Hello everyone.
11 months ago I made a post titled 'Higher FPS and its impact on speedrun times' where I explained that I had been shown the impact FPS difference has on cars in GTA V. The issue had no resolution for a number of reasons but primarily no one was attempting to abuse the system and no one was complaining. Why fix what isn’t broken, basically.
That has now changed. Toriks achieved world record yesterday, an improvement of 30 seconds in Trevor% after 9 months. This run was done offstream, this avoids the FPS reduction that streaming causes. Comparing his on-stream and off-stream runs, he achieved 20-40 higher fps on average. While the effect is more pronounced in this video, here is a refresher on what fps does to cars Here is Broughy discussing the issue (gets to PC 4 minutes in).
Even whilst streaming, Toriks has always had an FPS and loading time advantage (Compare both our Classic% run loadless and load times). Until now, I have just accepted my disadvantage rather than have to deal with the endless difficulties we would face solving these issues. I am however not going to let GTA V Speedrunning become ‘Who can rig their system to get the most FPS’. With a single stroke, Toriks has effectively killed the viability of streaming runs as any person who does will be hard pressed improving the world record. We had an uneasy situation that no one had abused but I think this now calls for a solution.
Having thought on it, just dealing with the fps differences would cause the least impact to the leaderboards and the route itself. Moving to loadless would effectively reroute everything due to death warps and taxis taking less time. At least having the loadless timer up there we can see who has the loadless world record still.
When considering the likely solution to FPS differences, an fps cap, the problem of ‘unbeatable world records’ comes into play. An FPS cap that is too low could make some of the world records hard to beat, whilst an FPS cap that is too high will not resolve the issue. I’d recommend an FPS cap of 75, it would both solve the issue and likely have the least impact on runs being unbeatable. FPS would need to be shown on screen, the method of locking the fps would be up to the runner. I would suggest that all runs that were valid previously are valid now, as it was with all other rule changes. I would call for a vote now, but perhaps someone has a better idea so please respond down below.
Please note, I will be deleting anything Ryedawg types here. He does not run this game and his evidenced attempts to make my life worse are not something I feel I need to tolerate on this board.
FPS cap is a good solution. Someone just needs to find one external program that everyone will use and put it in resources. Display of FPS then would be needed only for WR runs, because it's really unnecessary if you're not going for 1st place.
I'm pretty sure Toriks didn't mean bad by doing an offline run. It gives you more focus and you can practice more effectively, so I assume that was the main keynote.
Having your FPS capped and implementing (or just using it, since it is already implemented apparently) timing without loads would be a reasonable solution to all of this. It's something very common in other PC runs and I don't really get why it wasn't implemented years ago to tell you the truth. It's not really rocket science.
Also calling out someone on 'having malicious intents' on beating a WR by having a better PC on a leaderboard using RTA and uncapped FPS just seems dishonest, childish, unnecessary and unreasonable.
Not by having a better PC NoobSalmon. He specifically choose to run under conditions to gain a hardware advantage, seemingly for the first time ever. He already had an FPS and loadtime advantage, he just increased it to get a world record.
I understand but I don't see the problem here given the current rules on RTA timing and uncapped FPS. It was bound to happen eventually since without these limitations it's literally anyone's game who can find solutions to speed up their game with better hardware for example. Toriks maybe wanted to have WR and having that advantage but I don't see the blame put on him on rulesets like this, I mean good for him to be honest. I'm coming from the Fallout speedrunning community where you can move way faster if you are not capped so 60 FPS capping was introduced in all of the 3D fallout games pretty early on (in 2014/5 i think). Also loadless timing became a thing the same period. Ever since then we don't have any problems in debates of runs on better hardware or runs on shitty PCs. I think it would be a fairly fair solution to this.
I'm more into GTA 3D universe speedrunning where fps needs to be capped at 25 (via in-game frame limiter), so was surprised by Viper's video, i thought fps capped to 60 in V speedruns. 75 fps is a good idea, but talking about "unbeatable world records" — what if you guys keep old WR's but if they won't be beaten in e.g. 365 days, they will be removed?
Well it's too late to go and put the cat back in the bag, and capping FPS going forward to make everyone run the game at equal speeds might seem like the "fair" thing to do when you take into consideration speedrunning as a competition between runners, but it's not, it's a competition between the world and the game and whoever beats the game the fastest is our champion, limiting the FPS so everyone is equally slow is not only unfair, it is entirely against the spirit of speedrunning. The best solution and the only reasonable and logical solution is to separate the leaderboard into FPS brackets so DarkViper would have the T% WR in the 75-100 FPS bracket but Toriks would have the 100-125 FPS WR (these specific numbers are just to illustrate the point, the actual FPS brackets should be determined after rigorous testing at multiple FPS breakpoints) and of course it goes without saying the leaderboard would not be separated like this by default and to see the FPS brackets you would activate a filter like when looking at PS3 or XBOX only runs. Any other solution is tantamount to treason in the name of beating the game as fast as possible for the glory and honor of speedrunning.
@NoobSalmon 'I don't see the blame put on him' He was adamantly against an FPS cap and it was the largest reason why I didn't push harder for it 11 months ago when I brought it up.https://www.speedrun.com/gtav/thread/qqka4 To quote Toriks 'absolutely no, btw havent checked forums in forever lolol'
To put it bluntly, Toriks is a large part of why this was never formalised in the rules and it was he, not anyone else, who specifically abused this lapse. Who else is there to blame?
@tolly2hot Good one lol.
@MToms127 What dishonesty?
Viper asked me to put this here, I should mentioned that I have not been able to test this on my own PC, it's simply too weak to reach the framerate necessary to really "break" the game. But here it goes:
The game has a "performance loss catchup" feature where if the framerate drop is considered significant by the game it will give your car a little speed boost that almost instantly decays. So when it works as intended the average speed difference is way smaller than what's caused by human error, so no worries there. Until you go beyond 120fps, that is. In past tests I've participated in, dating to about 2 years back now I believe, it seems like the game overcorrects your speed if it's running faster than 120fps. So running the game faster than that and making it unstable in a particular way will fool the game into "correcting" you when it shouldnt, thus making you faster than intended. But on the other hand you dont want to bring the framerate down too far or else it will be percieved as more random. Because the physics tickrate is tied to the render framerate, anything relying on collision detection will be more accurate at higher fps.
You know about curb boosting, so imagine speeding over a pothole. Lets say the car skips past it at 30fps, but 60fps will just barely detect it and 120fps might detect it multiple times. It's like drawing a line the length of the distance covered in 1sec, then chopping it up to match the framerate. Each step on that line is one detection point. Naturally you'd want more accurate "scanning" of the road to increase the odds of consistent results, so cranking the framerate up as high as possible is desirable because of that.
It should be noted that I have seen the RE7B begin to self-boost beyond 140fps, so god knows what other cars break the rules beyond that.
- So it comes down to a balancing act of not tripping up the performance loss catchup thingy (decays too slow beyond 120fps according to older tests), hit detection accuracy (higher fps is desired) and spontaneous breakage (like the RE7B breaking the rules beyond 140fps)
EDIT: I'd suggest to settle on a framerate at or below 120fps, favoring some margin for error. A stable 110fps should make sure that the performance catchup doesnt trip up more than necessary, but 120fps could still work just fine.
Making Toriks out to be the villain is the dishonesty, claiming he is abusing the rules cause he wasn’t streaming. That’s an absolute joke. You also stated he improved his time after 9 months, which serves no purpose at all except to suggest that he was playing beyond his abilities because of a moderate increase in fps. It just looks bad to do it this way instead of arguing solely that capping FPS would make it more fair and provide a more accurate comparison of skill, it comes off as “Toriks ruined the game with his underhanded tricks so now we have to fix this mess.”
You blame Toriks for not taking care of this issue 11 months ago. If he consistently acts like he has no interest in modding the boards, talking about issues like this, or even checking the forums at all, why make him a mod in the first place? If you're the only one actively trying to tackle an issue, than you can make decisions by yourself with the community's help. You don't need Toriks' approval. If you see a solution to a serious problem like this, and see no one taking action, gotta do it yourself. You can't expect people to stick to unwritten "rules", even if they're morally right.
I don't think Toriks' had malicious intent behind his offline runs, if you had a free hour in the evening to do a Trevor% run before going to sleep, you wouldn't go live either for that one hour. You need to stop acting like he's the devil for doing this, you're definitely being unnecessarily harsh on him. Since this issue has not been researched at all apart from a vague Youtube video you linked, I feel like you're overreacting way too much.
If I understand @CHILLI's post correctly, the curb boosting differences are only really relevant above 120 fps. Even in toriks' offline run he doesn't even go above 120 on driving sections where it matters. So is it really such a big deal? Whenever I do offline runs of T% I never beat the golds that I get on stream. And where is proof that FPS influences loading times? I've never even seen this being discussed anywhere, nor have I seen any videos about it. Could it just be specific graphics settings, specific SSD you have? Seems like a more logical explanation to me, but please prove me wrong.
For the record, I agree that loadless timing will never work in this game and should never be the timing standard, for reasons already stated.
Other people have said this, but you simply cannot ever create a level playing field for a game like this. Maybe for the current top5 with good computers you can, but what if someone really good comes around who can barely hit 50-60fps? He will be screwed and in the same situation as us right now. Setting the cap to 75 is a bandaid solution, hardware will always play a factor. Even I dip into the 60's during my runs. The damage has been done, RTA is the standard.
To summarize, before introducing any kind of FPS cap (120, as CHILLI suggested, 60, to stick to GTA standards, or 75, the seemingly arbitrary number you came up with) I would like some proper testing to be done. I would do it myself, but my specs aren't great, and I don't really get above 90-100 while driving. Obviously sticking to RTA timing is the way to go, if you're so bothered about loadless just remove that coloumn entirely from the board, it's useless and unverifiable information anyway.
In the end we're all supposed to be friends here, why be hostile? Surely we can come to a reasonable conclusion without baselessly burying people's reputation.
I already explained most in GTA V discord to Viper and others but will fully explain my situation from my point of view.
Couple weeks back after dead Classic% run i started doing Trevor% for practice and proper Trevor% PB reasons. Everyone was getting Trevor% PB so i wanted to improve my too. Before that i didn't do any trevor% attempts for previously mentioned 9 or smth months which is true. I dont know why Viper said i was lying but he already apologized.
Anyway i decided to start grinding for a PB and didn't want to stream it because just like true any%, its boring and in Trevor% case seeing me in prologue all the time isn't fun either. Last few evening after work i did 3-4h of trevor% attempts and it was late after work when i cant stream anyway. Took few evenings to get this time. We knew about FPS thing since last year if not longer. That wasn't my intention to do it for better FPS, i didnt feel any advantage, game was just smoother. I had same times in missions like on a normal stream. I have slower PC so having faster loads etc doesnt makes sense since i loose a minute using loadless timer, dont know where Viper takes these numbers. Also i didnt abuse hardware advantage, which i dont have since Vipers PC is much better than my. I dont have knowledge what Online racers have so dont asume i know better, i trust my feel for the game. Its natural that times will get better especially since my PB was OLD. We improve skill wise etc. and current PB is improvable.
I dont remember what i said about FPS a year back but i am fine now since i will improve my PBs anyway. Dont see it as a huge obstacle. Hopefully didnt forget to adress something.
EDIT 1: My fps was capped to 130 due to "Complications" mission fail. I usually get if its over that. On stream i get arround 80-100, offline another as you said 30, not more.I want online Community members to set a number they thing most people who can play GTA v could achieve. Everyone post your average fps, dont matter if you run the game or not. WE can find golden middle.
NOTE: I might make some stupid points in this comment, sorry for showing a lack of knowledge I dont run the game as frequently as you do, and dont show the same amount of knowledge as you do sorry in beforehand but here’s my 2 cents on this:
After my stupid comment and seeing the comments here I got like a few things to say: Why not cap the game’s FPS? Making everyone as equally slow is the most fair thing. Speedruns are based on skill, not on how good my PC is compared to yours. And I realise it probably wont affect loading times, but thats one thing you can do to try and stablize it, Now I seem to agree and also disagree one with Toriks saying on game being smoother rather than faster. Cause there’s video evidence, but look I think its far from judging cuz Toriks was right about one thing, 11 months ago are not today, runners have improved and found new ways to make runs better, improve your PB’s and such. I suggest you wait.
I see CHilli suggests 120 or 110, would 100 still be fine? I think people who can run the game properly would be able to achieve at least 80. I want to find balance between smooth and obtainable for everyone. Burhac said he can achieve 100, me and viper too.
I made strawpool so please vote https://strawpoll.com/ke7z4ks3 Havent made one in ages so hopefully didnt mess up lol. Choose fps you can run the game with and would like to see capped at for runs.
staying to the issue at hand here...
FPS limit is a fix and an issue at the same time for this speedrun. As illuminati7777 states this issue isn't as simple as it is put. The community will have to vote on a 3rd party software that'll cap the FPS ( now we are adding 3rd party stuff to limit the game of it's and the pc fullest potential. ) and then come up with the max FPS all runners can have the FPS.
But where is the cap? 60FPS? well that seems fair cause Xbox and PlayStation run the game in that level but now you're cutting down PC potential. 100FPS? well this rules out Xbox and PlayStation forever challenging PC players ( not like xbox and playstation had the chance in the first place but what I am pointing out here is that there is another issue at hand that should be discuss ) but now what if some people pc's can't reach 100FPS and now have a ground base to say that rule is unfair and only favor those who have a strong pc as the rule imply.
If there happen to be a vote on this issue I would have to vote in favor of no change in the rules. It also doesn't matter if any runner does a run streaming or not as long as it hears by the rules at play therefore it doesn't matter. We stream to entertain our viewers give us something else to do in the boring bits of the run. Earn a bit of money. and just enjoy our hobby with others. The choice to stream is up to the runner not by the rules.
EDIT: However if the is no choice but to cap the FPS I will vote for 60 FPS I myself can reach way higher than 60FPS but in the interest of fair this will have to be it but now WR seems to be unbeatable with this or any cap so where do we go from here?
Every WR is beatable. Look i dont like FPS cap either but in interest of fair play etc. i can do.
Probably needed another vote on do you like idea of capping or not at all. I can do experimental capped runs to see if i go slower or not.
Reading here it seems that people don't know what impact FPS has, and don't seem to understand what Chilli said, so I will simplify it. Speedboosts are not simply achieved from curbs, they are achieved from any 'bump' in the game. The higher your FPS, the more of the variations in the ground your system is likely to detect and the more times it will detect each bump. So you could drive on a, to our eyes, flat surface and gain a speed difference between 60 and 90 fps. So you both gain more speed boosts and the speed boost have more impact the higher your FPS. The principle of this was shown in this video Additionally, it appears loading is somewhat effected by FPS too (explaining my and Toriks' loading differences) as shown in this video These are the facts. Higher FPS is faster.
I will try and respond to @illuminati7777 post in a non-hostile way. "If you want to get a higher FPS, and therefore go faster, then do offline runs, or use NVENC, or use lower quality settings for the stream." Illumanati. Everyone's PC can not produce the same FPS, regardless of how much you reduce the load. By advocating for speedrunning to become a hardware contest, the world record will ultimately go to whomever has the most money. You are ultimately saying "Speedrunning should be pay to win". I can not express how....I can not express my feelings to this view in a non-hostile way. Speedrunning is meant to be a contest of skill, not who has the most disposable income. We will never completely remove the effect of hardware, but we are trying to put a fair cap on it. Leaving this open just means that every passing year the previous world records will be easier to beat, not because new strats are found or people become more skilful, but because hardware becomes better. Speedrunning is not a test of how good current CPUs are.
The solution is a 75 fps cap. It will both allow for hardware differences to be normalised while still having current world records be beatable.
Here are the considerations: Reducing people's ability to simply spend more money to increase their hardware advantage. Normalizing, as much as possible, the hardware differences between individual runners. Maintaining the actual play-ability of the game, i.e enjoyment. Keeping the world records on the board beatable so we don't have to wipe the boards.
75 fps is a balance of all 4 considerations. You can scream "Why not 74 FPS, or 76!" but at the end of the day there has to be a value chosen.
You started this conversation by arguing no FPS cap should be done. Now you are speaking about caring that some people can't reach 75 FPS. Do you have a consistent position or are you just going to troll me all day? Either balancing hardware matters to you. or it doesn't. Can you pick one so I can actually engage with what you actually believe?
To the question of "Yeh but what about X! Why care about Y when X exists" Loadless timing is harder to address and a separate topic. I cover it here Just because we can't remove 100% of the effect of hardware doesn't mean removing SOME is a pointless endeavour. It doesn't matter what you restrict, SOMEONE will not be able to meet the standard. It is a matter of balancing the 4 considerations listed above.
If you are making the case that 60, 70 and 75 fps are not particularly different, or rather you can't see the difference, then why are you arguing with me?
