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What did Horizon ZD do to make 30 FPS so smooth?

ultima786

ultima786

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Oct 28, 2017
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I don't understand the FPS and frame-time stuff well. How did these guys and gals make 30 FPS look so smooth and stutter free? Every other 30 FPS game I play appears so much less smooth. Even God of War, which honestly is an out of this world gorgeous game, seems so stuttery to me at the 30 FPS mode (so naturally I play on the performance mode which is not perfect but plays smooth overall). I have ffxv for the PC and it's smooth at higher FPS but if I lock at 30 it feels like a flip book.

I have a feeling a few things are going on. One, there is a right way to look at 30 FPS which some (including myself) aren't doing as well. Second, I could be psyching myself out by already have played on higher fps's and going back down is therefore noticeable. Finally, I think frame-timings are a big part; not sure consistency but also the consistent frame time itself.

Am I on to something? Help me out here.
 

Deleted member 5491

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Perfect frametime
Smart engineering so that streaming doesn't cause any stutter
Good use of motion blur
 

Deleted member 19533

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Well, Horizon runs at a almost completely locked 30FPS with perfect frame timing. Only when on a tallneck do drops occur, and on the Pro performance mode there are no drops at all.

They also use an excellent motion blur which makes it seem smoother.

I think, on top of the near flawless performance, since that alone isn't enough, it's their motion blur solution. Idk if they're using something different, but even compared to God of War, Horizon is so much smoother. GoW was making me feel sick, I had to turn it down, and the effect on max is very obvious. Unlike Horizon, you can't help but notice it.
 
Aniki

Aniki

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Oct 25, 2017
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I agree, game feels very smooth. I would say GoW is the same though. Both games play wonderfully at 30 FPS. Very unlike Bloodborne or even Nioh, when you play in movie mode.
 

Deleted member 1067

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Idk man it feels pretty much like every other 30fps game out there to me. It has some nice motion blur but other than that there's not really much else to say about it.
 
Saint-14

Saint-14

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Nov 2, 2017
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Aniki said:
I agree, game feels very smooth. I would say GoW is the same though. Both games play wonderfully at 30 FPS. Very unlike Bloodborne or even Nioh, when you play in movie mode.
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GoW have some slowdowns sometimes which I've never experienced in Horizon but other than that it was perfect.
 

Apex88

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Jan 15, 2018
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I went straight from HZD (back) to Bloodborne. And by comparison, HZD feels like a 60fps experience.
 

Fredrik

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Oct 27, 2017
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Huh? The game is awesome but it's not smoother than any other modern locked 30fps game, it's just a slow-paced game so you don't notice the 30fps stutter as much and they've tried to hide the 30fps stutter with motion blur as well.
 
Orayn

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Oct 25, 2017
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The rendering pipeline and method by which a game polls controller inputs can also factor in. Guerilla's older games were on the other end of the spectrum in that they had a lot of input lag even when performance was stable.
 

Deleted member 1003

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GoW is pretty good but Horizon is near perfect. It goes to show that proper frame pacing and motion blur can make 30 fps good.
 
exodus

exodus

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It also feels like it has very low input lag for 30fps. Especially when compared to GoW which has very noticeable input lag at 30fps.
 
Bedameister

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Doesn't it use some special technology that only renders things in your FOV. And that's why you can't change the camera speed. I thought I saw gifs of that tech on GAF
 

Deleted member 21858

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Smooth? I played Horizon recently, you can definitely feel that it´s a 30fps game just by moving the camera around. 30fps and smooth is weird to read in the same sentence. Honestly I would accept ps3 graphics this gem (a la TLOU) if games like Horizon and GoW aimed for smooth 60fps.
 

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Orayn said:
The rendering pipeline and method by which a game polls controller inputs can also factor in. Guerilla's older games were on the other end of the spectrum in that they had a lot of input lag even when performance was stable.
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Yeah KZ2's input lag was so horrendous that fans of the game defend it as a game "feature", that it makes the controls "weighty"... To me it was just nigh unplayable >.>
 
Wizzly

Wizzly

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Jan 10, 2018
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The textures details in Horizon in close view seems to be lower than God Of War, and God Of War is perhaps more often advanced techniques like volumetric light Horizon uses less.
Guerilla Games have always been the top technical teams to demonstrate Sony console power, i would not be surprised they master lot more PS4 and are able to make better optimisations than Santa Monica.
 
reclaimerzzzzz

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Bedameister said:
Doesn't it use some special technology that only renders things in your FOV. And that's why you can't change the camera speed. I thought I saw gifs of that tech on GAF
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Frustrum Culling. This is basic game tech that most, all?, modern games use. I learned about it from that Kotaku article too. So, not at all special technology.
 
Orayn

Orayn

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Oct 25, 2017
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Yeah the whole frustum culling thing did include a really good illustration of how it works, and it certainly functions well in HZD, but games have been using some variation on that technique for about as long as they've been in 3D.
 
Deusmico

Deusmico

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Oct 27, 2017
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other 30fps games don't stay at 30fps....

many other games have many scenes they are lower.

same with uncharted 4/lost legacy they stay at 30
 
pikachief

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Oct 25, 2017
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Bungie is also very good with 30fps. Destiny looks very smooth to me (although 60fps in D2 is clearly superior).

Some devs can just work very well with 30fps.
 
Mathieran

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Yeah Horizon feels great. I only encountered slow down one time in like 90 hours and it was in a cauldron.
 

Deleted member 13155

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God of War at 5 Motion Blur feels about the same. But Horizon was somewhat faster and more fluid in general. I really should jump on that DLC once I am done with God of War. I love Horizon.
 

Deleted member 35446

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It's as smooth as 30 FPS can hope to be.

Good frame timing combined with lower than usual (for 30 FPS games) input lag shows that the console is capable of running the game at a much higher frame rate than the final 30 and has enough head room to not need to buffer up too many frames in advance. Probably well above 45-50 most of the time, at the very least. GoW probably hovers closer to 30.

Motion blur smooths over the visuals well.

Still doesn't feel great if used to unlocked fps on high refresh monitors, though.
 
ghibli99

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I wish BOTW had HZD's motion blur. It'd make it feel and look that much more smooth and cinematic.
 

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Motion blur and a constant 30fps is pretty much all it can be, so nothing different to a very large number of other games
 
Lord Brady

Lord Brady

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Oct 26, 2017
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They did it by basically putting welder's goggles on you so you can't ever see much of the world. One of the absolute worst FOVs in a game I've ever seen.

pikachief said:
Bungie is also very good with 30fps. Destiny looks very smooth to me (although 60fps in D2 is clearly superior).

Some devs can just work very well with 30fps.
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The winner for second worst FOV I've seen in a long long time.
 

Yurinka

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Oct 30, 2017
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When a game is "30 fps" or "60 fps" traditionally they don't run always at this exact speed. Even when locked, they subtlely change and sometimes have minor slowdowns, frame pacing issues and so on. In case of Horizon maybe it's pretty solid in these things.

In addition to this, things like to have a very low input lag, how quickly the camera moves, the length of the animations of the main character and how you transition from an animation to another also helps to feel super smooth. As happened in DmC, what they called "the feel of 60fps".

As they proved in many games, Guerilla have many tech wizards.
 
pagrab

pagrab

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Oct 27, 2017
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I tried GoW and Horizon just one after another and have to say that Horizon is much better. Magic.
 
BrunOz

BrunOz

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I just can't play God of War on resolution mode after trying performance mode, it feels so much better to me.
 
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