hemanursawarrior wrote: ā09 Apr 2020, 13:35
I've been playing Animal Crossing (30 FPS) on my Vizio P65-C1 (120Hz) TV, and after firmware updates, it's looked very blurry when running/panning sideways so I started playing around with the interpolation options on the TV. After turning up Reduce Judder, it's cleared up the image when moving, but very often there's sudden movements that are choppy.
I assume this choppiness is because the processor doesn't know how to interpolate odd movements (like the animation of casting a fishing rod, or turning around suddenly). Is that correct?
Not sure why I haven't noticed the choppiness before the firmware updates, but it's still annoying to see the unevenness. Does someone have a display/TV that somehow does a better job of smoothing out 30 FPS games?
Hello,
Yes -- you are correct. Early
frame rate amplification technologies (FRAT) such as classical television motion-interpolation -- have a lot of artifacts such as sudden stutter appearing/disappearing like this. There's no way to fix that kind of problem except to upgrade to newer algorithms that do a better job.
Adjusting interpolation settings can be a fierce tradeoff effect between judder, smoothness, latency, accuracy etc. It's a black box technology -- a chip-in-the-middle -- a middleman in a manner of speaking. Video goes to the interpolation chip, and interpolation chip displays to the TV.
Right now, there are very few good frame rate amplification technologies (FRAT) -- whether interpolation, extrapolation, reprojection, etc -- that works well at 30 frames per second without artifacts. Even things like slowdowns to 29fps generates weird artifacts. And odd motion problems.
For better interpolation, you will be looking at several thousand dollars for a TV that contains a recent "artificial-intelligence" interpolation chips. Though you will have to deal with the horrible input lag that interpolation on 30fps material does. But to get better than black-box interpolation, and far less latency, requires a frame rate amplification technology that runs on the same processor as the 3D graphics (e.g. access to 3D geometry and Z-buffers). When the FRAT can do that, it can become done so well, that it looks indistinguishable (or almost) from native high frame rate. But interpolators in a TV set are only essentially middleman, not knowing the original 3D graphics. So they will usually be prone artifacts. The AI interpolators are much better, not perfect, and still super-laggy with 30fps material.
Non-Console Alternatives:
Right now, the state of art Frame Rate Amplification Technologies that can be accessed by consumers today (as of April 2020):
-- Oculus Rift ASW 2.0 (Asynchronous Space Warp)
-- NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 with powerful GPUs
On my Oculus Rift VR, I've been playing Half Life Alyx at 45 frames per second that is currently being frame-rate-amplified (virtually laglessly) to 90 frames per second. It works darn near perfectly for all odd motion while I play this VR game, and the lag feels darn nearly identical to 90fps original. It doesn't use classical interpolation and it uses the Z-buffer to de-artifact parallax situations. None of the SOE problems and lag problems of classical television interpolaiton. Thanks to the GPU doing the "interpolation sequel" with full 3D knowledge (ASW), it's so vastly superior to television interpolation.
Unfortunately, consoles don't have this luxury -- they have to rely on an external interpolation algorithm that has no knowledge of how the 3D graphics was generated. So good 30fps console interpolation is so infrequently tested. The Samsung low-lag game mode interpolation is also one route, but there is also an artifact penalty of lower-latency "middleman" interpolation algorithms too.
You can often get better by spending more money, but sometimes at this point, this same money (to upgrade to a super-high-end TV with a recent AI interpolation chip that's better but still not perfect for 30fps console material) pays for a wonderfully top-of-the-line VR rig instead, or even 4K 144Hz rig / 1440p 240Hz rig. So prioritization of game spending can play a role.