The 30-60 FPS answer given as a standard seems to be a generally accepted “factoid” (something that sounds true but isn’t). There is a bit of disagreement as to how this misunderstanding arose, but one prominent theory is that it is an attempt to explain away the inherent deficiencies due to practical concerns in the refresh rates of the standard film reel up through today’s modern monitors. While frame rates as low as 20fps can cause the brain to recognize motion in a series of sequential images it is generally accepted that most people stop being able to perceive [i]flicker[/i] (the apparent jump from one image to the next) at somewhere between 60 and 75 fps. However the human eye is able to detect, the nervous system is able to transmit and the brain can interpret the subtle differences in perceived motion of much higher frame rates. The following link will take you to a brief discussion of the issue: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-highest-frame-rate-fps-that-can-be-recognized-by-human-perception-At-what-rate-do-we-essentially-stop-noticing-the-difference Here are a few selected quotes from the discussion: [quote]Myelinated nerves can fire between 300 to 1000 times per second in the human body and transmit information at 200 miles per hour. What matters here is how frequently these nerves can fire (or "send messages"). The nerves in your eye are not exempt from this limit. Your eyes can physiologically transmit data that quickly and your eyes/brain working together can interpret up to 1000 frames per second. However, we know from experimenting (as well as simple anecdotal experience) that there is a diminishing return in what frames per second people are able to identify. Although the human eye and brain can interpret up to 1000 frames per second, someone sitting in a chair and actively guessing at how high a framerate is can, on average, interpet up to about 150 frames per second.[/quote] [quote]The USAF, in testing their pilots for visual response time, used a simple test to see if the pilots could distinguish small changes in light. In their experiment a picture of an aircraft was flashed on a screen in a dark room at 1/220th of a second. Pilots were consistently able to "see" the afterimage as well as identify the aircraft. This simple and specific situation not only proves the ability to percieve 1 image within 1/220 of a second, but the ability to interpret higher FPS.[/quote] [quote]70 fps starts to get to the point where you really could not see any frame change or flicker at all, even out of the corner of your eye (the periphery is more flicker-sensitive than the center of the eye). The retina, however, is analog -- the brain dos not process vision as "frames". So it is possible that even higher frame rates could change visual perception in certain circumstances.[/quote] [quote]It turns out, that the actual subjective threshold (where a human subject decides an image is no longer flickering) depends on many factors, including contrast, brightness, spatial factors, and to a certain (but important) extent, image content.[/quote] [quote]You can see relative timing of visual events down to the millisecond level. But you also have some persistence of vision, so short visual stimuli merge together.[/quote] (΄◉◞౪◟◉｀)