[waiquoo]

60Hz is the 'flicker fusion rate', meaning if you were changing the frequency of a flashing, stationary LED, ~60Hz would be the frequency where perception transitions from visibly flickering to apparently continuous. It's a lower threshold for refresh rate in the human eye. When you have complex refreshing images (a 2d computer screen rather than a point-like LED, diverse motion, depth, etc), you are likely to notice flickering (or tearing, jittering, non-smooth motion) if the refresh rate is near this minimum.

[barrkel]

People routinely watch movies which refresh at 24Hz and motion is apparently continuous.

Perceiving flicker has a higher threshold. I can perceive 60Hz flicker in my peripheral vision easily enough.

Other sources online (you can find lots of them but I didn't see an obvious authoritative article) suggest that 16Hz is the flicker fusion rate for motion in humans.

Flicker fusion for continuous brightness (CFF) is somewhere around 30Hz per https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15034-z and it rises with brightness - this paper is about testing how it changes in different circumstances.

[svachalek]

Unless the camera moves fast and then it looks like a slideshow. Whenever they pan across a landscape it makes me grit my teeth.

[mdpye]

This is often exacerbated horribly by the fact that the 50 or 60 FPS output doesn't divide well by the 24 FPS source material. It was smoother in the cinema, when it was projected at 24 FPS...

[joshspankit]

Fair point, but I (and many others) see stutter in theatre as well.

Most of the reason you don’t is because filmmakers know very well what their “maximum pan speed” is and they stay as far away from it as possible.