Techno experts answer my videogame question.

DavidBeier

DavidBeier

Veteran
Something odd occured to me. I remember back when I played games more often (i.e. at all) there was a big deal made over a game running at 60fps instead of 30fps. Not, on a computer this makes perfect sense. Thinking in video terms though, something bugs me: we were all playing these things on interlaced TVs at the time (and most still are). I was under the impression that old TVs can only handle a regular 60i signal so how exactly do we tell the difference betwen the two. On a 60 field signal wouldn't the maximum frame rate be 30 frames per second?
 
here's wher eyou get into arguments over terminology. :)

I like to say that NTSC signal carries 60 "fields" per second to avoid confusion. Since a "field" is either even or odd and only displays half of the image, you need 2 fields to make 1 frame. So i guess TVs can show 30 frames a second. But since most video is not progressive, you're really dealing in fields and for most video and video games, each field is a new moment in time, so even though field A and field B supposedly create one frame, field B is a new moment in time where things a moved a little since field A.

So basically when you hear that a game holds steady at 60 frames a second, they're really talking about fields. unless your playing in progressive HD, then ur back to frames :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top