Intelligent FPS settings

[sacon]

OK, here is my rant for the day, nothing to do with being in a dejected mood over England loosing the football last night (we were robbed!)

I play mostly first person shooters on line. I want the FPS to always stay above 30, and to average at 60+. I also want to play at a resolution of 1024x768 with the eye candy turned on as much as possible. My current system is an XP2400+ with a 9600XT. The compromise is that I always have to tweak the eye candy down to get the FPS I want, and that cheeses me off.

I want games to have an intelligent FPS setting instead of muddling around with low level settings. Why should I have to decide if I want ejecting brass or not in call of duty when the game could be doing this for me. With intelligent FPS there would be just two settings, the lower bound FPS and the upper bound FPS. If I'm playing Call of Duty then I would set this to 30 and 60. The game would then provide the richest content of eye candy that it can possibly give within this range. When the action gets frantic then the FPS will aim for the upper bound level, when the action is slow then the eye candy kicks in. Think about it, when do you want to admire the graphics, in the middle of action or when you are observing the action?

Am I talking bollards or what

 

[Dark Assassin]

While your post has some validity to it, you fail to address the need for personal preference. For instance, some might desire all settings turned onto "Maximum" with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 and AA and AF set to a maximum level as well while others want the game just to run smoothly without all the nitpicky eye candy.

Yet another instance in Need For Speed Underground:

I have all the settings turned up to maximum with a resolution of 1280 x 1064 running, but I have motion blur and lighting trails turned off because they are superfluous and can slowdown the performance without offering any significant upgrades in image quality.

Some people just like certain things being disabled and some don't. It boils down to the same preference for someone choosing an Intel processor over an AMD one and vice versa.

Dark Assassin

 

[StArWaRrIoR]

I am more than capable of running at 16x12 in every game I am playing, but I don't chose to. I actually prefer 1024x768 with everything at the utmost highest levels possible. To me, 16x12 is too high and text becomes small. My personal sweet spot is a 19" monitor @ 1024x768. I am sure others will disagree as it's totally personal preference.

 

[sacon]

For instance, some might desire all settings turned onto "Maximum" with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 and AA and AF set to a maximum level

Set both the lower and upper bound values to the lowest playable FPS. ie 20

others want the game just to run smoothly without all the nitpicky eye candy

Set both the lower and upper bound values to 60 FPS.

The rest of us that want a bit of both can set the lower to 30 and the highest to 60.

Come on, you know I am making sense here

 

[dualblade]

Set both the lower and upper bound values to the lowest playable FPS. ie 20




Set both the lower and upper bound values to 60 FPS.

The rest of us that want a bit of both can set the lower to 30 and the highest to 60.

Come on, you know I am making sense here

it makes perfect sense, in addition to the tweaks already available. no reason why game developers couldn't implement it on top of what we already have. like an auto/manual mode. the auto modes could be iq(20fpsmin)/mixed(40fpsmin)/performance(60fpsmin) and the game would actively scale the iq options so that min framerate could be maintained.

perhaps there could even be a custom auto mode where you input min fps. all image quality options you set manually could be forced (set af/aa, set resolution...), or you could set them to auto to let the game vary them to keep up framerate.

it might be good to set 1024x768, 2xaa, 8xaf and let the game vary the rest based on the performance you desire