem to be playing lower fps (to save performance?)