Depth of field and motion blur

I love DoF!

I don't get this obsession with replicating camera flaws.

Always off for both, no question.

I always hate the way it looks and affects visibility, although that might be because I had amazingly-terrible (past 5 feet or so, blind as shit) nearsightedness for years and got my eyes fixed a few years back, so now that I can see clearly and love it, going back to everything in the distance being blurred drives me crazy. It makes it feel like I've got vision problems all over again, aggravating as hell. The fact that it tends to cut into performance just for an effect I despise just gives me even more reason to turn it off the instant I have access to an options menu.

Yet at the same time, an alternative I've always loved is impenetrable fog that obstructs vision without blurring shit, like Silent Hill 1 and other early 3D games did because they couldn't handle loading the far-away shit on top of everything else going on. It isn't annoying to me but somewhat cozy instead, since I got really used to it back then and developed a fondness for shit fading in from the fog as it loaded in. I even love actual fog as a result of this on the rare occasion I get some where I live, always gives me a strange mix of coziness and that feeling when you're somewhere weird and alien.

Hell, why don't more games with the "explore some shit" basis go for fog as a visual motif? I might be in the minority here, but I think it'd work nicely if you did it with the right distance and intensity, gave it some decent (or alternatively, as basic as possible) visual effects and accounted for it gameplay-wise. Assuming anyone would be willing to swallow their pride, and not design "muh scenic distant vistas for the trailers" for more than 5 minutes, the game would probably run on just about any toaster too thanks to the low render distance.

A game just about exploring some alien nonsense or a weird location would be pretty neat with that kind of fog, especially since you could pull some "The Mist" bullshit and have freaky fuckers come out of nowhere using the fog as cover. And I'd assume it's obvious how this would serve a horror game well, especially considering it's already been done. With the shit modern graphics can do, I'd love to see something that uses fog liberally like Silent Hill or an early 3D platformer, but made with the kind of graphical wizardry we can do now so that fog looks fucking amazing and whatever you can see around you before it's lost to the fog is nice to look at too.

A lot of the people making "cinematic" games were trained for and rejected by cinema. So they come to vidya and do as they were taught.

Depth of field is only useful in a movie, where the camera can focus on the most important figure in the shot. The director tells the audience where they should look for the most information. The only way this carries over to games is by level design, not by blurring everything else in view.

If it's done to replicate what your eyes do, it's still bullshit, because your eyes still do it when you're looking at the screen. If DoF is on, your eyes would blur an already blurred image. It's almost like taking control of the player, but instead of keeping you from moving, it keeps you from looking at parts of the screen (or more importantly, keeps your character from looking at his surroundings). So much for "role playing" or "immersion" when that shit is on.

Motion blur goes without saying, of course it fucks with your brain

That's only in RTS and TBS games for other games that's a hardware limitation induced visual effect of a limited draw distance, all the games in the old consoles (and some PS2 games) have a short draw distance and this gives a surreal fog thast encompasses the entire level. Sometimes the color is changed so it's pitch black darkness instead.

DoF usually hits the framerate a little, so I leave it off even though I don't mind it too much. Motion blur can fuck right off, though, along with chromatic aberration and bloom because devs don't know the meaning of moderation.

Off with all of it.
At best its a waste of cpu/gpu cycles on shit I do not enjoy at all, at worst its used as smoke curtain to hide shitty textures and other lazy dev oversights behind.

I think only the first Crysis did motion blur right

Dof is a shitty effect used by games that have small maps

Mosts effects used nowadays are fucking garbage and only make the games look worse

Motion blur done correctly is meant to act as motion interpolation between frames (simulate what it would look like if you had 2000+ FPS), but a) it looks like shit at

I never got depth of field
how does it even make sense ?

when youre looking at something, your vision gets corrected and you see the given object sharp. Everything that is too far from the object looks blurry

OK.. but how do you know what is the player looking at in a game ? Lets say Im observing exactly whats under my crosshair. In that case the blur will be correctly applied to the right stuff. But what If I suddenly see something in the distance and want to focus on it.. now I cant just look at it since its fucking blurry as hell and I have to move the cursor at it.. which doesnt make sense. Youre not looking only at the center of the screen, thats fucking bullshit !

DoF only works if you have an eye-tracker. But considering the price and availability of those things, it's not worth it.

That shit goes OFF in every game I play. My eyesight sucks already why would I need an additional layer of shit obscuring my vision?

DoF is an always off for me, while motion blur is only acceptable when the game is at least 60fps, and even then it depends on how heavy the motion blur is. The only visual effect i can stand is bloom, and even then i usually deactivate it because it's too strong and ruins everything.

The game can't know what your eyes are looking at so cross hairs or some invisible reticule of some sort is used because it is the only tangible measure that can be used.

Depth of field just reminds me that my eyes are crap.

yeah exactly thats the problem

when you know the implementation will be gimmicky as fuck then why adding it in the game

but hey.. casuals love cool stuff so might just add it in anyway

Motion blur off, depth of field depends. Some debs use it really well as some extra form of anti-aliasing on distant objects (The Witcher 3), but most just throw it on to hide the fact their shit is ugly.

I turn any dumb effects off.
They look nice in trailers and screenshots, but they're a pain to actually play with. DoF always makes my eyes water because they try in vain to refocus.

As someone who suffers from crippling near-sightedness I wholeheartedly agree.

I always turn motion blur off, without fail. It's a nothing but an obnoxious resource-hog.

In rare cases in which it's subtle, I will leave DOF on. In most cases it's not subtle - it looks more or less like the pictures in the OP, which is intolerable. Those pics look like the dev team are a bunch of short-sighted fools who thought they were implementing a realistic-looking feature, but in fact forgot to put on their glasses that day. It can be used to good effect, in camera zooms and other situations where attention needs to be drawn to certain areas of the screen, but it's usually garbage.

Depth of field is so fucking stupid. Your own eyes do it naturally.

DoF is just fucking ugly and should fuck off completely.
Motion blur is great when done right.

The only time I've seen good motion blur is in Crysis. It was called "Object oriented motion blur".

I want games that looks like the art was made by Albert Bierstadt.

What do you mean?
Those are well drawn sure, but they look like normal realistic landscapes.
Skyrim, or any open world game in past few years have plenty of that.

If you ask for something truly VAST, well unfortunately we aren't there yet.
And seeing how with technology growth open world games only became smaller, I'm not sure we will ever be.

The cloudy effects are similar in the concept art. But those paintings are from a distance and usually in games there's short draw distance, significantly lower detail, and the notorious pop-in effect.

Damn, DD really needs HD textures pack or something.

They don't look the same at all though. I don't think I've played any games with grand landscapes that aren't just skyboxes. There are no games that has really captured this sense of scale as far as I know.

Only if you turned the motion blur strength way the fuck down, the default setting is insanely high. Object motion blur isn't unique to Crysis, either. PlanetSide 2 for example uses it, and incidentally that game has the most well-done motion blur I've seen, subtle but noticeable.

Always on. Excellent. Should also boost performance. DOF by lower res blurred in upscale. Motion blur too. Unfortunately it isn't done that way. Still worth it. DOF like gaussian blur acts as great anti aliasing, blending in everything. If a high res is used the whole screen with some would blend it nicely.

If AA is used it should entirely remove aliasing.

If you are struggling performance always lower res first. Lower image quality last.

MGSV didn't have a 640x480 mode. So people would have lowered essential effects like DOF and been unimpressed because of that.

Motion blur helps lower stutter and low framerates are made playable by it.

Textures can be made for the distance they will be seen outside of DOF, saving performance and optimising them for an average observed distance. Would also help games like Rage where textures are compressed so up close detail is missing.

You don't seem anything but stupid repeating the worthless drivel from critics. Also doing so may prevent you from knowing better always hesitant to enjoy something yourself.

If they cost more performance, there are more importAnt considerations. In Dragon Age II Tesselation comes first, followed by texture size, followed by AF. resolution would be last, AA second last, DOF therabouts.

Better to have DOF than AA.

/thread

the overwhelming majority of post-processing in vidya is 'Pirated Sony Vegas'-tier garbage in how fucking plasticky/artificial it is

All are fine, with the exception of:

So scale. I dunno, Xenoblade and Xenoblade X maybe? But they have technofantasy landscapes rather than naturalistic ones.
E.Y.E. has some impressive scale too, but it's full on cyber gothic.
That no man's sky thing might also have some scale, but I expect it to be shit.

Huh?

But totally agree on the rest.

It's the particular style he had.
The paintings seemed to be aimed at being realistic however it had romanticized qualities and how heavily he used lighting.

More like every UE3 game ever. Everything looks like plastic, lighting is shitty and fucking terrible, color correction everywhere, static lighting, static lighting showing up in places it's impossible to be in like a streak of sunshine on the shade side of a building, right at the bottom of the building, it's terrible.

I blame devs, not an engine.
They are just lazy fucks using default whatever it is in there. I bet there is at least one or two good looking 3D games made in UE3.

Nope, every dev and game I've seen has done this. Also
Pure fucking cancer.

and the sad thing is I absolutely love the shit out of flawed outdated technology being repurposed. There's just barely anything out there that can replicate something like the oversaturation and vibrato side effects from cheap ferric cassettes, or the color bleeding of VHS tapes

sage for semi-blogshit

Depth of Field is definitely off always. There's no reason to have the game do what your eye does naturally already. It's redundant and it looks like garbage.

Motion Blur really depends. It can look good in a few instances when it's subtle, but that almost never happens. So 98% of the time that shit is off.

HDR might have been good if people knew what the fuck they were doing, but they don't so it looks like shit every time. More often than not, it just turns out to be yet another way to smuggle in other bullshit effects to make your game blurry and painful on the eyes.

Chromatic Aberration is the epitome of retardation in vidya graphics settings. Something photographers actively try to get rid of, some one thought it would be a great idea to go out of their way to add. Who ever that person was, they need to be shot and the idiot parade that went along with it and followed behind him needs to be buried alive. Film grain is in this camp too.

That's just called "fog", not fog of war.
But yes it can create creepy as shit atmosphere even in brighter games.

Motion blur is pleb shit intended for low framerates. I always disable it.

DoF is okay for cutscenes & screenshotting if only because it masks shitty textures & such.
I don't use DoF during gameplay though since I'd rather be able to see everything.

That hallway has to have been intentionally-designed for maximum spookiness, no question. The walls' shape and the pattern on them fucks with your depth perception, which when combined with the circle of dark fog makes it look like it's perpetually creeping down the hallway toward you. It has that effect even in a still image, every time I look at it my brain fucks up and assumes it's coming closer.

More games should use fog for that kind of effect, especially ones that are trying to be spooky on purpose.

I googled those images, I don't remember what specific location was that.
MML both 1 and 2 had shitton of dungeons that were supposedly unfitting for the game, but ending kinda shed light on grimdark nature of the universe and it all made sense.

Have you played Baroque? The original one, on PS1? It's in jap, but you still should try it.
Just not PS2/Wii verson, that aint spooky at all.

It's weird. I always assumed motion blur was a way to gloss over environment details so the game doesn't melt your computer when you spin around quickly. It came as a shock to find out that it's actually more demanding on your hardware than if you just turned it off.

What about unsettling? It's a damn lot of body horror.

Whelp the fog was such an ever present thing everyone had to deal with that they designed their games with that in mind either to avoid the fog or utilize it as part of the aesthetic. Silent Hill 2 is the most famous for it's use but every game you play on the PS1 or N64 utilizes the fog in some way.

Three that sticks out is Gex, Glover, and Turok the first because the underwater and haunted mansion levels utilized it to great effect, Glover because the levels were so liberal with it's use of rooms designed far beyond the draw distance it has this surreal indescribable weirdness that still sticks with me to this day, and Turok because it utilized the fog to fuck with you (level 2 is a particularly notorious example).

Oh you found it unsettling?
Now you have even more reason to try the original, not properly play just roam around for a while, I'm telling you.

I turn all that shit off if possible. But there is a situational use for most of the effects.

- DoF can work if visuals are designed for it.
- Motion blur can work, but it should never be on all the time.
- I have no comment on HDR, never really took time to learn what it actually does. So pass.
- Chromati… ok nevermind. Everyone hates it for a very good reason.

I also usually try with no anti-aliasation first, just to see if the games visuals can do without, but mostly not, not at all. Them flickering edges are just too much.

*Sorry I call it "Level 2" but the Temple level would be more appropriate, Turok 1 for clarity.

Film grain works great in Killzone and Silent Hill 2. It helps blend fog into the environment and acts like anti aliasing. If it is implemented badly or the environment isn't gritty it is best turned off, like in Mass Effect.

An analogue thing, connected to the source, instead of a copy. Degradating with time as well.

It's inportant in 3D games to emphasize depth. DOD does that with close objects. Also works well with specular maps so things seem to shine having scattered light upon something, more of a gradient to things. Which too aids depth.

Close textures have to be much higher resolution without it. That saved performance can go to better geometry. It does pose a problem for sniping but scopes should be thermal imagers anyway. Red, to preserve night vision.

Can also blur the background so distant objects can be simpler or more believable as sprites. Keep focus to a middle area or where is aimed. That middle area given priority in performance, the rest at lower framerates with more motion blur. Or blur everhthing but the distance, lessening blur into the distance, cbanging focus when an enemy is on screen or key item or npc present. If cameras could be trusted tracking where the eyes are looking to focus there. Increasing the complexity of what you are looking at and emphasising it's position in a 3D space.

Film grain also makes color banding completely disappear, something you can easily prove to yourself in photoshop. Less relevant in new games, though.

Looks like shit + laggy as fuck

So no.

Sorry about the sage.

I like Red to the left Blue to the right.
Better exaggerated by distance.
Found this example, low res looks better to me too. Whole scene blurred.

When playing a game you are taking in the whole thing mostly. Ideally nothing should stand out. Set peices and characters should blend in with the world too, no sharp transitions. Get used to greatness.

I only use it for screen shots and when I'm making webms I always turn it off while I'm playing though.

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Motion blur is ugly and horrible. I do turn dof on tho, can make aiming a pain if you don't. Art style doesn't matter that much to me, but I don't like cartoon cell-shaded shit like borderlands.

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I appreciate motion blur because it makes my toaster framerates feel smoother. The rest of the crappy camera effects can eat a dick though.

I always turn that shit off.

How do you guys feel about lens dirt and shit like that though. I can't fucking stand 90% of these shitty post-processing effects in games.

Hate motion blur, never seen it implemented well.

DoF I don't mind, but it doesn't matter that much. Nine time out of ten you can see if something is there, and getting the camera to switch field depths is usually fast enough to not worry.

Even if film grain can work, I need an option to always turn it off. I have visual snow, so my life has permanent film grain enabled. I don't need another fucking layer.

As for the OP, OFF OFF OFF
I have a bunch of vision problems, I don't need any more fucking eye-cancer clogging up my view.
These things are done by your eyes automatically if the game doesn't run like shit. Fuck off.
THESE ARE ALL EYE-CANCER FILMING ERRORS AND ANY DEV THAT TRIES TO EMULATE THEM IS A FUCKING RETARD HOLLYWOOD WANNABE HACK
All pure unmitigated cancer. If the game doesn't at least have the option to disable these, fucking dropped and uninstalled.
No, no, fucking no. I have never seen a dev use any of these fucking things correctly and any game that doesn't let you turn them off is fucking cancer.
I've seen exactly one game use any sort of effect similar to this correctly and it was Wild Arms 3, which was emulating a pencil-drawn effect for the graphics that was aesthetically pleasing. Every other game that does this can fuck off.

The most insulting part of all of these above eye-cancer effects is that they're all fairly demanding hardware-wise. Not only do they look like shit, they make the game run worse, too. I made a mod that fucking deletes all of the post-processing from Dying Light (which includes almost every fucking thing listed above) and it doubles the framerate outright. Fuck am I glad I pirated that piece of shit.

Oh, and before I forget, an extra fuck you to FXAA and any shit game that forces it. I don't need your help to make everything a blurry mess, thanks, I can just take off my fucking glasses.

I only like it when your using a camera in first person, otherwise sometimes I realize the screen is like a camera and I can't help but image the character has a camera for a head.

The only time I use DoF is when it only blurs extremely close (sub 2 inchs) objects; motion blur I always turn off.

Only partially correct. Natural depth of field will come when we get 4d monitors, and natural motion blur will only work on super high frame rates (in the case of tracers from firearms, you would probably need around 100000 fps to avoid temporal aliasing).