Halo MP Is now Free to Play (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, August 03, 2020, 08:44 (1362 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Also IMO 120fps is a waste of the computing power.

If you have the power, use it.

I agree, but don't waste it. Make 60fps look better instead. If it were up to me, I'd target Halo ∞ at 1080p60.

Yeah, but I'm going to guess that making more fps is way easier than just "make it look better" and to do that for a game as massive as Halo Infinite, I believe that is the idea, is even harder.

Choices, choices.

My understanding is that increasing the FPS above 30 gets exponentially more difficult. Developers need to account for the inherent lag time baked right into the hardware (while insanely quick, it does take time for a signal to travel from your controller into the hardware, and then for the hardware to respond accordingly). I have no idea what that lag time is on current or next-gen hardware, but the important part is that the lag time is the same regardless of how many FPS the game is running at. For the sake of example, I’ll use some simple round numbers that I can actually keep track of :)

Let’s say your game is pushing a new frame every 100 milliseconds, and this hardware lag time is 10 milliseconds. That means you actually only have 90 milliseconds for your hardware to do all the engine processing that it needs to do, because 10 milliseconds is gobbled up just by electronic signal travel. Now you decide to crank up your FPS, so you target 1 frame every 50 milliseconds. 10 milliseconds are still being used up by lag time, so your engine needs only really has 40 milliseconds per frame. Double the frame rate again to 1 frame every 25 milliseconds, and now you’re down to 15 milliseconds of actual processing time per frame.

Long story short, doubling the frame rate requires better than double the processor efficiency. As I understand it, this is one of the main reasons that do few games even aim for 60 FPS. It’s so much more demanding than other visual upgrades (such as slightly better lighting or particle effects or draw distances) and every survey that developers have done tells them that the vast majority of gamers don’t even notice the difference between 30fps and 60fps. So most developers look at it as a waste of resources. Personally, I think it makes a huge difference, but maybe I’m more sensitive to it than most players.

As far as Halo Infinite running at 120fps, my guess is that 343 wants a consistent look for the game across platforms, and decided that the best way to do that was to create a fairly simplistic looking game so it will run decently well on a basic Xbox One, and then crank up the FPS on other platforms rather than create new assets or fancier lighting, etc. I agree with Cody that I would much rather see that extra processing power go into areas that make a more meaningful difference. I much prefer 60fps over 30, but I think going beyond that is travelling pretty far into “diminishing returns” territory.