FPS

Frames per second (fps) is a unit that indicates how many individual images are displayed each second in a video, animation, or game. Higher fps generally produces smoother motion and more responsive input, though perceived smoothness also depends on the display's refresh rate and the viewer's perception. Most consumer displays are 60 Hz or higher; when a system renders more fps than the monitor can display, techniques such as vertical synchronization (vsync) or adaptive sync (NVIDIA G-SYNC, AMD FreeSync) are used to reduce tearing. Common fps values include 24, 30, 60, and 120 or higher in gaming contexts. Frame timing, jitter, and consistency are often more important than peak fps.

In cinema and video production, 24 fps is a long-standing standard for motion pictures, delivering a particular cadence. Video games and realtime graphics strive for higher fps to minimize input latency and motion blur; achieving stable high fps requires hardware capable of efficiently rendering scenes, including the CPU, GPU, memory, and storage, as well as software techniques like level of detail scaling and rendering optimizations. FPS is frequently used in benchmarking to compare performance across hardware and software configurations.

FPS also stands for first-person shooter, a genre of video games in which the action is presented through the eyes of the player character. Core features typically include gunplay, aiming, and movement in a 3D environment, often with multiplayer components. Subgenres include tactical shooters, arena shooters, and roguelite shooters. The genre emphasizes responsiveness, precision control, and balance between offense and defense, with design guided by latency, hit registration, and fair matchmaking.