If a computer is powerful enough, how does it know not to play videos or perform logic for games at a faster speed?

Question

I don’t know if I’m explaining this right…
A computer can run logic at some speed based on how powerful the components of it are, so if it can perform the logic of something, for example, movement in a game, how does it know how much should be done based on its power, instead of essentially running in “fast-forward” or conversely in slow motion?

In: 1307

Answer 1

In the beginning, they didn’t. The classic example of increasing difficulty level of Space Invaders was partially inspired by less sprites on screen allowing the hardware to calculate the game faster translating to enemies moving faster. Even as recently as early-mid 2010’s this was a problem. For example, Skyrim would have weird physics interactions when the FPS was set to greater than 60.

But to answer your question, the CPU usually has a method available to programs to just return real time. This means that the physics can be calculated on real time instead of frames, which means the movement can be based on “distance per second” instead of “distance per calculation” that caused the classic problems.