This never got addressed, does Sonic Colors on Wii run in 30 or 60 frames per second?

[Shaddix Leto Croft]

FPS means First Person Shooter. Duh.

It does ? I always though it means Federation of PILLS Specialists... *runs aways*

[speedduelist]

No.

Frames Per Second, is the number of frames that appear on screen every second.

Framerate indicates fluidity of motion, not the speed.

A fast game usually requires a consistant framerate, so you can see whats going on.

it still looks fast to me, and previews said the frame rate is constant. so yeah.

that all what does matter specially in a sonic game.

[Saint Nathan]

The Motion Speed of The Game is dedicated by FPS.

You are like saying a 1 Frames per second game with motion blur would look super fast regardless of the frame rate.

Nope. 1 frame per second in Unleashed would be the exact same speed. You would move the same distance in the same amount of time. However, it would LOOK slower, because the picture would be changing only once every second.

During every second of Colors, about thirty frames go by. This makes the picture look fluid and less choppy. During that one second, if any other amount lower than 30 of frames were played, it would take the same amount of time, and the same actions would happen, but it would be choppy due to the small amount of frames per second.

Speed does not equal FPS. FPS is just how choppy the game looks. It does, honestly, LOOK like some form of lag, but it's not.

EDIT: Also motion blur is just a screen effect, it's got nothing to do with FPS.

Edited October 30, 2010 by Galaxy Man

[Conando]

It does ? I always though it means Federation of PILLS Specialists... *runs aways*

[SuperClassic]

it still looks fast to me, and previews said the frame rate is constant. so yeah.

that all what does matter specially in a sonic game.

Wait, so if a Sonic game looks fast, that's all you care about? No platforming, no momentum based gameplay, none of the stuff that made the games fun to play?

[speedduelist]

Wait, so if a Sonic game looks fast, that's all you care about? No platforming, no momentum based gameplay, none of the stuff that made the games fun to play?

the game needs to have a good framerate to become playable specially at the speed parts in a sonic game.

Never said that Speed is all what matters in a sonic game.

Edited October 30, 2010 by speedduelist

[DistantJ]

Most people can't tell the difference between 30fps or 60fps, and a lot of people who say they can are fooling themselves, usually you'll only notice that a game runs in 30 if you play it just after a game which runs in 60. 60fps games do have this interesting 'smooth' feel to them but 30fps ones you usually don't notice it's not present unless you've just been playing a 60fps one.

If I explain to you that movies are filmed at 24fps, and Disney movies are animated at 24fps, perhaps you'll understand why 30fps isn't at all a bad thing. The human eye can't distinguish between 24 images a second and actual motion.

Sonic Unleashed, yeah, I had it on 360 a while back, now I have the PS3 and playing it on that I notice the difference, the way the framerate fluctuates so much more, it's better to have it capped to be more consistent. SADX was the same - it's framerate often went higher than the Dreamcast game, but it often dipped a lot lower as well, and the inconsistency makes it more obvious.

A lot of games on the HD consoles now use clever interpolation methods which actually run the game at 30FPS but puts a half-and-half frame inbetween the two with a motion blur effect, it means that the game outputs at 60FPS but only 30 have to be rendered by the game and the ones inbetween sort of 'blend' them together. The downside of this is that you do get blur when things are moving quickly.

Edited October 30, 2010 by DistantJ

[Korama]

The human eye can't distinguish between 24 images a second and actual motion.

A common misconception. If it were true, there wouldn't be so many people complaining about slow framerates.

Human eyes are made for reality, and reality is not frame-based.

24 fps and even 30 fps can look strangely choppy when each frame is perfectly sharp, as is the default in computer games. You can easily enough experience that yourself when you record a video in very bright light (direct sunlight) so that the camera has to use very short exposure times, resulting in crisp frames with little to no motion blur. Motion blur is a big factor for apparent fluidity of motion, which is why so many games use it nowadays, with more or less success.

Here's a nice page with food for thought about the human eye & fps issue.

Anyway, I agree with you that stable 30 fps are good enough for Sonic Colours (even though stable 60 fps would be better, of course).

Edited October 30, 2010 by Korama

[DistantJ]

True... Games don't have a motion blur like photography does, this is probably why game standards are 30 rather than 24, but what about Disney movies? They're clean cut frames, they're only 24 and they look fantastically smooth... Howcome they look so smooth?

[Korama]

I guess you mean the older hand-drawn Disney movies. While they are without a doubt beautifully animated, I wouldn't say they are fantastically smooth.

I did a quick youtube search and found this 720p version of Beauty and the Beast (24 fps). When you look at it frame by frame, you notice that while zooming and panning is done at 24 fps, the actual animations mostly just change every second frame, thus 12 fps (in some scenes with faster motion they are 24 fps too). And even at this rather low frame rate, they look smooth enough. For a cartoon, at least, with live footage or 3D graphics our expectations are higher.

If you look closely, you should be able to see that the described lack of motion blur makes animations look somewhat choppy and stuttering, not as fluid as they could be. But then again, we are used to that for cartoon graphics.

The larger the moving objects are and the faster they move, the worse that stuttering effect gets that I'm talking about.

As an example, you can check out the long pan from about 2:55 to 3:05 in that video (best seen in full screen). Observe the several foreground and background layers, they move rather quickly from right to left there, but since each frame is crisp and sharp, the motion doesn't look perfectly fluid but a bit choppy. Or the carriage scene at 03:52 - houses in the background move rather quickly but without blur and thus stutter, the animation of the carriage (clearly CGI supported) and Belle is noticeably more fluid (24 fps) than the animation of the pedestrians (12 fps).

If you can't see what I'm talking about, then perhaps you're not very sensitive about frame rates (not everyone is) or just very accustomed to this stuttering-motion-without-blur effect.

Of course there's also the issue of watching a 24 fps video on a display that doesn't have a refresh rate that is a multiple of that (the common 60 Hz isn't), but that's another story.

Well, I hope this wasn't too off-topic.

Edited October 31, 2010 by Korama

[DistantJ]

I remember in Beauty and the Beast, the frame-rate for certain camera pans was really low because it was early CG, and also that the animation isn't as easy to do when you are hand-drawing something rotating around different angles, it's not something which is easily done so it never looks natural, but for the most part good disney movies do look awesomely smooth, if you look at The Lion King for example... I've always wondered why we notice it more in games than animation.

Anime is totally different though, like the way you mention that foreground characters use more frames than background ones etc. anime uses crazy framerates for different layers etc. all over the place, but often even the foreground just goes at 12fps, it's crazy, but anime never feels as natural because of it. There are only occasional ones which do the 24fps thing, like Akira or sections of Street Fighter II, I never quite felt the movement when watching anime because of it, as great as some of it is.

Did you know that pigeons would need 150fps to see an animation as movement? If you showed a pigeon a movie it'd look like a slideshow. Isn't that nuts?

[speedduelist]

I wish they would use the art style of super mario galaxy and make it in 60 FPS (Just like what SMG Does).

what i am saying has no thing to do with Mario vs sonic or sonic copying mario, the art style should be inspired with Sonic. that would be a good thing and doesn't technically mean they (if they use SMG Art style) are copying Nintendo.

But Even then , the game looks more incredible than mario galaxy at 30 FPS (Graphic Wise).

[Blue Comeback]

I wish they would use the art style of super mario galaxy and make it in 60 FPS (Just like what SMG Does).

what i am saying has no thing to do with Mario vs sonic or sonic copying mario, the art style should be inspired with Sonic. that would be a good thing and doesn't technically mean they (if they use SMG Art style) are copying Nintendo.

But Even then , the game looks more incredible than mario galaxy at 30 FPS (Graphic Wise).

I'm pretty sure Super Mario Galaxy is 30 FPS

[Tiller]

I'm pretty sure Super Mario Galaxy is 30 FPS

No its quite clearly in 60 fps. It's one of the things I picked up upon playing the game for the first time.

Galaxy certainly beats out Colors in the graphics department, but both games built to achieve vastly different gameplay. Mario is more suited to set piece platforming that happens at a slow pace. Mario stays in one area longer than Sonic does, so an emphasis on specific areas is required. The gravity mechanic and planetoid design effectively allow the game to display less on screen than a flat world would, and the worlds are smaller. This helps Wii put out the 60fps and sheen that the Galaxies are known for. Sonic doesn't tend to stay in one place vary long, and thus the worlds must be much bigger and continuously loaded. Not so much time is spent in an area so a you don't need to allot so many resources to it. Instead, the game compensates with the busyness and attention to detail seen throughout the stages, so it looks as if a lot of stuff is flying by rather than that really pretty area that you pay no mind to after .5 seconds. This also accounts for the game being locked at 30 fps.

Basically: Galaxy has smaller, technically better looking worlds, Sonic has larger and busier worlds.

Edited November 2, 2010 by Tiller

[Scar]

No its quite clearly in 60 fps. It's one of the things I picked up upon playing the game for the first time.

Galaxy certainly beats out Colors in the graphics department, but both games built to achieve vastly different gameplay. Mario is more suited to set piece platforming that happens at a slow pace. Mario stays in one area longer than Sonic does, so an emphasis on specific areas is required. The gravity mechanic and planetoid design effectively allow the game to display less on screen than a flat world would, and the worlds are smaller. This helps Wii put out the 60fps and sheen that the Galaxies are known for. Sonic doesn't tend to stay in one place vary long, and thus the worlds must be much bigger and continuously loaded. Not so much time is spent in an area so a you don't need to allot so many resources to it. Instead, the game compensates with the busyness and attention to detail seen throughout the stages, so it looks as if a lot of stuff is flying by rather than that really pretty area that you pay no mind to after .5 seconds. This also accounts for the game being locked at 30 fps.

Basically: Galaxy has smaller, technically better looking worlds, Sonic has larger and busier worlds.

Precisely.

I'm sure Sonic Team could have used Galaxy quality high-res textures and models, but that would have probably ruined the framerate. Likewise, they could have acheived 60fps, but they would have had to sacrifice somewhat with the graphics. Seems like they struck a good balance, so it turned out rather well.

[Blue Comeback]

Ah ok, sry, I haven't played Galaxy in a long time so I forgot the framerate.

Btw, an interesting article with some fawning over Colors' graphics

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/sonic-colors-finally-360-quality-graphics-on-wii/a-20100706111242529025

[Solly]

If Sonic Colors had been shown off and announced as an Xbox 360 or PS3 exclusive, I don't think anybody would have said the visuals were too basic for the systems.

[jeremycarrier]

360-quality my ass. Sonic Colors looks VERY good...for a Wii title. Let's not go overboard here.