[tverbeure]

Higher refresh rates don't have to be perceptible to be useful: they can shift the balance in head-to-head gaming.

Imagine 2 identical gaming setups with 2 players that have the same skill set. In an FPS game, you'd expect each of those players to win 50% of the games.

Now switch one monitor from 120Hz to 240Hz. On average, the player on the 240Hz monitor will see their adversary 4ms earlier than the player on the 120Hz monitor and thus be able to push the mouse button earlier too.

[nkrisc]

I think this sort of effect odd what makes people think they can tell the difference - they can notice the indirect side-effects that correlate with the difference.

A pro FPS player might notice that they loose contests peeking around corners more often. Obviously network latency in online games will be a factor as well, but since it likely averages out for both players over time, I would guess you can mostly discount it along with alternating who’s doing the peeking.

I don’t think anyone could look at a scene on a 120hz vs 240hz display and tell the difference, there needs to be some indirect clue.

[sjoedev]

I play video games at a decently high level (like top ~10% in a few competitive games). To support what you’re saying, I can tell the difference between 144hz and 240hz if I’m in control. For example, if I can shake the screen around.

If I’m just watching, I’m not sure I could even tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz.

[tverbeure]

esports games are played with vsync disabled, which means you'll get tearing when there's a rendered frame update in the middle of a scan. At 60Hz, you'd definitely see the tear, at 144Hz much less. So that would be a way to notice the difference as a third party observer.

[brookst]

Do any competitive FPS games actually render 240 different frames in a second? Because if both players’ hardware is doing 60FPS, that monitor difference changes nothing.

[haiku2077]

Yes, most will go up past 500FPS, even old ones like Quake and classic Counter Strike.

https://youtu.be/nqa7QVwfu7s

[timewizard]

More directly if the game engine only updates player state every 60 seconds (tick rate) then is this 4ms advantage actually present for the 240Hz case?

Further if your network has more than 4ms of jitter then I don't think you can make any concrete claim in either direction.

[dubbie99]

My theory about why it helps gamers to have a higher frame rate is that for something like a whip turn, with a low frame rate, your brain has to take a brief moment to work out where it ended up looking after the pan. But if your frame rate is high enough, you brain can keep updating its state during the pan because the updates are continuous enough not to lose “state” during it. This means when you finish the fast move, there is no delay while you reorient yourself for a few milliseconds.

[haiku2077]

Current esports titles don't use tick rates.

https://youtu.be/GqhhFl5zgA0

You can film the screen in slow motion and visually see more fluid motion (and see how it reacts to player input).

Games also use predictive methods and client side hit detection to mitigate most of the effects of network latency in the common cases.

[turboponyy]

Yes, because the visual feedback on your client matters as well (faster reaction times).

Also, it means each frame is more recent. Also, higher refesh rates reduce the mean variance between the timestamps of rendered frames offered by the GPU that are drawn on the monitor, meaning the visuals are smoother. The smoothness is pleasing to the eye and makes it easier to focus.

[leni536]

There is still theoretically an edge if you just show the same frames statistically earlier to one player.

You can present the game state statistically earlier to the player with the higher refresh rate display.

[tverbeure]

I've been told that many esports FPS games are played with graphics set to the lowest quality from maximum frame rate.

[tuna74]

You also have higher motion clarity so you are more efficient in seeing what happens on the screen.