How to get more than 60 fps in-game?

[Vegard]

Got a new kickass monitor today with a 144hz refresh rate; but no matter what I do, PA refuses to go above 62 fps. I have enough juice left to run it easily at 200+ fps, so that's not the problem. I've tried disabling V-sync, disabling my 2 other monitors, looked through every option in the Nvidia control panel etc; but no luck. I tried Pinball FX2, which is more graphically intensive than PA, and got 144 fps easily with plenty of power to spare. 120+ hz monitors are getting quite popular, so there must be someone else out there with the same problem.

I've tried googling, searching the Steam forums as well as this one. Came up short. And yes, I can absolutely tell the difference between 60 and 100+. Even 60 to 80 is quite noticeable, and Pinball FX2 at 144 fps is quite the experience compared to 60.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

I'm fairly certain TPA is hard-locked to 60 fps and won't go much above that number regardless of what you do. I do know that the physics engine runs normally at 60 Hz and speeds up as needed in intervals of 60 Hz, so it could be that TPA requires the physics:display ratio to be an integer, and the easiest way of achieving that is locking the framerate to 60 fps.

Maybe one of the developers can confirm.

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Currently locked to 60fps for physics handling.

 

[Vegard]

Sigh.. Alright. Thanks for the speedy responses.

 

[kimkom]

Welcome, Vegard. Interesting first question!

 

[Vegard]

Welcome, Vegard. Interesting first question!

Well, I primarily bought the new monitor because of this game alone (mostly to get portrait mode though, thankfully), so I figured I'd have a better chance of getting a response here. The Steam forums are kind of a mess.

Anyway, portrait mode is fantastic, so I'm fairly happy with that alone. Maybe in the distant future, they might upgrade the physics engine to handle 100+ fps. One can hope.

 

[Bonzo]

The Steam forums are kind of a mess.

Amen!

Welcome to the fold.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

We can certainly hope, as the physics engine in general has a lot of room for improvement. Sadly it seems to be held back by what they can do on mobile.

I might actually consider getting the Pro upgrades on tables if they included a better physics model into that.

 

[Vegard]

Amen!

Welcome to the fold.

Hehe, thanks.

We can certainly hope, as the physics engine in general has a lot of room for improvement. Sadly it seems to be held back by what they can do on mobile.

I might actually consider getting the Pro upgrades on tables if they included a better physics model into that.

Yeah, that's the problem with games that are on weaker platforms. Usually it's consoles holding games back, but I should think that the PS4 can handle this game on 120 fps quite easily, so here's hoping it gets as popular as it can.

Though in this instance; FX2 is in the same boat. It too is on mobile devices, but it doesn't seem to have a frame rate limit. It runs ultra smooth on 144 fps, and it too has a pretty sophisticated physics engine (though obviously less realistic). So I don't really see the problem. Will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

To be fair, FX2 is not a simulation so their optimisation is likely a lot more flexible. I also wonder if their development team are larger.

The problem here is having the ROM emulation overhead and the time is takes to get the simulation stuff working on lower powered platforms.

 

[Vegard]

Both statements are true; pretty sure their team is a bit bigger. I guess they'd have to be, designing their own tables from scratch.

 

[Deltaechoe]

I have a really nice TV that I also use as a computer monitor for gaming sometimes (fast latency for a tv) and it's a 120hz screen and yeah, there is a huge difference in perception of the game from 60fps to 120fps

 

[Worf]

Actually, no. 120Hz refresh rate just means the screen refreshes at 120Hz. The actual incoming signal is 60fps, 24fps, or 30fps. 120Hz divides evenly in all those framerates with processing. Otherwise 24fps movies have to be telecine'd (3:2 pulldown) in order to display on a 60Hz panel.

The video processor either does frame doubling (2 for 60Hz, 4 for 30Hz, 5 for 24Hz) or interpolates (generates) the missing frames.

Of course, there are also lame TVs that claim "120Hz" but do something like backlight blanking to fake it. Of course, turning up the video processing can produce some interesting... effects.

 

[Deltaechoe]

nah, it's a true 120fps, it needs to be for its functions. It was not a cheap display and I made sure to test it beforehand and after purchase. I play many of my games on it at 120 frames per second and the television handles it just like I would expect, displaying every single frame. Also, before the question comes up, no I do not connect my pc to my TV via HDMI, I use dual link DVI for a proper 120hz signal and the television accepts it just fine.

 

[Vegard]

nah, it's a true 120fps, it needs to be for its functions. It was not a cheap display and I made sure to test it beforehand and after purchase. I play many of my games on it at 120 frames per second and the television handles it just like I would expect, displaying every single frame. Also, before the question comes up, no I do not connect my pc to my TV via HDMI, I use dual link DVI for a proper 120hz signal and the television accepts it just fine.

Hmm, didn't even know TV's with DVI connections existed, much less ones that operate at 120hz. Does it also smooth movies / regular TV programs running at 24/27 fps? Was at my fathers house this Christmas and he has a really good "400"hz TV. Watched an old movie, and I could swear that the movie ran at 60 fps, it was incredible. I know the technique is "cheating" the eyes by showing the same image several times, but damn, it works. Wish I could afford one of those TV's, it might make console gaming a bit more bearable, lol. I'll have to wait until I'm done with my education.

 

[Deltaechoe]

Hmm, didn't even know TV's with DVI connections existed, much less ones that operate at 120hz. Does it also smooth movies / regular TV programs running at 24/27 fps? Was at my fathers house this Christmas and he has a really good "400"hz TV. Watched an old movie, and I could swear that the movie ran at 60 fps, it was incredible. I know the technique is "cheating" the eyes by showing the same image several times, but damn, it works. Wish I could afford one of those TV's, it might make console gaming a bit more bearable, lol. I'll have to wait until I'm done with my education.

It's not a consumer television and it was very difficult to obtain (money and favors, lots)

 

[netizen]

Unless the source material is 120 FPS is doesn't matter what TV you have or how it's connected the display you use will not make it display faster than the actual source material.

Having a higher refresh rate will reduce the likelihood of tearing or smearing like occurred on CRTs that were locked to 60hz and games were being pushed above 60FPS, and the display couldn't refresh fast enough to show all the motion.


TL;DR - Not 120 FPS from source, Not 120 FPS on Display

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Hmm, didn't even know TV's with DVI connections existed, much less ones that operate at 120hz. Does it also smooth movies / regular TV programs running at 24/27 fps? Was at my fathers house this Christmas and he has a really good "400"hz TV. Watched an old movie, and I could swear that the movie ran at 60 fps, it was incredible. I know the technique is "cheating" the eyes by showing the same image several times, but damn, it works. Wish I could afford one of those TV's, it might make console gaming a bit more bearable, lol. I'll have to wait until I'm done with my education.

The smoothing on modern TVs actually "guesstimate" every other frame, which is why they look so good when they get it right but create annoying ghosting or downright corrupt looking frames when they get it wrong.

Panasonic seem to have good tech for it, LG on the other hand seem to be all over the place (makes me sad as it seems to be totally random if it works right or not).

 

[Worf]

My first HDTV had a DVI connection. DVI-I so you could hook VGA to it or DVI.

Nowadays though, it's far easier to go with HDMI since PCs generally tend to have that more than DVI ports. And with HDMI 2.0, you can get 4K @ 60fps now. HDMI 1.4 only supported 4K @ 30fps.

But the whole reason for 120Hz/240Hz is because the common framerates are 24fps, 30fps and 60fps, so 120Hz is required if you want to avoid telecine (aka 3:2 pulldown) of 24fps content. 240Hz is required for 3D so you can do left/right eye.

Now, you can disable video processing which just puts them into "frame repeat" mode - where each frame is simply re-displayed. If you leave the video processing on, it'll interpolate frames, which can make for some really funky effects on fast moving images - like a drummer. One of my friends called his "trippy" before he turned it off.

My current TV is fairly nice - even those there's a "game" mode, there's only a single frame delay for video processing/scaling (see input lag). Most TVs have 2-3 frames (32-48ms).

 

[Zaphod77]

The reason physics is locked to 60 fps is for fair competition.

Were it able to run faster on your computer more shot possibilities would exist. For example, were dr. dude running at 120 fps, the gift of gab would be makeable off the feed from the ray. It's currently impossible. you need to hold the flipper up and nudge to make the ball go dead to ever complete reflex.

A floating frame rate is just not fair with digital pinball. The physics needs to run at a constant frame rate that's the same on all platforms.