All these comparisons to video/film are pointless. Think how fast you can rotate your viewpoint 180deg. in an FPS. 1/4 second? Less? I check my 'six' constantly while playing battlefield and other games. It's just a quick flick of the mouse back and forth. Now, at 30 fps I would see massive strobing as my view changed 180 deg. and only a handful of frames were drawn on the screen.
Back in crt days we played on 19" monitors (trust me they were Gigantic back then!) at 100 to 120hz with voodoo cards that could output 150fps. Then 60hz lcds ushered in the dark ages for a few years until 120hz monitors reappeared.
If you spent any amount of time playing at 120 fps and then tried to go back to 60 you wouldn't like it. Individual mileage may vary but for me anything over 90 feels smooth, below that I notice. And yes I think 60 is playable for sure it's just the strobing is very noticable. 30fps - no way. Third person games on a PS3 at 30 are fine on a tv but not for FPS. FPS games are a special case that need high frames because of the unbelievably fast viewpoint changes that are possible and common.
I would always lower graphic settings to maintain high frame rate in any fps.
I'm curious whether you see that "strobing" effect when locked at 60FPS (assuming your monitor is 60hz). I think a lot of people think 120fps is better than 60fps just because they are normally sitting somewhere in-between 60-120fps, where your FPS are out-of-sync with the monitor (which produces that "strobing" effect). Locking your fps at 60fps will always appear smoother than say 85fps due to that effect (regardless of whether you use v-sync to lock). In addition, once you hit 120+fps your FPS are high enough that the monitor refresh rate doesn't create that effect any more (so 120, 150, 180 will all be just as smooth). Again this is all assuming a 60hz monitor. I assume 120hz is different and haven't had the opportunity to test it like I have with multiple 60hz monitors and rigs.
While yes 60+ fps is defiantly better, this program sure helps smooth out anything below that. Before I couldn't play games that dropped below 50 fps because of bad stuttering. Now all my games are playable.
Just set your fps limiter in the program to your desired fps cap but watch it eliminate the stuttering in your games.
For whatever reason this is true (in my case at least). The FPS limiter is resolving some sort of driver bug causing the stuttering. Dunno why.