academic courses on cognitive neuroscience at the university of Utrecht (Netherlands). It all depends on the training a person has had. Fighter pilots have been recorded spotting 1/255th of a frame. That's right: 255 frames per second And they could give a rough estimate as to what they've seen.
Edit: seanalltogether took the time to post a source (220 fps and they could identify the aircraft). Edit2: Seeing that my post is the 2nd hit on google when looking for 'max frames per second eye can see', little add-on: This research went looking for the temporal gaps that people could perceive, I'm linking to the result diagram.. The figure about vision is a box-plot. The average population would perceive about 45 frames per second (nice going HFR movies). But on the other hand, you have 25% of the population who will percieve more than 60 frames per second, with extremes going to seeing temporal gaps of up to 2 ms. Which is insane. When I wrote my replies and the first post, I did not know about this research. New conclusion: By far most of the human population (test in USA) will see more than 24 fps, only the extremes will see just the 24 fps or less (we're going towards visualle impaired elderly). More
than 50% of the population will benefit greatly from FPS of 45+. Trained fighter pilots can see even more, so training of the brain might just be possible in perceiving a lower threshold of temporal gap
https://www.google.com/search?q=medically+what+is+the+most+frames+per+second+the+human+eye+can+see&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8myth about "60 FPS" came from in the first place? Most LCD monitors today, let alone 10 years ago, have refresh rate of 60 Hz. On such monitor, no matter how much FPS your application, such as video game, has, you will see only 60 Hz, and additional frames will be ignored. On such monitor, even if your game has 1000 FPS, you will still essentially see 60 FPS.
Now take an old good CRT monitor. CRT monitors are good for this because their image is fully dynamic, that is every frame is drawn from scratch, while LCD monitors do not effectively draw frames that are not very different from each other, they only draw the difference. In dynamic scenes CRT and LCD monitors are similar in this regard.
Most good CRT monitors used to show 85-120 Hz. When you set your refrest rate on such monitor to 60 Hz, you can clearly see extreme flickering. When you set 85 Hz, flickering becomes bearable, but still noticeable. 120 Hz - flickering is almost gone. The difference between 120 Hz and 240 Hz is still noticeable if you place two monitors close to each other and stare at them attentively, but it is very slim.
Let's return to LCD monitors since that's what most people use today. I want to make a very important statement here that people arguing about FPS often do not fully understand:
How much FPS you can see depends on the scene you watch.
Imagine if the scene is just Windows desktop, without any activity on it. How much FPS do you need? Right, 0.
Now, imagine if a dot moves on your screen at speed of 1 pixel per second. Since the monitor cannot show "half pixels", you don't need more than 1 FPS to see this as perfectly smooth as your display resolution allows.
Imagine now an object that moves from the left edge of your screen to the right. It goes at speed of 200,000 pixels per second, while you have a resolution of 1920x1080. How much FPS do you need to notice this object? Since it shows on your screen for 1080/200,000 = 5.4 ms, you need 1000/5.4=186 FPS to consistently see it on your screen.
What does it all mean? If you use your usual 60 FPS, in about 66% cases you won't even pick a glance at this object. If you use 240 FPS, however, you will see it cross your screen every single time. And, since your eye is theoretically able to see much more FPS than that, you WILL actually see this object.
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So, here is the thing. When you say that you cannot see any difference beyond 60 FPS, first of all make sure that you are actually looking at more than 60 FPS. You cannot see more than 60 FPS on a 60Hz monitor no matter what, since the monitor itself will always show exactly 60 FPS. Then, make sure that you are actually looking at highly dynamical scenes, not just looking at your desktop moving icons around (although between 60 FPS and 120 FPS, I bet, you will see the difference even there). Finally, account for the habit: if you've been using 60 FPS for 10 years and then suddenly receive a 120 Hz monitor, you might not see the difference clearly right away since your eye is used to staring at the old screen. Give it some time, maybe, a day - then revert to the old refresh rate, and you will IMMEDIATELY see a HUGE difference by just moving mouse cursor around. You will see so many frames skipped, you will be shocked that you've never seen them before.
So, how many FPS do we need? Depends on the applications you use, of course. If you are interested only in web browsing and office work, you are unlikely to really need anything beyond even 30 FPS. If you play some slow-paced games like Hearthstone, 60 FPS is fine. If you play all kinds of games, including RPG, FPS, RTS, etc., 120 FPS will benefit you a lot. And if you are a hardcore FPS gamer, the more FPS you have, the better, 240 FPS and beyond will be just perfect.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1572225-Mythbusting-quot-Human-eye-cannot-see-beyond-60-FPS-quotcouple of good perspectives for reference... really though i doubt anything but maybe my tbm moves anywhere close to this fast.. im off to tweak my fps.. oh and micro cube cars move pretty fast too... :)
Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2015 01:43