Effects of Display Settings onUser Performance inFirst-Person Shooters

Frame Rate and Resolution on Movement Related Tasks

Tim ConnorAdam Fiske

Ryan Kennedy

withProfessor Mark Claypool

Overview We tested the effects of frame-rate and resolution on

user performance in first-person shooters. Specifically, we tested the effects they have a on

players movability. Three basic movements:

Walking Running Jumping

Recognition

Related Works Several studies were done the effects of frame-rate and resolution on streaming

video. In this case, framerate can be very low and users can still percieve what is going on just fine, but higher resolutions make things much better. This is “passive” media, whereas our study deals with “active” media. McCarthy, John D, Sasse, Angela, and Miras, Dimitrios. “Sharp or Smooth? Comparing the Effects of Video

Quantization vs. Frame Rate for Streamed Video.” University College London, London, United Kingdon, 2004. Tripathi, Avanish, and Claypool, Mark. “Improving Multimedia Streaming with Content- Aware Video Scaling.”

IMMCN, Durham, North Carolina, 2002.

Other studies, specifically Reddy’s The Effects of Low Frame Rate on a Measure for User Performance in Virtual Environments, show that users performance at different movement tasks begin to greatly increase at 15 fps. Reddy, Martin. “The Effects of Low Frame Rate on a Measure for User Performance in Virtual Environments.”

University of Edinburg, Scotland, UK, 1997. Swartz, Merryanna, and Daniel Wallace. "Effects of Frame Rate and Resolution Reduction on Human Performance."

Silver Spring, Maryland, 1993

A previous study was done very similar to ours. Quake 3 Arena was used to study the effects frame-rate and resolution had on users’ ability to aim and shoot targets. Claypool, Mark, Claypool, Kajal, and Damaa, Feissal. “The Effects of Frame Rate and Resolution on Users Playing

First Person Shooter Games.” MMCN, San Jose, California, 2006.

Test Parameter and Map Development Frame-rates

15 fps 7 fps 3 fps

Resolutions 640 x 480 512 x 384 320 x 240

A test harness was developed in java to randomize the order of maps and run them.

Four Maps Walking Running Jumping Recognition

Walking / Running map

Jumping Map

Resolution Map

Test Setup Specs:

AMD Athlon64 3700+ 2 GB RAM 300 GB HHD nVidia GeForce 6800 17” Monitor

User space – Normal computer setup Second keyboard and monitor behind a divider away from user

This was necessary to monitor the user and to control the test harness

User Performance Rating After the testing we developed a user

performance rating For frame-rate maps it was based on two things:

Time taken to complete a map Amount of health lost during this map

(Time)*(Health Lost) = Performance Rating

For resolution maps Time taken

Walking: Frame Rate vs. Performance

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Walking: Frame Rate vs. Performance95% Confidence Intervals for Mean

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None of the confidence intervals overlap, indicating that, with 95% confidence, frame

rate makes a significant difference in performance rating for the frame rates tested.

Analysis of Performance on Walking Maps

As frame rate improves, worst performances improve and the spreads of data points become smaller, possibly indicating that frame-lag effects are having less of less impact on performance.

Analysis of Performance on Jumping Maps

Jumping: Frame Rate vs. Performance

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Jumping: Frame Rate vs. Performance 95% Confidence Intervals for Mean

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The overlapping of the 7fps and 15fps confidence intervals indicates that performance at 3fps is significantly different from performance at 7fps and 15fps, but performance at 7fps is not significantly different from performance at 15fps.

As was the case in the walking maps, as frame rate increases, the

worst performances improve and the spread of data lessens.

Running: Frame Rate vs. Performance

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Running: Frame Rate vs. Performance 95% Confidence Intervals for Mean

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Analysis of Performance on Running Maps

Similar to the results for the walking and jumping maps, as frame rate improves, worst performances do as well. Additionally, the spread of the data lessens.

Like the analysis of the jumping map, the confidence intervals for 7fps and

15fps overlap. This tells us that there is a significant difference between

performance at 3fps and performance at 7fps and 15fps, but not between 7fps

and 15fps.

Recognition: Resolution vs. Performance

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Note: 1 is 320x240, 3 is 512x384, 4 is 640x480

Recognition: Resolution vs. Performance95% Confidence Intervals for Mean

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Note: 1 is 320x480, 3 is 512x384, 4 is 640x480

Analysis of Performance on Resolution Maps

On the lowest two resolutions, 320x240 and 512x384, respectively, participants

completed the maps with similar distributions of time. At the highest

resolution, however, 640x480, worst performance improved and the spread

of data lessened.

95% confidence intervals for 320x240 and 512x384 overlap with each other, but 640x480 does not overlap with either. This indicates a significant difference in time to completion for the resolution of 640x480.

Conclusions Frame rate impacts performance in walking,

jumping, and running. Performance in walking maps improves significantly with

each jump in frame rate tested. Performance in jumping and running maps improved

significantly from 3fps to 7fps, but not from 7fps to 15fps. Resolution impacts performance in recognition tasks.

Time taken did not significantly improve from 320x240 to 512x384. But, 640x480 is significantly better than both of the lower resolution.

Future Work Things that could be expanded upon in this

particular study Better demographic range to draw conclusions

between gender or age More recent first-person shooter to make it more

relevant to today. Effects of frame-rate and resolution on user

performance in other genres.

Questions?

The End