Frame rate (expressed in frames per second or fps) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images called frames appear on a display.
Ugh… It creeps me out that this myth is still out there. If fps was a thing back in the medieval age, then it very well could’ve been the reason for the Crusades. In the gaming world (because mostly gamers argue about it) this myth is a stumbling rock for the community. Wars are waged, hundreds of thread pages are written on forums — and still no consensus.
It’s almost like a religion, which split at some time into several branches:
“Cinema Witnesses”. Those who believe that we can’t perceive more than 24 fps. This misconception arises from filmmaking. To cut a long story short — it was an ideal amount of frames for people not to perceive them as separate images, following one another, but like an actual, natural motion. And it was cheap. Why increase the number of frames up to 48 (for example, Edison made a camera that operated at a higher framerate) and double the amount of film reel needed, if 24 was good enough? So even back then it wasn’t debatable that the human eye can see more than 24 fps.
“Past-gen Witnesses”. They believe that 30 fps are a threshold. It probably originated from console fps limitations. Because mostly developers limit their games (we’re not talking about current-gen consoles, things are shifting towards 60 fps now) to run at 30 fps. But notice this — they limit them, not because the human eye can’t perceive more, but for various reasons like optimization. Then there are several smaller groups who believe different numbers are in play — 48, 60, 70, etc.
Well, myelinated nerves can fire between 300 and 1000 times per second, basically allowing your eye and brain to interpret up to 1000 frames per second. But that’s in theory. In reality, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference of frame rates higher than 150.
Some experts will tell you that the human eye can see between 30 and 60 frames per second. Some maintain that it’s not really possible for the human eye to perceive more than 60 frames per second.
Another fact that can confirm that people actually see more than 60 fps is that VR devices work at 90hz refresh rate (PSVR at 120hz), because our peripheral vision (which we almost don’t use when sitting in front of our monitors/TVs) is much more sensitive to motion, and 60hz is not enough for our eyes to not notice stuttering caused by this refresh rate.
If you switch to a 120hz monitor after years of using 60hz, you may not spot the difference. But give it a day or two, and then try playing the 60hz panel — you will immediately see that ‘something is off’.
Most people can tell the difference between refresh rates for up to 60hz, while for most gamers this number will be bigger, for up to ~120hz. After this, changes are barely noticeable for the majority of us. The eye transmits information to the brain, but some characteristics of the signal are lost or altered in the process. For most of us, the 60-cycle alternation is lost somewhere between the eye and the brain (called Critical Flicker Fusion - CFF).
To further complicate the issue, the ability to process flicker itself is not uniform across the retina. The periphery is sensitive to large flickering lights and can follow them at fairly rapid rates, whereas the fovea is less sensitive to flicker and prefers smaller objects.
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