Gamers vs Neuroscientists
Professional gaming is growing steadily with thousands of people worldwide playing all sorts of competitive games as a full time career. As with all sports, the right technology and equipment can provide the slight advantage that can be the difference between losing and winning. Any serious competitive gamer cannot afford to be at a disadvantage and will play on a top of the line computer with a top of the line gaming monitor. The key difference with these monitors is that they have a higher refresh rate. Refresh rate, put simply, is the number of times per second the image changes. Traditional computer monitors have a refresh rate of 60 Hz, 60 new images per second, while gaming monitors display at 120 Hz or higher. The reasoning for this is that more images per second means that the motion of the player in the game is smoother and easier to track, and the motion of enemies is also easier to track.
Refresh rate ultimately refers to the number of frames per second the monitor can display (a nice visualization can be found here)Note your monitor will likely not be able to show any difference above 60 fps.
Everything I said up to this point seems to make sense, but people often forget that humans have physical limitations. Neuroscience research into how the eye and the vision system works have demonstrated that the average human is incapable of seeing any difference in frequencies above 60 Hz. In neuroscience, this is referred to as temporal resolution. We take advantage of this fact everyday with fluorescent lighting. Fluorescent lights turn on and off 60 times per second in North America due to our 120 V power. The reason we see these lights as constantly on is because they are above our critical flicker frequency, which is defined as the number of times per second a light must flash to be perceived by people as always on.
So who’s right gamers or neuroscientists?
The most important thing to remember is that even if there is substantial anecdotal evidence that a current scientific theory or model is wrong does not mean that a proposed counter-theory is correct. It seems clear that there is some benefit to using a monitor above 60 Hz for professional gaming. This does not mean that humans have a visual temporal resolution higher than this. It could be another effect to do with motion or artifacts caused when viewing images on screens. It could be due to eye fatigue or another related effect. Many people who work long hours on a computer or in fluorescent lighting often report eye fatigue due to the imperceptible flickering. The way an image is generated on a computer screen is complex and drastically different depending on the type of monitor. It could be that higher frame rate monitors are only necessary as long as we are using current LED/LCD technology.
There is no answer currently. All of these reasons are pure speculation and until proper, rigorous scientific study tackles the problem, all we can say is something is going on here and it warrants further investigation.
*Disclaimer I own a 144 Hz monitor but I am nowhere near good enough to need it. I feel like I can see the difference if I drop a game down to 60 fps but that could be because I don’t want to have spent money on a monitor for no reason.