Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, morphine, SecretSquirrel
mkenyon wrote:No, I'm not wedded to it in any way. I'm talking about the clear difficulty in getting people to understand what any of it means. Yeah, it's clearly written, but there's a very visible block that people are having in understanding that this is a more accurate measure of performance rather than an alternate measure of performance. Using the different measurement I think contributes to this.
mkenyon wrote:So far, that hasn't panned out too well. I'd say an overwhelming majority of folks that I talk to about this view it as a way to capture something else entirely which isn't quite as important as FPS.
mkenyon wrote:I think this makes sense, but the Inside the Second articles are a lot to digest. There's so many points and revelations in there that some finer details might be obscured or fail to hit home.
Meadows wrote:Superjawes also had an idea about a "smoothness rating" formula, that sounds like something TR might look into.
tfp wrote:To me the real advancement was measuring down to a point you can't take any more samples, not what units the data is shown in. In the past people had graphs showing averages down to the second at best but nothing that really gets to the individual frame velocities.
Flying Fox wrote:Granted I stay on TR during most days, but I am not really seeing this so-called "overwhelming majority of folks" that don't understand this. At least I am not seeing a whole bunch of comments from each of TR's review that claim "this sucks I don't understand all this". Perhaps it is the average level of knowledge/intelligence/comprehension/critical thinking of the TR readership is higher? It is not like most of the gerbils are like <15 year old "g4m3Rz!"?
I am bad with analogies, but I think of something while typing all this: if Intel can switch the entire industry from GHz obsessed to performance per watt, why can't the enthusiast community and gaming industry do a paradigm shift? Similar to the "claimed wattage" to "amps delivered on 12V rails" in the PSU debate, we have changed our mindset successfully. So why can't we do the same with this?
DPete27 wrote:Regardless of whether "framerate" is the proper term to use for the new method, consumers playing games at home with FRAPS running in the corner of the screen are going to see FPS
jihadjoe wrote:Frame time is basically the minimum frame rate.
What matters is the amount of time spent at that minimum, which is harder to quantify in terms of FPS.
If we go by averages then the good frames tend to smother out the bad frames, making it a bit hard to represent as a simple graph.
HardOCP's style of plotting the frame rate over time is a pretty good method, IMO. You can clearly see where the FPS line graph go into those single digit dips, and how often and how long those dips last.
mkenyon wrote:So many people I talk to on other forums and even with my friends just don't understand that these numbers are essentially measuring the same exact thing ...
mkenyon wrote:Frame time is not the minimum frame rate. Frame time displays all of the detail.
HardOCP's frame rate over time is lacking because it's still second-based polling.
Zoomastigophora wrote:@OP: Frankly, if you have the time to spend trying to convince people to still show FPS values in performance measurements that are latency based, I would rather you spend that time educating the apparently "ignorant" populace in the communities you frequent about why still trying to use min/avg/max FPS measurements is pointless.
mkenyon wrote:You're only referring to the line chart.
mkenyon wrote:To use an analogy, they're both measuring the same thing. It just so happens that frame time testing measures mm with a mm ruler. FPS testing measures mm with a cm based ruler. Though one is clearly better, they are in fact attempting to measure the same thing.
Scrotos wrote:Some of this reminds me of people giving suggestions to any opensource project. Often the responses from surly community members are, "get the code and implement it yourself. Good luck!"
i.e. the onus is on everyone else in the world to fix whatever is wrong with the item.
I get the same feeling from the "everyone else should be smarter" vibe getting flung at the OP. As educators, you have a responsibility to convey the information in the way it'll do the most good. Getting pedantic about it and missing the opportunity to expand your audience is just sad.
OP has been trying to evangelize this to the people who it would most serve, the esports players, and has documented the issues that he's run into. Instead of "too bad for them" the response really should be about finding a way to constructively deal with the problem. I also think Scott should jump in on this, too, as while it's all well and good to work with other tech editors about the testing methodology, this is an example of how the current results are being interpreted and misintrepreted in the real world. I'd think he'd welcome this opportunity with open arms to finetune how his results are displayed in a way that makes more sense to a layman.
Because I don't want to be attacked about my opinion here, just let me say that I practice what I preach and try to give back what I learn, be it with random posts in TR's forums or doing things like writing up "how to compile" how-to's for opensource projects. I hope something constructive comes of this thread and discussion!
sluggo wrote:This is a horrible analogy, and it's wrong on both points.
flip-mode wrote:
lilbuddhaman wrote:I did not read the entirety of this thread, but I would prefer that we have less stupid/uninformed people that can't understand a two-metric system (some form of framtime + fps), rather than try to dumb things down for them.
Educate people about frame timing until it is the norm and common knowledge.
lilbuddhaman wrote:I did not read the entirety of this thread, but I would prefer that we have less stupid/uninformed people that can't understand a two-metric system (some form of framtime + fps), rather than try to dumb things down for them.
Educate people about frame timing until it is the norm and common knowledge.
sluggo wrote:If a clever and accurate three-letter-acronym comes along that catches on, so much the better, but let's not force anything just yet.
cynan wrote:While someone might say that there is a distinction between instantaneous rates and average rates, in reality all rates are averages