I simply enjoy my games and don't care for FPS. Worked great for... uhm... more than 20 years now!? If a game feels choppy, I just lower some of it's settings until I'm satisfied. But that's me. I even enjoyed some "unplayable console ports", without noticing that they're unplayable. Just don't read stuff on the internet and enjoy your games ;)

To understand frames per second, you have to understand frames.

When you're watching a video or playing a game, you're not watching actual movement -- you're seeing a number of still images. 24~30 still images per second is roughly the number required for the average brain to fool itself into thinking that it's seeing actual movement on a typical sized TV with you sitting a typical distance away. It is NOT the maximum that your eye or brain can see and process!

In order to understand the difference between 60fps and 30fps, let's forget about frames per second for now and just go with frames:

Let's say a friend uses an uber camera and takes still photos of you moving from a sitting position to a standing position.
If he shoots 2 frames, you'll have 2 still shots between your sitting and standing positions.
If he shoots 30 frames, you'll have 30 still shots between your sitting and standing positions.
If he shoots 60 frames, you'll have 60 still shots between your sitting and standing positions.

Now, if the total time it took you to go from that sitting position to a standing one was exactly 1 second, and you process your still shots into video to match real-time, you will have 2fps (super choppy), 30fps (pretty smooth), and 60fps (very smooth), respectively.

The faster/slower issue comes up when, say, you only took 30 shots but process it into 60 frames per second. At that point, your entire movement from sitting to standing will be over in 0.5 seconds instead of 1 second. It's not an issue with most newer games because they'll work with hardware to create or skip frames to match the developer's desired "realtime" timings.

The technology of showing you this fake movement isn't different between TVs, computer monitors, and movie projectors. They all show you a number of still frames each second, not actual movement.

And this is why high-performance gaming hardware is in demand. When given a lot of graphical details to process, slower graphics cards and CPUs won't be able to process as many still frames per second as required by your eyes and brain to detect the images as fluid movement.

15fps is fine on old phones with small screens, but that same 15fps will be choppy on even a 17" monitor, as there are big gaps between still images that your brain notices. It'll think it's being bombarded by myriad still images vs. seeing smooth movement, thereby inducing fatigue and nausea.

Obviously, some people find 30 frames per second to be fine. But they're really wrong when they say that people can't tell the difference between 30 and 60. Maybe between 50-60fps, or between 60-100fps, but 30-60 is a big difference that the average human brain can differentiate quite easily.

about 30 FPS?

The people who aren't idiots are aware how the limitations of the human eye do not contradict a better perception of motion at higher framerates. That some use biological and physical facts to prove absurd points doesn't mean that the facts themselves are wrong, it means that the people using them in their arguments don't understand shit.

And don't get me started on audiophiles... I'll just say this: the difference between 30 and the 60 FPS is very noticeable to the average person and the reason why you don't see that difference when watching gameplay videos online is probably because the videos have limitations that aren't there when actually playing the game. Still, the FPS are the last thing I'd be concerned about when comparing current gen to next gen, there's certainly far more noticeable advantages the PS4 version of MGS will have.

This is what I've learned as well.

It would be swell if they could create that natural occuring motion blur in video games because the technique they have been using the last couple of years is not working, at least not for me.

Good for you but people are different. Those who care about FPS can't just magically ignore it.

oh perfect for me to look at, random question but does this help with motion sickness?

Frankly I believe that it will rather have the opposite effect since it strengthens the illusion of motion.

It depends on the game itself and people tend to be affected by different things, but for me, definitely yes. Higher framerates relieve motion sickness on certain games.

If I'm getting nausea from the way the game itself works, like head-bobbing (curse whoever came up with that idea), claustrophobic environments like dungeons, disorienting point-of-view.... Higher fps doesn't help me at all.

But for other games, like the Counter-Strike series and most other FPSes, MMOs, and other first- or close-up third-person games, I usually don't feel sick at all on 45+ fps, while going below 30 will make me want to puke within a few minutes at worst. Saint's Row the Third comes to mind from recent experience. :( It's fine in indoor or quiet environments but driving and shooting make me sick as frames drop to the 20s.

I like having some amount of head-bobbing (feels a bit weird just sliding around the game world) - more games should include the option to toggle it off for those who don't, though.