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Author Topic: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?  (Read 3728 times)

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stormeus

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Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« on: July 09, 2013, 02:31:38 am »
As I'm certain anyone reading this thread is aware of, there's a long-standing theory in the VC:MP community that disabling your frame limiter or adjusting your FPS to a higher value causes players to warp for whatever reason. Disabling frame limiter or using FPS hacks to circumvent the limit is oft considered a move comparable to cheating and has been considered ban-worthy if you were caught doing it.

On the topic of frame limiters, this happen earlier today in #VU:
Code: [Select]
<aXXo> Marcell adjust his FPS to a higher value every time he dies hhhhhhhhh
<[EAF]Alarba> deso was hacking
<[EAF]Alarba> 60fps
<Stormeus> What effect does having frame limiter disabled have on gameplay, though?
<Stormeus> oh no
<Stormeus> a high fps
<Stormeus> whatever shall we do with smooth gameplay
<Stormeus> I honestly want to see a video side-by-side comparison
<Stormeus> Of someone in VC:MP at 30fps
<Stormeus> And at 60fps

Though Deso wasn't adjusting his FPS, I was honestly curious as to whether or not VC:MP's sync caused disabling the frame limiter to cause any sort of distortion or irregularities in combat, so Shadows (heekzs) and I set off to record gameplay to compare different frame rates, the most important being the baseline of 30fps, a laggier 10fps, and a heightened 60fps.

From what I can tell from the videos I recorded, a player running VC:MP at 30fps would see no irregularities between someone playing at 30fps and another playing at 60fps. There was no observable warp that had not been caused by latency, and shooting seemed consistent.

These observations, on top of Charley's analysis on running speed at different frame rates (which also found no measurable difference between 30fps and 60fps) leads me to believe that disabling your frame limiter has absolutely no substantial weight or advantage in gameplay, for several reasons:

Running speed
As mentioned above, players who play at 60fps move at the same speed that players at 30fps move at. Just because there are more frames being drawn in a 1-second interval does not mean that the game itself is running faster. It simply makes your view look much smoother while moving.

Combat and "warp"
Combat animations are not interrupted and there is no warping or stuttering to players with latencies that differ by even a couple hundred milliseconds, even if one player has their frame limiter on and the other person has their frame limiter off, as shown in the video below.

It's my belief that any warp that actually is caused by disabling frame limiter is due to VC:MP sending more information in a one-second period about where the player is and what they're doing, since R2 does not interpolate player movements, animations, and positions in an accurate manner, and simply warps them into place. Since the player is updating their position more frequently, this should actually make it easier to shoot them since the need for lead aim can be reduced by the player's frequent position updates.

Warp may also be caused by players attempting to perform various glitches while running with an increase frame rate, which either makes their glitches less effective as they are updating too frequently to give off the intended effect (see above) or does nothing other than giving the appearance of warping in place.

Network traffic and packet parsing
Because they are running at a higher frame rate, they also parse more incoming packets more frequently, meaning that as long as you're running at an acceptable frame rate with decent latency, combat becomes simpler as lead aim and glitching become less feasible.

Is this concrete? No, and on top of the fact that I'm taking an issue as trivial as whether or not disabling frame limiter affects how you shoot people in a video game seriously enough to write a paper on it is ridiculous in itself, but the idea here it should be something that is looked into more closely before banning people for "frame limiter hacks." (Which, honestly, sounds absolutely absurd in any context whatsoever.)

« Last Edit: July 09, 2013, 08:48:12 am by stormeus »
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Deso

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2013, 08:16:39 am »
Code: [Select]
<[EAF]Alarba> deso was hacking
<[EAF]Alarba> 60fps

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aXXo

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2013, 09:32:28 am »
there's a long-standing theory in the VC:MP community that disabling your frame limiter or adjusting your FPS to a higher value causes players to warp for whatever reason.
I don't know the roots of this warp theory.
Originally, players with 60 FPS were alleged to be much faster than the players with 30 FPS. Obviously, when someone is butthurt, they don't really care about technical aspect of things. So, each encounter resulted in words like "fast", "speed" and "hacks" being spammed on public chat.

Charley rubbished those allegations by doing a speed test. He considered the distance covered at different FPS in a fixed interval, which obviously came out to be the same.

It seems that issue was never with the running speed, but the number of animations that are played in a fixed interval. I am not sure how VC:MP works in the background with each client's refresh rate. But after reading the text quoted below(bolded part), if it is true, then FPS adjusting has quite a lot of advantages.
It's my belief that any warp that actually is caused by disabling frame limiter is due to VC:MP sending more information in a one-second period about where the player is and what they're doing, since R2 does not interpolate player movements, animations, and positions in an accurate manner, and simply warps them into place. Since the player is updating their position more frequently, this should actually make it easier to shoot them since the need for lead aim can be reduced by the player's frequent position updates.

Theoretically, 60 FPS'ers can execute more animations per a given interval than 30 FPS'ers. On client side, the effect will be the same. But a 60 FPS'ers actions will be synced to everyone as their animations are being recorded on the server at a better rate.

From personal experience at 30 FPS, I have to hold on to the shooting animation much longer so that my opponent sees the bullets coming out of the shotgun barrel. What I think is, 60 FPS'ers can ghost shoot much more effectively. They can probably fire up to 5 shots in 2 seconds and all of their shots being synced to the opponent.

Such type of shoot and move combination does make the player look quite fast. So, even though "fast" is a technically inaccurate term. It is not completely wrong to describe a FPS adjuster as being faster than a normal player.

Aiming
Counter Strike players would know that having a high FPS actually helps in aiming at longer distances. The cursor's movement is much more fluent at higher FPS, which helps a lot in pin-point shooting at a still target. I guess the effect is similar in VC:MP, though it is not much of an advantage given the general pace of VC:MP's combat.

Speed Illusion
The best advantage that FPS gives over opponents is psychological. When a FPS adjuster makes a very fast zig zag random movement, it is synced very fluently to the opponent. That kind of movement with c glitch slide rape could brain fuck anyone into believing that they can't beat the FPS hacker. It might sound bullshit but when a player loses a duel psychologically the score turns from 9-8 to 21-8.   ;)




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stormeus

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2013, 10:04:08 am »
I don't know the roots of this warp theory.
Originally, players with 60 FPS were alleged to be much faster than the players with 30 FPS. Obviously, when someone is butthurt, they don't really care about technical aspect of things. So, each encounter resulted in words like "fast", "speed" and "hacks" being spammed on public chat.

Charley rubbished those allegations by doing a speed test. He considered the distance covered at different FPS in a fixed interval, which obviously came out to be the same.

It seems that issue was never with the running speed, but the number of animations that are played in a fixed interval. I am not sure how VC:MP works in the background with each client's refresh rate. But after reading the text quoted below(bolded part), if it is true, then FPS adjusting has quite a lot of advantages.

Theoretically, 60 FPS'ers can execute more animations per a given interval than 30 FPS'ers. On client side, the effect will be the same. But a 60 FPS'ers actions will be synced to everyone as their animations are being recorded on the server at a better rate.

From personal experience at 30 FPS, I have to hold on to the shooting animation much longer so that my opponent sees the bullets coming out of the shotgun barrel. What I think is, 60 FPS'ers can ghost shoot much more effectively. They can probably fire up to 5 shots in 2 seconds and all of their shots being synced to the opponent.
True, but there are two issues with that:
  • If everyone were to play at a higher FPS, everyone would see this wider range of animations, so not only does gameplay appear much smoother for everyone, it allows for more intricate combat techniques as well.
  • If there were discrepancies in frame rate between players (e.g. one playing at 15fps and another at 50fps), it would be the same issue that already exists between players at 15fps and 30fps -- the laggier person would not see those extra animations as the player is updating too quickly for their slower machine, so people would not have any upper hand and would still have to stand still and shoot in order to make sure the laggier person sees the shooting animation.

Quote
Such type of shoot and move combination does make the player look quite fast. So, even though "fast" is a technically inaccurate term. It is not completely wrong to describe a FPS adjuster as being faster than a normal player.
Acknowledged.

Quote
Counter Strike players would know that having a high FPS actually helps in aiming at longer distances. The cursor's movement is much more fluent at higher FPS, which helps a lot in pin-point shooting at a still target. I guess the effect is similar in VC:MP, though it is not much of an advantage given the general pace of VC:MP's combat.

Quote
The best advantage that FPS gives over opponents is psychological. When a FPS adjuster makes a very fast zig zag random movement, it is synced very fluently to the opponent. That kind of movement with c glitch slide rape could brain fuck anyone into believing that they can't beat the FPS hacker. It might sound bullshit but when a player loses a duel psychologically the score turns from 9-8 to 21-8.   ;)
Well then that sucks for players who are easily outdone psychologically like that. :P
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<krystianoo> stormeus do good job
<krystianoo> with recent update
<krystianoo> if not agree; jeb yourself in head
<Avenger> yesterday you said death to stormeus
<karan> double standard krystianoo
<karan> he called him fake prophet too
<krystianoo> sure fake prophet
<krystianoo> but with recent updates real

ferrari32

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #4 on: July 09, 2013, 11:56:00 am »
So why don't everyone just play without the frame limiter :P
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mDz

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #5 on: July 09, 2013, 01:07:09 pm »
So why don't everyone just play without the frame limiter :P

Because It's more smooth.
I don't know why, but I find playing vcmp with 30 fps annoying.
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Deso

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2013, 04:25:02 pm »
So why don't everyone just play without the frame limiter :P

Because It's more smooth.
I don't know why, but I find playing vcmp with 30 fps annoying.

Same here. It's hard as hell to follow your opponent's movements when he is zig-zagging close to you.
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stormeus

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #7 on: July 09, 2013, 07:55:48 pm »
So why don't everyone just play without the frame limiter :P

1. Some servers, like XE, do sync the frame limiter, so you can't disable it without third-party programs.
2. Though there is no fundamental difference between 30fps and 60fps, any relatively seasoned fighter is capable of taking advantage of the increased fluidity since it grants very slightly better timing of your movement, and this is what scares people into banning it - a slight advantage.

However, that second point holds true for virtually every multiplayer game that does not use frame limiters, so there's no reason why there should be any scare about increasing your frame rate, especially since it's considered one of the "hardest exploits to detect" among all of VC:MP's issues -- considering that frame rate increase "hacks" do virtually nothing of significance, I can see why. The real issue is F8 abuse and FPS reduction, as this acts as a "selective desync."

As morphine said in a server report at EA:

Quote
a FPS adjuster does not, by any means, increase client-side game speed. the fact that somebody's game might be running at twice the capped frame rate (60 frames per second) does not imply that the speed at which the player is running the game is running at twice the norm, too.

a FPS adjuster does, however, give more detail, more fluidity and more precision to the game. however, in VC's case, it makes the game look more like a soap opera than an actual game.

I don't FPS hack, but I don't see anything wrong with this either.
« Last Edit: July 09, 2013, 07:59:41 pm by stormeus »
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<krystianoo> stormeus do good job
<krystianoo> with recent update
<krystianoo> if not agree; jeb yourself in head
<Avenger> yesterday you said death to stormeus
<karan> double standard krystianoo
<karan> he called him fake prophet too
<krystianoo> sure fake prophet
<krystianoo> but with recent updates real

ferrari32

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #8 on: July 09, 2013, 08:59:16 pm »
I never actually even tried playing with frame limiter off, I'd like to try, but I'd probably get banned on most of the servers ;P
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Deso

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #9 on: July 09, 2013, 09:20:41 pm »
I never actually even tried playing with frame limiter off, I'd like to try, but I'd probably get banned on most of the servers ;P

You just can't set it off. It will automatically set back to On.
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Benedani

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Re: Frame Limiter: Is Many Evil or No?
« Reply #10 on: May 09, 2016, 04:49:31 pm »
It doesn't set it for me.
also I tried frame limiter off, and the only advantage I see is the heli takeoff
« Last Edit: May 09, 2016, 04:52:10 pm by Benedani »
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