Of the points raised by @TheWarmWind…
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This is part of the issue I’ll add more info that I posted elsewhere below that can explain WHY this is the case. It’s still not REALLY justifiable but that’s just my opinion.
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I don’t think people will feel pressured to spend more on hardware just to play 1 single game. I certainly wouldn’t buy a console just to play say GT7, I didn’t in the past and wouldn’t do so now either, same was true of Forza prior to it’s arrival on PC, both games were interesting as I’m a petrolhead but still, I’m not gonna pay £500 to buy a console just to play a game that interests me, again that’s just me.
On the flipside if you have a desktop for web browsing then for less than £200 you can get a GPU (e.g. a 2080Ti) that WILL get you 50-80fps @4K set to the extreme preset, which is 33% more than the XSX is capped at in performance mode. Cheaper than paying £500 for a console for a single game.
IDK the exact implimentation of FSR used on the XSX but IF it’s exactly the same as it is on PC this is what you’ll get.
Performance mode:
960 x 540 upscaled to 1920 x 1080
1280 x 720 upscaled to 2560 x 1440
1720 x 720 upscaled to 3440 x 1440
1920 x 1080 upscaled to 3840 x 2160
Quality mode:
1280 x 720 upscaled to 1920 x 1080
1706 x 960 upscaled to 2560 x 1440
2293 x 960 upscaled to 3440 x 1440
2560 x 1440 upscaled to 3840 x 2160
As for why MS T10 chose to limit fps rates, here’s my thoughts from another thread…
“60fps = 1 frame every 16.66666666666 recurring ms, but they cannot have infinite decimal places so you’ll get 16.67 or 16.667, a rounded up number.
With 144fps you you’re getting a frame every 6.94444444 recurring ms, again applying the same number of decimal places you’ll get 6.94 or 6.944ms, a rounded down number. Same with both 30 and 120fps which get also get rounded down.
So one gets rounded up, the other rounded down, there’s your synchronisation issue which eventually leads to the timing discrepancy, the longer the race the larger that discrepancy becomes.
Add in variable fps rates and you compound this problem further sometimes rouded up and sometimes rounded down…
The servers attempt to correct the discrepancy by miscalculating or adjusting the relative locations based on the servers polling rate.
The slower the polling rate is? The bigger the discrepancy.
The faster the polling rate is? The lower the discrepancy.
If the server polling rate is 60Hz then those at desynchronised fps rates will gain an advantage at each polling point as the server will round up or round down their ACTUAL position vs their perceived/expected position.
It can also lead to in race collisions (not outright smashes more likely bumping and grinding) due to these positional “disagreements”. in a similar way to high vs low ping to the servers due to internet connection speeds, exactly like when you see cars to appear to skip about rather than be smooth and consistent in their track placement.
MS could resolve this by increasing the polling rate the servers use but that increases costs, data throughput and power demand due to the increased calculations required (not massively but enough to cause this problem).
With the MP locked to 60fps everybody gets the same action rounded up instead of a mixture…”
An addition to these points…
You’ll notice that both 30fps and 120 fps both fall into the rounded down category but, afaik, no-one is complaining about 30fps having a potential advantage.
If I’m correct about the rounding issues then there’s likely an advantage for those playing at 30fps vs those playing at 60fps.
Not even a mention of this possibility thanks to T10 not ACTUALLY giving us details of the root cause of this issue.
Because T10 wants us to play on their servers instead of peer to peer like most other games they have to pay for those servers (if rented) or run and maintain them if they actually OWN the servers.
Higher fps rates means more data and more cost running the servers.
IIRC playing on dedicated servers gives them positional data on all players along with car used and tuning etc. All of this means T10 can monitor players and supposedly weed out those using cheats or trainers due to discrepancies which SHOULD be obvious when examined in detail.
Allowing them to ban persistent offenders and those abusing exploits as was seen in FH3 and FH4 with the Goliath team play bug.
Yet I’ve seen many vids that mention cheat times on the leaderboards??? How is this possible if T10 are checking for it happening? I have only one suggestion, they can’t afford to pay somone to trawl through all those datapoints stored on their servers, plus, who’d even WANT that job?
In all likelyhood they use some algorithm to scan for anomolies and act if that picks anything up.
What’s more interesting is something mentioned in this vid.
If a player has the skill to manually play the game but only has the skill to get say a top 15% time yet a dog with auto drive enabled can get a top 1%, doesn’t that make a mockery of ANY player actually TRYING to master the game?
Yeah I know these self drive features are intended to allow people with say “physical impairments” that prevent them from manually controlling the cars, to play and enjoy the game, problem is, people will often abuse things like this rather than TRY and improve their skills.
To me this seems like a far, FAR bigger issue than server desynchronisation giving PC players an advantage. They’re effectively ALLOWING players to use an IN BUILT cheat whilst claiming to abhor them and banning people for their use???
Seems like a huge dollop of double standards to me… Banning people for exploiting glitches yet allowing players an easy method to get top 1% times regardless of their skill set…