Human eyes & refresh rates.

[Wayfall]

Hi

Rather small question but there will probably be a big answer to this.

Why is it if when I come home and later play a game at 100+ frames on a 144hz display and of course it is really smooth but if I play a game that is a fixed 60fps for example Wolfenstien the new order it looks really choppy. But if I come home and play a 60fps games first my eyes don't see it as choppy but of course then the 100+ fps games seem silkier if I play one after the 60fps game.

What makes the eyes adapt so?

Thanks!

 

[Eximo]

This is a really interesting topic. Many years ago I took a psychology class that focused on biological processes and went into a lot of detail about what we know regarding visual perceptions.

Your brain is responsible for what you see more so than your eyes. Though the retina and optic nerve have been proven to do some pre-processing. For instance the brain edits out the blind spots that are created by your optic nerve. The micro movements of your eyes themselves are edited out and all kinds of other nuances.

Our brains are susceptible to optical illusions due to how our brain has trained itself to deal with particular shapes. A really good example was taking someone raised in the jungle to an open field and asking them to determine the height of someone in the distance. They were unable to do so because they always had close jungle within a few meters to compare objects against.

Since it takes time for the proteins in our eyes to convert visible light into an image in our brain we are actually seeing into the very recent past. But to us we are living in the present due to our brain tricking our perception.

To your question, the primary reason is that your brain is anticipating the movement speed you are experiencing due to the higher refresh. When you then perceive a lower refresh it is perceived as slower since your brain is still trying to anticipate for the faster rate. When you start with the 60hz and move up it appears smoother as a matter of course.

Velocitacion is another related phenomena (And I have no idea how to spell that, not sure why google isn't helping me out there). This is where after driving for a long time on the highway your perception of how fast you are going has changed. This leads to speeding in lower speed zones or failing to stop soon enough.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Our perception of time changes depending on a lot of factors. It's a pretty interesting field of study, but difficult given the subject nature of things. When you're tired or less attentive, you aren't processing information as quickly. You're filtering out more unimportant information, and using a lot of mental shortcuts to figure what's important.

There was a series of experiments to try to show whether or not we could speed up our perception in stressful situations, like a 150 foot free fall into a net. People's speed of perception (noticing fast events) didn't seem to improve, but their recollections of the events and images they could perceive was magnified, as well as the subjective amount of time they experienced.