Can you see the difference from the FPS fix?

[C_Dub]

Luckily Fresh 3.3.1 came out and is based off this newest update. I can def see a difference. The phone is smooth as glass now, no more choppiness when dragging widgets, scrolling menus and swiping through homescreens.

This phone keeps getting better.

 

[vgsantiago]

I don't play much games, but noticed a big difference when playing Angry Birds. That's my only benchmark I can go by personally, also noticed swiping menus and scrolling is improved.

 

[msvnlu]

smoother!!! this is one of the good update. its one of those, i can live without it, but if i can have it, it makes it so much better!!!! when scrolling up/down on the list of apps, i was wonder if there is something to slow that down, lol. silky. people that is comparing it to an iphone, remember that a iphone is BASIC, nothing in background, etc. the person who mention that the droid X felt choppy, hahaha, im glad i did not get that phone.

EDIT: running stock, unrooted

 

[DustinMyselfOff]

I have to admit I was skeptical. We only see things at about 20 frames a second (which is why we don't see individual frames when we watch movies that are typically shot at 24 fps), and when I watched videos of people running more than 30 fps online I didn't notice ANY difference.

BUT. When I got this update I immediately noticed all aspects that had to do with any movement of anything on my phone were faster, smoother, and better looking.

I have never been so happy to be wrong.

I don't get it, but I like it.

 

[JunBringer]

I have to admit I was skeptical. We only see things at about 20 frames a second (which is why we don't see individual frames when we watch movies that are typically shot at 24 fps), and when I watched videos of people running more than 30 fps online I didn't notice ANY difference.

BUT. When I got this update I immediately noticed all aspects that had to do with any movement of anything on my phone were faster, smoother, and better looking.

I have never been so happy to be wrong.

I don't get it, but I like it.

I see what you mean. A good example is a lot of the new tvs out there have a really high refresh rate and I saw Toy Story on one of them and it looks unreal. I dunno that this is a fps thing, but the way we see allows us to pick up on that.

 

[mbell75]

I have to admit I was skeptical. We only see things at about 20 frames a second (which is why we don't see individual frames when we watch movies that are typically shot at 24 fps), and when I watched videos of people running more than 30 fps online I didn't notice ANY difference.

not true. the human eye can certainly detect different frame rates way over 20, thats why a film looks way different than a soap opera or a music video. Something shot at 24 fps will look much different than something shot at 60 fps. so of course the jump in frame rate in this update is noticeable.

 

[Jensen]

I have to admit I was skeptical. We only see things at about 20 frames a second (which is why we don't see individual frames when we watch movies that are typically shot at 24 fps), and when I watched videos of people running more than 30 fps online I didn't notice ANY difference.

BUT. When I got this update I immediately noticed all aspects that had to do with any movement of anything on my phone were faster, smoother, and better looking.

I have never been so happy to be wrong.

I don't get it, but I like it.

I'm just curious, but where did this rumor start? I'm not bashing Dustin here or anything, in fact even HTC used this excuse when people inquired about removing the 30 FPS cap in the past.

This is such a massive load of horse $hit. The human eye can detect FAR FAR FAR more than 20 fps. If anything 20 FPS may be the LOWER limit where the human brain interprets something as moving video as opposed to still images. As you all now know, 60 fps vs 30 fps is easily noticeable.

In fact, I guarantee you I can detect the difference between 60FPS (or Hz) and 120 FPS (or Hz) with 100% accuracy. I may be slightly more sensitive to it than most, but this idea that the limit for motion smoothness detection (if you will) is anywhere below 100 updates a second is absurd.

 

[novox77]

I have to admit I was skeptical. We only see things at about 20 frames a second (which is why we don't see individual frames when we watch movies that are typically shot at 24 fps)

You're confusing this with our ability to perceive motion. It requires around 20 fps for our minds to blend the frames and interpret motion. We are used to movies played back at 24fps that if a movie was presented in any higher FPS, it would actually feel strange... too smooth.

A typical LED refreshes at 60hz when plugged into a wall socket, and if you look back and forth around the LED, you can see that it's actually blinking. Or, if you hold the LED and move it around, you'll see the blinking as well. But looking at it straight on, you can't tell there's a refresh rate. So, the perception of framerate is dependent on several factors. In the case of the Evo, it's the speed of the animations (which is kinda like looking back and forth around the LED).

Also, the improved touch sensitivity makes a huge difference in our perception of smoothness. Even if the FPS was capped at 30fps, but the screen stuck to our fingers perfectly, we'd conclude the phone was working "smoother."

 

[JoshUng]

For me, it is definitely noticeable.

However, I've found it isn't making a huge difference for gaming for me. Two games I've tried (Air Control Lite and Homerun Battle) still stutter sometimes. I just assumed it was due to the framerate, but I guess it wasn't. In Homerun Battle, when it does run smoothly, it does loook so much better.

But scrolling webpages and between menus is a huge difference. I just kind of hoped it would make the games work a little better.

 

[novox77]

I just kind of hoped it would make the games work a little better.

The FPS is uncapped to 50+ fps, but it's not guaranteed to always show at that rate. For games, it's likely the CPU is the limiting factor. The uncap won't affect the phone's ability to render games quickly.

 

[Existence]

lol wow...the FPS update actually improved my 4G. I was getting barely 2.2mb. I now just tested after update and i got 6.1mb. 3G is horrible at only 1mb.

 

[Altair68]

I noticed a big difference in the two Gameloft games I play; Let's Golf and Dungeon Hunter.
Let's Golf went from barely playable to smooth.
The stutters in Dungeon Hunter have been reduced so much that they only happen when I am being swarmed.

I notice an improvement in general use, but nothing amazing.

I just wish they had fixed the weak streaming audio codec.

 

[jrstinkfish]

A coworker of mine has an Evo that he hasn't updated yet. I've had the netarchy kernel for a few weeks so I've grown used to the FPS being uncapped. We held our phones side by side and compared scrolling, and there is definitely a huge difference. When he scrolled, it almost seemed like the icons were flashing on and off. I forgot how choppy it was. Maybe it's just a visual enhancement, but it sure does a lot for the overall experience.

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

lol wow...the FPS update actually improved my 4G. I was getting barely 2.2mb. I now just tested after update and i got 6.1mb. 3G is horrible at only 1mb.

I believe the update also included improvements for 3G & 4G.

 

[RiverOfIce]

Since I was dragged into this. They also up the touch control responsiveness. So it will seem to have more control, which is the touch controller. It does not appear to have any more fluid, which is fps. There is a difference in response time and fps, most people are noticing that the touch controller is more sensitive now. To me it is more touch responsive. But it is not smoother. There are just to few screens to display. 10 screens at 30 fps and 60 still happen too quick for the eye to see. If you want to do the same thing on your pc, open up the mouse sensitivity screen and reduce down to very slow. Noticed how slow your mouse is going, now turn it all the way up, notice how fast it is going. You did not change the fps, you just change the sensitivity of the input device. I am also getting a lot more miss types now. Oh and to be clear, I have one patched phone and one unpatched phone side by side. And really do not care about it either way.

 

[RiverOfIce]

As you all now know, 60 fps vs 30 fps is easily noticeable

On a 4 inch screen, 12-24 inches away. Come on, there is no way you can. The resolution of your eye sight could not make out the different pixels, let alone tell honest movement. If you have a 60 inch screen 5 feet away, you can tell the difference up to 40 fps. After 40 it all looks the same. The closer you get to the screen, the better it is. But we are still talking about clear vs blur. Anything over 20 fps shows blur and anything under is choppy.

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

On a 4 inch screen, 12-24 inches away. Come on, there is no way you can. The resolution of your eye sight could not make out the different pixels, let alone tell honest movement. If you have a 60 inch screen 5 feet away, you can tell the difference up to 40 fps. After 40 it all looks the same. The closer you get to the screen, the better it is. But we are still talking about clear vs blur. Anything over 20 fps shows blur and anything under is choppy.

On what are you basing this? I can definitely tell a difference, and it is the movement.

Your analogy takes into account a mouse pointer moving on a fixed screen, not a complete desktop moving across a screen.

Also, as FPS goes up blur is reduced because you are drawing more frames.

 

[RiverOfIce]

On what are you basing this? I can definitely tell a difference, and it is the movement.

Your analogy takes into account a mouse pointer moving on a fixed screen, not a complete desktop moving across a screen.

Also, as FPS goes up blur is reduced because you are drawing more frames.

The pointer is touch controller, it determines how responsive the screen is to touch. When some one says the screens change quicker, that is not frame per second, but the responsiveness of the touch controller. If you turn the mouse sensitivity down and have someone move a window, it would seem really unresponsive, if you turn the mouse sensitivity up and have someone move the window it would seem really responsive. Responsive has nothing to do with frames per second, but hz.

If you think your phone is more responsive, it does not matter if it is 30 or 60 on a 4 inch screen. Because the number of frames it takes to cover the whole screen is more then the number of seconds it takes to cover the area plus 10.

If it takes one second to cover 4 inch screen, then you only need to have 20 frames or more per second to cover that distance.

You would have to cover a 4 inch screen in less then 1/2 second to make 40 screens per second seem slow.

Can you really cover all 4 inchs of screen in less then 1/2 of a second and have it be noticeable? Are you super human?

So on a 4 inch screen, frames per second can not effect responsiveness in a way that can actually be noticable to the user. It is the increased in hertz of the screen that makes feed back to the controller more responsiveness.

If you increased the controller with out increasing frame rate, you would still see an increase in responsiveness.

Now, except for video games. Normal menus and icons have a frame rate of less then 5 frames per 100 pixels, anything more and it would not be detectable by the human eye as movement at normal viewing distance.
The closer you get to it the more you notice, the futher away you get the less you notice.

So a quick test. Open up a standard word document, make sure the view rate is 100%. Enter 5 periods, that is about 100 pixels. The smaller the screen the smaller the dots.

On a 4 inch screen, with 700 pixels, anything above 35 frames is not displayed by the screen, because you can not draw a frame that is not there.

Since it is unlikely that you would normally cross 4 inches in less then 1 seconds. 30 frames per second would not be noticeable to you when you are moving icons or changing screens.

If you allow more then 5 frames per second, it would press the video card 100% every time you move anything, which is a waste of battery.

If you do not like my answer I am fine with that, but it is the truth, I talked to some people that professionally made operating systems. Everything I am telling you is what they told me.

Which is also why windows xp looks worst then win 7. XP was coded for less then 5 frames per 100 pixels for screens less then 15 inches.

Win 7 was bumped to 10 frames per 100 pixels, for screens smaller then 60 inches.

 

[novox77]

Google Nyquist Rate. I believe this is responsible for the perceived framerate increase even if HTC was right all along: that the rendered animation is still 30 FPS. Here's the details if you're interested.

HTC claimed that the fix simply increased the screen refresh rate to 50+ FPS, but the actual rendered animation was limited to 30FPS. This rendering rate was what they considered the hardware limitation, and the refresh rate of the screen was what was fooling the benchmarks. So is there a difference in perception between "rendered 30FPS on 30FPS screen refresh" and "rendered 30FPS on 60FPS screen refresh?" Definitely. That's where the Nyquist rule applies.

Nyquist's rule states that to fully capture (reproduce) a signal, you need to record/display at 2x the frequency of the signal. Otherwise you get aliasing (dropped frames). CD sampling rates are 44,100hz, which means it can fully capture signals of 22,050hz, based on the Nyquist rate. Since 20,000hz is the upper limit of our ear's ability to hear, a 44,100hz sampling rate is sufficient to capture the music as well as we can possibly hear it.

So while things are still being rendered at 30FPS, the sampling frequency increase allows us to see closer to true 30FPS, which translates into smoother animation.

I agree with RiverOfIce though: the most influential factor in our perception of a performance improvement is in the touchscreen sensitivity (tracking). When the screen animations stick to your hand well, the phone feels very responsive. It's exactly the same thing as "handling" on a car. The ability of the car to respond to your steering wheel input gives you a good handling experience.

 

[jrstinkfish]

Scrolling through the app drawer, for example, looks much smoother than it did before. I'd chalk it up to the power of suggestion if I didn't have an non-updated Evo right beside it to compare. Whether this is done through trickery or fudging numbers, I don't really care -- things are smoother in the UI and that pleases my eyeballs.

 

[Jensen]

Long Post...

Most of what you're talking about has zero implication on what HTC did in this update to our phones.

 

[Jensen]

Google Nyquist Rate. I believe this is responsible for the perceived framerate increase even if HTC was right all along: that the rendered animation is still 30 FPS. Here's the details if you're interested.

HTC claimed that the fix simply increased the screen refresh rate to 50+ FPS, but the actual rendered animation was limited to 30FPS. This rendering rate was what they considered the hardware limitation, and the refresh rate of the screen was what was fooling the benchmarks. So is there a difference in perception between "rendered 30FPS on 30FPS screen refresh" and "rendered 30FPS on 60FPS screen refresh?" Definitely. That's where the Nyquist rule applies.

Nyquist's rule states that to fully capture (reproduce) a signal, you need to record/display at 2x the frequency of the signal. Otherwise you get aliasing (dropped frames). CD sampling rates are 44,100hz, which means it can fully capture signals of 22,050hz, based on the Nyquist rate. Since 20,000hz is the upper limit of our ear's ability to hear, a 44,100hz sampling rate is sufficient to capture the music as well as we can possibly hear it.

So while things are still being rendered at 30FPS, the sampling frequency increase allows us to see closer to true 30FPS, which translates into smoother animation.

I agree with RiverOfIce though: the most influential factor in our perception of a performance improvement is in the touchscreen sensitivity (tracking). When the screen animations stick to your hand well, the phone feels very responsive. It's exactly the same thing as "handling" on a car. The ability of the car to respond to your steering wheel input gives you a good handling experience.

Closer, but this isn't really about the Nyquist theorem.

The hardware of this phone and the Android OS were always capable of outputting more than 30FPS (as we now know). I'm not entirely positive if the cap was artificially placed on android, or if the cap was on the refresh rate of the screen - maybe someone can clarify that, but the end result really doesn't matter.

All HTC did was uncap the (refresh rate of screen or FPS of the OS) and allow it to run at the full potential of the processor/GPU and screen. That means if you are scrolling in GMAIL you are now scrolling at the limit of the refresh rate of the LCD on the EVO - which is probably 60Hz. Although it is possible that HTC actually just raised the cap to 52, instead of letting it go all the way to 60.

Either way, the end result is that it looks much smoother.

However, not ALL "smoothness" is limited by the screen. 3D gaming will often be limited by the Adreno GPU in the EVO's processor, for example.

 

[RiverOfIce]

Most of what you're talking about has zero implication on what HTC did in this update to our phones.

Just toss me aside and agree with the next poster, which more or less agreed with me. Nice.

It was the fps update that makes it look smoother, but the update, as a whole did make it looks slightly smoother.

 

[novox77]

Closer, but this isn't really about the Nyquist theorem.

maybe. But I still can't rule it out. With the uncap, screen tearing still exists, and that happens when the nyquist freq is not fully double the rendered rate. One solution to avoid needing 2x the frequency (nyquist) is to implement vsync. That forces the screen refresh rate to be variable - matching the rendering rate. This eliminates screen tearing (the top of the image is not allowed to be re-rendered until the bottom is fully finished). This also ensures that the framerate you perceive is the full potential of the phone at any instant.

We see no evidence of vsync implemented because screen tearing still occurs, and with good CPU management in custom kernels, the refresh rate is pretty constant at 52-54fps w/ 2-3 stdev. And we know the Evo can be weak graphically, not fully able to hit the refresh rate of 54fps at times.

This means rendering rate and refresh rate are not synced, and nyquist does apply. The only way to settle this debate is to record an icon being dragged from one side of the screen to the other at a known speed (faster is better), setting the camera at 120hz (requires a damn good camera) to fully capture a 60hz refresh rate. Then count how many times the icon is drawn during the swipe across the screen.

I just don't care that much to set up that experiment, but that would be how you could conclusively prove whether the Evo is now drawing at 54fps or not.

 

[toomuchgame441]

Sorry if this question has already been asked in this thread but I wanted to know if the new update improved VIDEO CHATTING on the Evo. Seemed a little jerky from the response earlier on that I read. Just wanted to know if the uncapping seemed to improve THIS feature