1. [Publications](/publications) 2. On Smoothly Varying Frame Timing in First-Person Gaming # On Smoothly Varying Frame Timing in First-Person Gaming ![](/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/publications/Screenshot%202025-02-19%20153648.jpg?itok=c8yWZ6Mk) In video games, the time between rendered frames varies significantly and is often uncontrolled. With the advent of variable refresh rate (VRR) displays, like G-SYNC and FreeSync, players can experience varying frame timing as produced instead of aliasing to nearby refresh timings (e.g. VSYNC On). We investigate how the presentation of smoothly varying frame times over time affects a gamer's perception of smoothness and aiming performance. Participants performed a first person targeting task while experiencing sinusoidally varying frame times of different amplitude and mean duration. We found a decrease in perceptual smoothness ratings in the presence of varying frame times. ## Authors UC Santa Barbara and NVIDIA (Devi Klein) [Josef Spjut](/person/josef-spjut) [Ben Boudaoud](/person/ben-boudaoud) [Joohwan Kim](/person/joohwan-kim) ## Publication Date Thursday, July 18, 2024 ## Published in [ACM SIGGRAPH Talks](https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3641233) ## Research Area [Computer Graphics](/research-area/computer-graphics) [Esports](/research-area/esports) [Human Computer Interaction](/research-area/human-computer-interaction) [VR, AR and Display Technology](/research-area/virtual-augmented-reality) ## External Links [ACM Digital Library](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641233.3664346) [HTML paper](https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3641233.3664346) ## Uploaded Files [Author Preprint](https://d1qx31qr3h6wln.cloudfront.net/publications/S2024_Talk__Variable_Frame_Timing_talk_author.pdf "Open file in new window")895.87 KB ## Copyright Copyright by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept, ACM Inc., fax +1 (212) 869-0481, or . The definitive version of this paper can be found at ACM's Digital Library .