Avatar Game Gets a Rare 40FPS Mode in New PS5 Patch

Nice one, I have had this game since December and not started it yet lol. I have a LG c1, so will definitely play it at 40 fps. Other games I have yet to buy and play include God of war ragranok and horizon forbidden west, so will do the same with them too. I like higher image quality and not too sensitive to lower frame rate as long as it is stable or offers a 40 fts mode so this is perfect for me. This is a good example of waiting to play games when they are cheaper and or better than when first released.

Also supported by Horizon Forbidden West, The Last Of Us Part 2 (PS5 version aka "remastered"), A Plague Tale: Requiem etc - still not common enough!
These modes are perfect for action-adventure games and RPGs.

Avatar in performance mode on both consoles running at 60fps is a blurred mess when panning round even with the settings correct and a top a top end VRR etc TV.
It’s sort of spoils it for me a bit and is totally the programme codes and tricks they use fault.

Other games at 60fps on both consoles exclusive or third party look so much cleaner when panning using 60fps, god knows why Avatar can’t.
At 30fps it is a very bad mess.

Nice, 40 FPS is the sweet spot on steam deck between battery life and framerate.

40fps is exactly half-way between 30fps and 60fps in terms of Frame Time - 30fps is 33.3ms per frame, 40fps is 25ms per frame and 60fps is 16.6ms.

It also fits perfectly in a 120hz container like 30 and 60fps. You get 4x Refreshes per Frame at 30fps, 3x Refreshes per Frame at 40fps and 2x refreshes per frame at 60fps.

Part of the reason 40fps isn't and hasn't been common on Consoles comes down to Displays. Until recently, we didn't have TV's with 120hz panels or VRR. 40fps doesn't fit nicely in a 60hz container so 30fps (2x refreshes per frame) became the 'minimum'. With the majority of TV's still unlikely to offer 120hz, there has been 'little' reason to optimise for the 'few' that can use that mode. Those with 60hz TV's though will have to settle for 30fps or 60fps modes.

I would expect it to become more Common as more and more TV's have at least 120hz Panels with more and more people upgrading from their existing 60hz TV's. These TV's are also becoming cheaper too.

Nice to see more Devs adding this feature and I hope to see more do so in the future.

Wonder if this is hard to implement on Dragons Dogma 2 and Final Fantasy XVI those two recent games are fantastic but the framerate isn't

Played HFW in the 40 FPS mode and it was the perfect balance. this is good news as I bought this on sale and just started it,

Not good enough, sorry.

40 fps is a gigantic step down for slightly better graphics - why are these companies not optimising games for the hardware they're releasing on?

I have stopped buying games with really poor performance modes, or that can't do 60fps. I'm currently playing Skyrim vanilla on PS5 - even that at native 4K 60fps looks amazing.

@BAMozzy Honestly I find the slight judder of 40fps on a 60hz display to be less jarring than unsteady 30fps slide shows.

@Terra_Custodes
I totally agree, on many PS5 exclusive games like HFW I tried 40fps, ok a bit better than 30fps but nowhere near as good as full 60fps.
HFW etc at full 60FPS VRR on, zero motion blur setting, looks so clean when panning around and smooth. Nothing else will do for me now.

@NEStalgia To be honest, I'd prefer a steady 40fps on a 60hz screen than an unsteady 30fps - but I'd prefer a Locked 30fps to a locked 40fps on that set-up.

Its not just slight judder, but inconsistent motion as you either get inconsistent Frame persistence (1 frame displayed for 2 refreshes and the next frame only displayed for 1 frame), Screen tear (where the screen refreshes with only some of the 'new' frame displayed whilst the rest is the old frame persisting) or some other issue.

At 30fps, you may have more of a noticeable jump as fast moving objects move a greater distance between frames - but its Consistent and good motion blur can make it look really smooth.

Obviously I would 'generally' prefer a locked 40fps on a 120hz display to a locked 30fps - but I don't ALWAYS play in 60fps Performance modes as the 30fps mode not only looks significantly better, it offers a locked 30fps compared to a 45-60fps unstable frame rate. I prefer a 'consistent' frame rate.

@OldGamer999 they just aren't optimising correctly. The PS5 cannot handle high end 2023/4 hell, 2020 graphics. They need to tone it down and focus on a balance achieving native 4K 60fps. My jaw is dropping playing an 8 year old game in 4K 60, the clarity and colour depth makes up for insane shadow details, the longest view ranges, best specular lighting and ray tracing etc. Very nice graphics can still be achieved 4K 60 on PS5, instead they are flogging a dead horse trying to get games running on PS5 equivalent to "High and a bit of Ultra" settings on modern pc's which is unachievable.

@BAMozzy Yeah, but the reality is I almost NEVER see actual true locked 30, it's always "30ish until you turn across the open road with that building there.

Meanwhile that noticeable jump of 30 just kills me. Maybe other people slowly move cameras and that's why they don't notice these things. Any game that has a follow-camera the first thing I do is disable it since all it does is fight me as I'm continuously adjusting the camera. I was trained on +mouselook. I whip the camera 180 max speed non-stop. 30fps HURTS. Things basically just blink into different teleported places as I turn at 30.

I'm stuck on 30 on XVI because the 60 mode is both blurry and drops to 30 or below half the time anyway. I have that blur cranked at max to make it bearable and it's still gross. Doesn't matter if it's consistent if it's consistently bad But I don't totally disagree. I'd be in 60 if it were a consistent 60. Or a consistent 40. Even though that game is fugly in performance mode. But it's not just inconsistent, it's wildly inconsistent and spends more time at 30 than 60 and still looks fugly.

@Terra_Custodes EXACTLY THAT!!! Honestly I think FFXIV at 4k/60 looks better than XVI at lol/28-51 with it's 10 year old graphics. But they'll break that with the coming graphics overhaul no doubt. XVI stills may look better but in motion it's choppy, and it's got more soft focus than an Uhura headshot. Heck those settings are unachievable on most PCs and chug even on monster rigs. I really don't understand why they insist on doing that. I assume the marketing department makes these decisions because they'll wow in stills and youtube videos. At least give us a toggle in the settings for "Bullshot mode" that we can turn off.

@NEStalgia yep, and I've had the same experiences with most AAA games - choppy 30fps and clear graphics, or vaseline smeared screen 60fps. It's not a nice set of options. With this 40fps middle ground being simply subpar in both metrics.

I agree, older titles that had great design and art direction really soar in native 4K at 60. I feel like I never experienced Skyrim as intended until recently playing it on PS5, the Blackreach caverns had me in awe. And I notice details I never have before across the board. That to me is more stunning and immersive than a pretty but choppy 30fps game or the aforementioned vaseline smeared 60fps option.

You're right though, they're selling dreams, it's marketing but ultimately it's a fugazi. I'd prefer they just made games as pretty as 4K native 60 can be achieved on the hardware. Even if it means 5 year old FX, it will be a better package and experience overall.

That's all well and good and requires a lot of know-how and information about the available hardware and the individual devices for it. Something like that is no longer acceptable on consoles. It's 2024 and we should get native games without options. the full resolution of the TV with the full frame rate. one bells and whistles here and there and compromises. This whole thing is getting annoying, I can't do that philosophy anymore.

40fps modes arent for me (framerate is far too low) , but adding as an option is a good thing as i think they are a far better option to 30fps providing your TV can do 120hz.

@Terra_Custodes Even the games that look "amazing" are still pretty soft and low internal res these days, even at 30fps. They keep cramming all these shaders in and the end result is an image we're told is supposed to be pretty, but just looks fuzzy and ill defined. The sharpness of full resolution just can't be beat. Even if you have to turn the fx all off. I still blame the GPU mfrs for pushing using all their supposedly advanced new tech all the time on devs as the big new "do this because you can!" feature rather than focusing on actually hitting res/fps goals for the modern age on the actual hardware.

Look on the bright side. Since new AAA games are released broken and incomplete, we can take solace in the fact those 5yo gfx games that run 4k60 basically are finally new releases, and the $70 betas the marketeers are selling will be able to be played when they're finally out of beta and run at 4k60 in 5 years at half price!

@Terra_Custodes
I had a similar conversation not long ago, about how developers adding more and more effects and new graphics techniques, or CPU heavy systems, often lowering pixel counts to silly levels, just makes games look worse and worse.
60fps is a must for me (no 60fps, no buy), but I wholeheartedly agree that all these effects and techniques at the expense of clean image quality is a real turn off.
To give a 3rd party example hogwarts was one of the best looking games last year imo (i cant think of a 3rd party game that i thought was better), and in performance mode was pretty consistant at launch - with higher framerates now usual since the last patches if you have 120hz VRR and uncap.

RE Skyrim - is this the PS4 version? Does it now run at 4k60 locked on PS5?

That’s fantastic news. I haven’t played it yet but when I do I’ll definitely play on that mode.

@Terra_Custodes
Yeah, I’m not sure what has happened with developers and this new generation. Sort of started ok but has gone wrong now in my opinion.
Chasing the wrong things.
Releasing games that are far better 6 months to one year later with patches.
Taking ages to release games, then badly optimised etc.
It’s like the whole performance of development of games as gone from about a 9/10 to a 6/10 with a need desperately to pay more attention to quality overall and micro manage development better.

@Rich33 You hit the nail on the head with the piling of fx, but fuzzier and fuzzier image. It looks crap.

PS5 native version (free update from PS4 version) indeed locked native 4K 60fps and it's beautiful.

@NEStalgia that's how I've learned to live with each gen now. They can run the previous gens games properly. That's how I'm treating consoles moving forwards. Another reason to eschew a ps5 pro as well.

@Terra_Custodes @OldGamer999 @Rich33 It's not just new gen devs, this has been the cat chasing it's tail since the 90's. Whenever more powerful hardware comes out, devs just soak it down with as much graphics special effects as possible and ignore the actual rendering. Every single time. When Quake 2 came out it was all about the colored lighting!

It's got to be the marketers, or the GPU makers pushing the tech, and maybe more importantly bored curous devs that want to "try all the latest things" or worse are afraid of getting "left behind in the industry" unless they're familiar with using all the latest things, and therefore keep their skills up to date by using tech that's barely out of beta and only works on $1000+ GPUs, kind of.

Either that or the mandates come down from on high now to do this so that for the next 20 years they have a "state of the art" version of their game to keep re-selling as new without much extra work added.

@Pranwell Not really, devs have now been focused on bogging down the CPU with stuff, and the Pro won't fix that. The PS6 will. @Terra_Custodes is exactly right, I think the way to do consoles now is buy it to play the previous gen's games properly. Better yet, wait until the latter half of the gen, and just buy only Pro models and skip the cross-gen launch. Then you buy a console, and have a bunch of games that are now actually fixed and completed and half price and have it on hardware that's half as good as the hardware it was meant to run on instead of 10%.

I find it funny, though that the same industry that's in crisis trying to figure out how to get people to buy games at launch before the value collapses also proudly declare that the game won't actually be complete or fully functional for up to a year after launch. Wanna pay me today for next months dinner?

@Pranwell I expect the pro to have performance modes too, it will definitely have compromises. Smarter to focus on what games the PS5 can run optimally, and wait for a PS6 for this gens hard hitters. Save the wallet and your disappointment. Just my stance.

@NEStalgia
I wonder if this will be a down fall for games consoles.
The series consoles are not selling well at all.
The PS5 is about 4.5 million down in Europe, same time line as PS4.
And to make it worse they are charging high prices for consoles and games.
For example, PS5 in UK now £480 PS4 at same time line was reduced to £300 permanently RRP.

@OldGamer999 More or less, at least the downfall of business as usual for consoles. As is often pointed out the total market for consoles hasn't really changed since the 80's, it's roughly selling in the same numbers. And since it's selling in a lot more markets than it used to, that means the market actually shrank in the original key markets.

But, the total market share hasn't totally shrunk much, either. So what that tells us is that a lot of would-be Xbox and PS buyers, where numbers are down, became Nintendo buyers instead (where numbers are lolwut.)

"The market" has decided crazy photorealistic graphics don't matter, people just want to conveniently play games that look good enough, and they're not willing to pay high hardware premiums or software premiums for super graphics, outside a relatively small niche that seems willing to pay literally any price for it.

Maybe cloud solves all problems, but we already see MS splitting the XSX servers into running 2 XSS instances because running graphics heavy servers in a datacenter is pretty expensive, and energy consuming. And real estate consuming. Even in the cloud future, the cloud operators are going to have limits on just how much hardware and electricity is viable to run for the sub fee most users are willing to pay and the onus will still be on devs to turn down the graphics drain.

It was always going to end here, but the whole industry seemed to floor it as they approached the cliff. Games feel like vanity projects to show how much the devs can do with so much technology and less like a well thought out package to entertain someone else. Like a movie with an all star cast, filmed on location in gilded costumes, but with no script or plot. And in some cases, no film in the cameras either.