PhiEaglesFan:Do you have the ability to limit your frames locally and see what the meter looks like at 30fps? I might imagine it would be consistently slightly choppy, but less irregular (if this makes any sense). Is that better?
I don't know if its possible to limit our display's FPS, but anything is possible given enough time and money they say....;)
BUT! You are probably too young to know about turntables that have adjustable speeds for playing 33 1/3 RPM or 45 RPM and even 78 RPM records. (YJ would know them but you might need to Google turntables and records. ;-) )
Lets say we can limit our displays to 30fps, but WGT is still driving the display at 60fps. I think it would be like playing a record pressed to play at 45RPM on the turntable set to play 33 1/3 RPM records. Not a good or meaningful result.
That said, I can answer your question! I spent yesterday building a Flash meter simulator at 60fps and one at 30fps. The whole purpose was to compare meters running at 30 and 60 frames per second.
Its a simple simulation using a screenshot of CB #10 as background, A meter bar element to move across the background using AS3 commands in the area where the meter is. And recognition of mouse clicks to start and stop the meter bar moving across the screen.
I gotta stress simple again. It does not have any of the many movable elements (flag, minimap animations, aim box, camera views, chat, menus, etc. etc.)
If I do say so myself, its pretty damn close to a WGT meter. It even accelerates a bit on the way towards the ding line. You'll need to click in the area around the meter. I kept it simple.
The best way to compare 30 vs 60 is to open the following Flash files in separate windows. adjust the window sizes so both meters are on the screen and you can easily switch back and forth between 30 and 60 simulators.
If you run the sims in the same browser you are reading this in, close all WGT windows including this one or WGT's flash will interfere with the sims just like having other WGT windows open while we are playing in the Game Client. They will be choppy meters unless you close all WGT windows. (At least my FF meter sims are choppy while I'm typing this)
I've checked these two out in both FireFox and Chrome. Run them in your browser of choice by copying the below link addresses and pasting it into your address bar.
60 FPS Meter Simulation
30 FPS Meter Simulation
On my gaming laptop, with WGT pages closed, both sims are smooth meters, a very slight difference IMO with the 30 sim being a bit less smooth. And I have like 8 other programs running at the time with my CPU usage around 10%
I even tried running the sims in Chrome (latest version, latest Pepperflash version) with the game client also running on Chrome showing a 50 foot putt on CB with all the dots being animated. My CPU jumped to over 40% thanks to all those dots. Sims were still smooth on Chrome/Pepperflash tho.
Here's a couple of screenshots showing that indeed the sims are running at 30 or 60fps using Chrome's built in Frame Rate Counter. Unfortunately due to Chrome's choice of colors and fonts the counter text is hard to read so zoom in on the upper right corner of the full image.
I think I answered your question EagleFan. 30fps would be acceptable IMO.