Ambient Occlusion is a technique that basically adds shadows to certain parts of the environment. However, the result is barely noticable in most cases, and completely unconvincing and unnatural looking in others. Lets look at some comparison screens.
When you have to break out the red ink to point out the differences, you know you have a problem.
wow, such upgrade
The added wall crease shadow increases my immersion by 150%
Ambient Occlusion is on the left... I think?
AO's effect is most noticable when it's applied to grass, shrubbery and the like. However, it's not exactly noticable in a good way. Check out this Skyrim comparison:
The added shadows look like they were added with MSPaint's spray tool. They look terrrible!
The worst part about ambient occlusion is that it comes with a MASSIVE performance hit. In most PC games, enabling AO causes my framerate to drop by 20 fps or more. There's just no justification for neutering your fps for such a pointless effect.
If you're a console developer and you sacrifice framerate for ambient occlusion, you deserve to see your game fail.
When you have to break out the red ink to point out the differences, you know you have a problem.
wow, such upgrade
The added wall crease shadow increases my immersion by 150%
Ambient Occlusion is on the left... I think?
AO's effect is most noticable when it's applied to grass, shrubbery and the like. However, it's not exactly noticable in a good way. Check out this Skyrim comparison:
The added shadows look like they were added with MSPaint's spray tool. They look terrrible!
The worst part about ambient occlusion is that it comes with a MASSIVE performance hit. In most PC games, enabling AO causes my framerate to drop by 20 fps or more. There's just no justification for neutering your fps for such a pointless effect.
If you're a console developer and you sacrifice framerate for ambient occlusion, you deserve to see your game fail.