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Comment by nerdralph | Hacker News Reader

I agree with most of the article, but would clarify the following: > For the screen to look smooth, frames have to be drawn at the display’s refresh rate. On the most common 60Hz display, that means 60 frames per second, or about 16.6 milliseconds per frame.

It isn't absolutely necessary to match the display refresh rate. With a 144Hz monitor, 72FPS is going to look smooth for the vast majority of the people, and even 48FPS will look smooth for most people. I agree that higher FPS is better, but there are diminishing returns.

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It's a good nitpick. A hypothetical 1000Hz display will still look smooth to the human eye at 60/120Hz. A 1Hz display will never look smooth.

But it's more about honoring the user's preference. I personally would rather 60Hz, then 120Hz heating up my room unnecessarily. If someone has a display set to 1000Hz for whatever reason, then you should try your best to honor that.

A user's hardware represents the worst case scenario they want to be able to handle, not their preferred nominal settings. Most people aren't changing their screen refresh rate when they switch between playing a game and reading wikipedia.

It depends. My display being at 1000hz doesn't mean I need your homebrewed accordion menu eating up the CPU to slide out and wiggle at 1000hz

Below a certain threshold things are certainly going to look janky. But you’re right you don’t have to match the screens native refresh rate. More important is that you have a consistent frame rate. If you can’t hit 120hz, it’s better to target 60hz, rather than 120 a miss your frame budget. 30fps will also look better than 60 but regularly dropping frames.

I generally agree, though "consistent" can by varying levels of strict depending on the tradeoff you want.

But importantly, if your screen is variable refresh rate or high rate enough compared to your typical performance, that greatly reduces the inconsistency. Go ahead and vary between 55 and 70 if the screen is at 165. Definitely don't drop to 30 and I don't think you want to drop to 41.25 either.

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