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[Devil]

I actually like the default pics better for the examples in here of Fallout 3, Deus Ex: HR and Resident Evil 5... Without them some of those pictures look like a cheap simulator game or a standalone mod type of game.

The filters gave these game their own feel. Without them they look too clean and sterile. I don't mind effects like these for games with very realistic looking designs. Concrete walls, dusty valleys or even futuristic metal buildings just aren't that exciting to look at and don't offer to much freedom für the creator to make it look like great art when used in a (semi-)realistc setting.

 

[No Love]

realism

+ chromatic aberration

+ muted colors

+ noise

+ lens flares

+ piss filter

+ black bars

+ motion blur

=

2015 video game

Fucking brilliant.

 

[Älg]

Good motion blur makes my dick rock hard.

 

[Alo81]

edit: sorry, double posted below.

 

[bomblord1]

realism

+ chromatic aberration

+ muted colors

+ noise

+ lens flares

+ piss filter

+ black bars

+ motion blur

=

2015 video game

If you took out the lens flare I would say that looks better than the initial photo.

 

[Terrified]

Cuphead appears to use CA and it really, really works judging by the screenshots I've seen.

As always, there's no such thing as a bad effect/stylistic choice - just bad uses of them.

 

[Alo81]

Step 1. Image search "Zelda 64 texture pack"

Step 2. Puke

I don't think I agree at all.

If you just google it and look at the crappy first examples sure, but all of these examples are from an unfinished texture pack and still look pretty good.

HD textures require good texture filtering and downsampling helps a lot to make details visible in a good way. It doesn't help when people post stuff like this

which clearly isn't representative of how it should actually look. And even that not-stretched and properly downsampled looks fine too.

 

[liliththepale]

I feel like Sleeping Dogs used DoF and chromatic abberation quite well. The DoF was used in cutscenes as it would in a movie, and in game it was quite subtle. The CA was only used when you got knocked out, so it was supposed to look dizzying and slightly out of focus.

The effect that I almost always turn off or to low is SSAO. It looks like a rendering bug in most implementations, or accentuates genuine rendering bugs.

 

[Durante]

In almost all cases I could do without simulating camera artifacts.

 

[Maintenance]

If you took out the lens flare I would say that looks better than the initial photo.

bomblord1
Andrea Pessino's secret account
(Today, 05:22 PM)

 

[vctor182]

=

2015 video game

Add 900p and locked 30 fps and there you have it.

 

[mxgt]

CA is horrific but I'd take it any day over bloom. Fuck bloom.

 

[foxuzamaki]

I typically don't dislike any graphical effects if the developers though it enhanced the aesthetic. That said, anything over-done is never a good thing. Bloom is the biggest offender in my opinion. I don't know what the hell Nintendo was thinking with Wind Waker HD :/

Also, proper motion blur is amazing! God of War 3 people!

I wonder if people pointing out WWHD actually played it, the bloom is done rather tasefully and it got their desired effect, which is a blazing sun at a beach. there are much worse examples of bloom in this thread. Nobody's eyes are bleeding because of bloom in windwaker HD

 

[TouchMyBox]

The AO or whatever it is in Far Cry 3 which made everything EXPLODE SHADOWS as you moved further away from every object made that game look fucking ridiculous. They toned it down in the Far Cry 4, but I think it's still there.

 

[u4ea]

Anyone remembers the Kane and Lynch 2 'Youtube camera effect'?
God that was horrible.

 

[Devil]

Oh, I just thought of what May Payne 3 was doing to it's game. Fuck that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b1mR5gS1wg

You can probably scroll to any point of the entirety of it's cutscenes and will constantly find this stupid effect of doubled images, lines or colors across the screen which is probably supposed to show how bad Max feels. This shit was already overdone after the damn intro sequence but they somehow thought it would be a good idea to keep it through the complete game. You know, just in case you didn't notice that Max is depressed addict after they have shoved that info in your face for hours.
Also, having the words written out in a "stylish" manner was a joke after a while as well. They just randomly picked unimportant stuff and highlighted it to make it seem deep where it was in fact nothing but shallow.

 

[Nanashrew]

Why don't we also start altering movies while we're at it?

Look at this shit, real life isn't green.

Wow, so much bloom. Disgusting.

Kubrick must have known nothing about lenses. Didn't he notice the chromatic aberration?

Because in film it's more intentional and a good director knows how to use the effects to heighten the mood or atmosphere. In the Matrix, you see the green filter but the image is clear and many effects are used sparingly, the lighting in the black and white scene, the image is clear and effects are used sparingly, and Clockwork Orange, that is a specific scene to enhance and give focus to that moment and the image is clean. Effects are used sparingly in many films because a clean image is important. People give J.J. Arbams a lot of crap over his lens flare abuse in the Star Trek films because it was poorly done.

I feel many game directors don't understand the importance of these effects and haphazardly use them however which leads to them often being done poorly and ineffectively to enhance a mood or atmosphere.

 

[NaDannMaGoGo]

I never said it has to be smearing like the poorly done motion blur and agree when handled badly it looks ass.

Here is my source: Wave your hand in front of your face. It's not motion blur like a camera, but the visual impulses received by your brain are spread out enough that its practically the same effect. This is also why when you spin in place the whole room blur (not to mention if you keep spinning you lose balance).

EDIT - If you ever play Guitar Hero for an extended period of time, then look at something else, your eyes will still be trying to correct for the movement. This is also how many of those little optical illusions work.

So why would I generate additional blur to an object which my eyes would blur themselves anyways? A fast moving object that, I'm not focusing my vision on*, is going to appear blurred in my minds picture anyways unless we're going to too low framerates, in which case I'd agree that motion blur is probably appealing by masking the choppiness to some degree.

Though this is once again another point which shows just how important high framerate is and why I prefer 60fps+ gaming so much. Even though you achieve higher individual image quality, the visuals in motion actually suffer and masking them with motion blur that's cheaply done and doesn't look good, ruining the IQ to some degree. Well simulated motion blur would be rather performance heavy after all and might as well be skipped for higher fps.

Anyways, the other problem I have with motion blur and marked with an asterisk above: when you move your hand, you can focus your eyes on it and it won't be the blurry. In fact, the blur effect on every object on the screen will be heavily dependent on where the user/player is actually focusing on. As there's no way of knowing that (unless we do eyeball tracking etc.) just applying motion blur to all kinds of objects doesn't seem like a good solution. It'll work decently because you can guess what most players will be looking at most of the time, but it isn't universally applicable.

 

[Arkaerial]

Motion Blur, overused DoF blurring, Bloom, Chromatic Aberration, etc

This and let me add the JJ Abrams disease (Lens Flares) to the list.

 

[KKRT00]

realism

+ chromatic aberration

+ muted colors

+ noise

+ lens flares

+ piss filter

+ black bars

+ motion blur

=

2015 video game

Codemasters just hired You or what?

 

[Dennis]

You'd rather consume unfiltered piss?

I am trying decipher your comment but I am not having much luck I am afraid.

 

[specdot]

I really dislike motion blur. I remember the first time I played the halo reach beta and thought there was something wrong with my tv. Very jarring to play with, though eventually i adapted, I'd still prefer playing without it enabled.

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD. OMG the motion blur makes it almost unplayable.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

I am trying decipher your comment but I am not having much luck I am afraid.

it was a joke

 

[SneakyStephan]

-color grading
-chromatic abberation
-bloom
-film grain
-vingette
-shitty DoF (almost all games have shitty dof)
-low quality motion blur (only motion blur that ever improved a game visually but is still a bad idea gameplay wise is crysis 1 and planetside 2)
-FXAA

Basically any post process effect.

Modelers make beautiful meshes, mappers design beautiful well thought out maps, artists make some awesome looking textures.
Then some dude with 'artistic integrity' comes along, squats over their work, closes his eyes, pushes hard and takes a runny soilent green (color graded ofc) dump on it with post process effects.

 

[Sagely]

Well, I had no idea chromatic aberration was used so abundantly in-game. I used to wonder why people hated it so much as I think it looks quite nice in the UI for sci-fi settings (especially with the occasional glitching effect). But to see it used on the actual environment, seemingly with no regards for the setting, is rather discouraging. The glitch aesthetic seems to have gotten quite overdone in general.

So, another vote for CA I suppose! At least when the context doesn't call for it. I also dislike extensive motion blur and blood splatter effects on the screen when you take damage - fine idea, often implemented inelegantly. However I do enjoy quite a few cheesy effects like scanlines and film grain when it fits with the general atmosphere.

 

[Nanashrew]

I actually have a lot of trouble with chromatic abberation. The image looks blurred in a weird way but my eyes are trying to focus hard to find a sharp image but can't. So it puts a lot of strain on my eyes and hurts to look at images with that effect.

 

[papersleeves]

I don't think I agree at all.



If you just google it and look at the crappy first examples sure, but all of these examples are from an unfinished texture pack and still look pretty good.

HD textures require good texture filtering and downsampling helps a lot to make details visible in a good way. It doesn't help when people post stuff like this

which clearly isn't representative of how it should actually look. And even that not-stretched and properly downsampled looks fine too.

That ground texture is obnoxious for the eyes. Trilinear filtering in that case would be a better option imo.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

Stupid filters like Fallout, Deus Ex HR and Battlefield 3.
Motion blur never bothered me until Type 0. Good Lord.

 

[MikeyB]

I think they are called particle effects. Random crap blowing across the screen all the time. Sometimes it is dust, or debris, or space junk, or even snow.

I'm guessing it is supposed to make the world seem more textured or alive, but it seems to me that it's overdone to the point of distraction rather than immersion.

 

[funkystudent]

The AO or whatever it is in Far Cry 3 which made everything EXPLODE SHADOWS as you moved further away from every object made that game look fucking ridiculous. They toned it down in the Far Cry 4, but I think it's still there.

Deus Ex Human Revolution had this as well.

AO was all over the place last generation. Very few games did it well.

Its best done subtly but it was like since it takes such a big performance hit on that old hardware the designers just turned it up to 11 so people say they had SSAO!

 

[eso76]

Absolutely all of them, when overused.
Absolutely none of them, when used in good taste.

Also, to those saying motion blur: you suck ! Motion blur is the single best thing that happened to realtime gfx in the past few years !

 

[NaDannMaGoGo]

I think they are called particle effects. Random crap blowing across the screen all the time. Sometimes it is dust, or debris, or space junk, or even snow.

I'm guessing it is supposed to make the world seem more textured or alive, but it seems to me that it's overdone to the point of distraction rather than immersion.

90% of the PhysX effects seemed ridiculously distracting if anything. I still remember the Mafia 2 PhsyX trailers where the high amount of particles creates from walls on bullet impact was simply ludicrous.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

CA the thread. Why the hell has it become so prominent this gen? It's shit.

 

[Aaron Strife]

The Donkey Kong Country games with their strobe lights during the Squawker levels (seen here - epilepsy warning). Fuck right off with that shit

 

[Cizeta-Moroder]

Read my post above. If done right, it simulates how we see things in real life. Applies to games with realistic depiction.



Exactly.

Human perception should be accommodated to by providing more information, not less.
In real life, no matter what the speed, humans can lock their eyes on a moving object and see them crystal clear. But when you apply motion blur, shit's done for.

 

[mclem]

I am trying decipher your comment but I am not having much luck I am afraid.

Just that 'piss filter' sounds more like a device to filter piss.

 

[Stevey]

Have to say I disagree with these Fallout 3 posts.
Here's a shot I took yesterday-completely vanilla, no mods at all, and I still think it holds up today.

 

[kruis]

I think they are called particle effects. Random crap blowing across the screen all the time. Sometimes it is dust, or debris, or space junk, or even snow.

I'm guessing it is supposed to make the world seem more textured or alive, but it seems to me that it's overdone to the point of distraction rather than immersion.

I usually like particle/physx effects. In the case of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, I turned it off. The amount of smoke generated by a single pistol shot was simply ridiculous. You couldn't see a thing.

 

[ckohler]

LOL. This is cracking me up.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

Like that? Even worse images in the Console Emulation thread, it's like half of the posters played their old games with their nose touching the TV. So many overdone scanlines :/

I legit can't look at that screenshot for more than a 4 seconds at a time because of the Chromatic Horseshit.

 

[KHlover]

I am trying decipher your comment but I am not having much luck I am afraid.

I think the poster tried to make a pun based on the word "piss filter". Can't say for sure since it isn't funny in the slightest.

I legit can't look at that screenshot for more than a 4 seconds at a time because of the Chromatic Horseshit.

Paired with the scanlines it just creates an unfortunate effect where my eyes have no clue which part of the picture to focus on since everything is blurred :/

 

[Stevey]

I legit can't look at that screenshot for more than a 4 seconds at a time because of the Chromatic Horseshit.

lol, there must be something wrong with your eyes if you're serious.

 

[BibiMaghoo]

What ever that shit is that makes outlines of characters shimmer when the camera is panned. Hitman Absolution does it. ACIV does it. I:FL does it but not as badly.

It is awful to see on a 40'' TV, but entirely absent when the camera is still.

It may just be the shittiest AA ever made, I have no idea, but It's nasty.

 

[Blizzard]

lol, there must be something wrong with your eyes if you're serious.

I have the same sort of reaction to this:

Paired with the scanlines it just creates an unfortunate effect where my eyes have no clue which part of the picture to focus on since everything is blurred :/

It's sort of mentally painful and eye-watering.

 

[ssss]

realism

+ chromatic aberration

+ muted colors

+ noise

+ lens flares

+ piss filter

+ black bars

+ motion blur

=

2015 video game

Wow, nominated for best 2015 Gaf's post, simply awesome.

I've laughed so hard with the black bars

 

[Skinpop]

Badly managed color levels/gamma
Crushed blacks, over-saturated colors and too much contrast. This is especially a problem with console games ported to pc. State of Decay for example. Whenever I lots of pure blacks, whites or fully saturated colors I die a bit inside.

Color Grading
Talking about movies, the one movie that pioneered it(oh brother) is one of the few were I actually think it works really well.

Creating mood through lighting not grading is almost always the superior choice, doubly so now that pbr is becoming the standard.

Lens effects
I don't mind the occasional lens flare, I do however mind obsessively modeled camera lens effects unless the viewport is actually supposed to be a camera. It's one of the things I really like about Arma 3. The image is clean.

Excessive bloom
Conservative use of "physically based" bloom is ok, any more and it will instantly annoy me.

I'd trade any spectacle for 60 fps

 

[ghibli99]

The Donkey Kong Country games with their strobe lights during the Squawker levels (seen here - epilepsy warning). Fuck right off with that shit

Ha! While playing the game, I barely even notice (and probably thought the effect was kind of clever initially), but watching it in a video is super-annoying.

 

[Peltz]

Like that? Even worse images in the Console Emulation thread, it's like half of the posters played their old games with their nose touching the TV. So many overdone scanlines :/

Some fake scanlines can look really great, but it's extremely rare.

 

[jett]

Have to say I disagree with these Fallout 3 posts.
Here's a shot I took yesterday-completely vanilla, no mods at all, and I still think it holds up today.

Agreed, it looks fine, and making it colorful defeats the purpose of making the world feel dead and depressing. Then again, some people like to shove anime characters into Fallout 3 as well...

 

[Skinpop]

So when movie directors do it it makes sense contextually. But game devs can't be trusted to decide what their own games should look like.

movie directors are working with actual lenses and cameras. the effects you want/don't want is a trade off depending on lighting and equipment. In most games, a virtual physical camera doesn't even make any sense.