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[KDR_11k]

So many games nowadays are using vignetting and chromatic aberration, often without an option to turn it off. Why? What are they trying to do? Make the sides of the screen blurrier and worse to look at?

 

[Dipper145]

They are probably trying to make the game look better. I mean it's pretty subjective, and I don't think developers are trying to make their game look worse.

I do agree that turning on or off image effects should be a thing in games that have them though.

 

[jediyoshi]

So many games nowadays are using vignetting and chromatic aberration, often without an option to turn it off. Why? What are they trying to do? Make the sides of the screen blurrier and worse to look at?

Is it only bad when you notice it, or bad when you don't notice it as well?

 

[VoltySquirrel]

Post processing effects are subjective, but generally I'm fond of them. They evoke a mood, a style. If don't well, of course. If you don't like them, fine, but it's well in the rights of a developer to control how their game looks.

 

[slick7rick]

Chromatic Aberration supposedly ruined Bloodborne for many people here, but in over 100 hours of playtime, I've never even noticed it.

 

[More_Badass]

Aesthetic? Style?

Visuals aren't just graphical fidelity

 

[Fermbiz]

Chromatic aberration is the devil.

 

[majik13]

It is used a lot but I kinda like them if they fit the mood and its not too strong. Like NMS is kinda going for a retro scanline look, and it works there imo. Generally gives the image a more tangible, analog feel.

FWIW pretty much every film has a very subtle natural bit of CA, and even vignettinge. Its almost always matched and added in every CGI VFX shot. Makes things more PHOTOrealistic.

Anyways games generally really crank it up, a bit too much.

 

[Blizzard]

Enough people don't mind it that it helps to hide image quality flaws and/or produce a certain mood.

For other people, it's almost eyestrain/headache inducing, so it's a bit sad when there's no option to disable CA, unless a mod comes out.

 

[Dahbomb]

It is this generation's bloom lighting.

 

[spekkeh]

Vignetting frames the center part of the shot and chromatic aberration makes people fill in the blanks better. Both should lead to more immersion.

 

[Renekton]

I like the "nightmare realm" effect it gives.

 

[supernormal]

It depends on the visual style the dev is trying to achieve. I for example love grain and motion blur, but it depends on the game. Of course it should always fit into the overall aesthetic and visual style of the game. You wouldn't put Chromatic Aberration on NBA 2k17, but I think adding some grain or vignetting could benefit the aesthetic of a horror game.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

CA has its stylistic uses, I suppose. I can't stand how it's implemented in most games but every now and then there's a game where CA just makes sense on a visual/thematic level.

Vignetting on the other hand is lame and I always disable it because ultimately it adds nothing

 

[Lunarwhale]

Aesthetic, and like every aesthetic trend, it works some places better than others.

I think both are usually pretty questionably implemented, though. Like... nothing as bad as your average SweetFX shader or something, but it's rarely a design choice that feels 100% consistent or fitting.

 

[flipswitch]

It depends on the visual style the dev is trying to achieve. I for example love grain and motion blur, but it depends on the game. Of course it should always fit into the overall aesthetic and visual style of the game. You wouldn't put Chromatic Aberration on NBA 2k17, but I think adding some grain or vignetting could benefit the aesthetic of a horror game.

I took off the grain in Alien: Isolation. I found it ruined the image personally.

CA is hit and miss in games.

 

[Giolon]

Chromatic aberration in games is only appropriate if it's transitory, like Mirro's Edge Catalyst when you take fall damage. It helps there to give the sensation that your eyes are refocusing.

I hate when games apply it universally as a style. It hurts my eyes. It's also a trend among some popular artists these days to offset each of their color channels slightly to give a chromatic aberration effect and it just looks shitty 99% of the time.

The only other effect that comes close is the fucking grain/noise overlay. Thank god ME1 let you turn it off.

 

[TheAdmiester]

It is this generation's bloom lighting.

The thing is, bloom is a good thing when used carefully as the bleeding of light into the foreground is a real effect we see.

Chromatic aberration in any capacity is something actively fought against with camera lenses, and any amount of it makes the game look worse. Bloom is bad when overused, but any CA is bad. I don't get at all how it even took off.

 

[Bjoern the Smexy]

I like chromatic aberration as long as it's not overused.
Bloodborne for example had just the right amount of it. As did Alien Isolation.

Vignetting though...I don't really care for it. I don't even notice it 99.9% of the time.

Developers doing quite a lot to make their games look as much as a movie as possible, with all the visual "errors" a camera can produce, and that includes chromatic aberration, lense flare and so much more. Most of the time I couldn't care less.
But if the effect is overused then it just reeks of "We have this new shader and we are using the SHIT out of it, believe us!", especially with stuff like Bloom where less is more, but many devs don't seem to see that. If you overuse it you could just as well smear Vaseline all over your TV to get the same effect. It looks ok if done correctly and horrible if not.

 

[Gun Animal]

it looks cool and the vast majority of people don't have a problem with it.

alternate post: would you rather people complain about your game having distracting visual effects, or about the IQ and art style/competency issues those effects exist to hide in the first place?

 

[Ritzboof]

they both have their place in proper aesthetics for your games, but i think the vignette in minecraft is shitty and pointless and chromatic aberration for the sake of chromatic aberration is garbage and hurts your eyes

 

[KDR_11k]

Aesthetic? Style?

Visuals aren't just graphical fidelity

CA's style is "defective electronics", makes sense in a game where your camera is supposed to be junk but in games where you're not supposed to have a camera like most first person shooters?

Vignetting seems to me like it's either invoking those very rounded ancient CRTs or very old cinema projection tech, might fit for a game set in the early 20th century but anything else? I don't get how that fits the style.

Recent examples with both of these effects are Doom (fortunately optional) and No Man's Sky, neither of which seems like a thematic match.

 

[schopaia]

Every generation has something like this. Lens flares in the 32/64 bit gen, cel shading in PS2 gen. It's used because it's something new made available by the rendering capabilities of the hardware. I'd say Bloodborne is the only one to use it thematically, as your avatar is turning into a beast, giving the bleary-eyed vision of the world some narrative accord.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

Because some people think it looks better, and evem more people don't care. Hell, I'm on an enthusiast board and I belong to the "I don't care" camp when it comes to these things. The people who do feel negatively about it are either in a minority or end up buying games anyway despite it.

 

[Shin-Ra]

Sharpening is the in-fashion awfulness at the moment, even in games that aren't upscaled or otherwise particularly blurry. Some use it to counteract mild temporal anti aliasing blur but it still looks bad.

Vignetting and CA I can accept to varying degrees depending on the scenario.

edit: just look at this shit:

Doesn't really need the magnification, but if you're on a small mobile display, there it is.

 

[JordanN]

It is used a lot but I kinda like them if they fit the mood and its not too strong. Like NMS is kinda going for a retro scanline look, and it works there imo. Generally gives the image a more tangible, analog feel.

FWIW pretty much every film has a very subtle natural bit of CA, and even vignettinge. Its almost always matched and added in every CGI VFX shot. Makes things more PHOTOrealistic.

Anyways games generally really crank it up, a bit too much.

This is false.

It's a real effect but it's not necessary for photo realism. In fact, many photographers even try to buy specialized cameras that limit the effect or just remove it all together in post process.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

i hate it. it's distracting.

 

[Pops Maellard]

Aesthetic? Style?

Visuals aren't just graphical fidelity

Yup.

Just because a niche of GAF is obsessed with sheer IQ doesn't mean that visual effects aren't appreciated by other subsets of a game's audience. I think when used well chromatic abberation is dope. I love it.

 

[BizzyBum]

No Man's Sky uses an obnoxious amount of CA and there's no way to turn it off without installing a mod which is ridiculous.

The vignetting in the game I don't mind as much since it gives off the vibe of wearing a space helmet.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

Seriously I'm glad you brought up vignetting because nobody talks about it but seriously it's so fucking pointless

Like it doesn't bother me much, but I disable it on principle, because... just why? Why is it there?

Maybe it's just because I play on PC and I'm a foot away from a 24 inch monitor instead of five feet away from a big ass TV or whatever but it's noticeable and it just doesn't do anything for me

Like, I've played plenty of games where I actually appreciated CA. Alien Isolation comes to mind!

I've never seen in-game vignetting that I liked.

 

[Bl@de]

No Man's Sky uses an obnoxious amount of CA and there's no way to turn it off without installing a mod which is ridiculous.

The vignetting in the game I don't mind as much since it gives off the vibe of wearing a space helmet.

I think it fits the 60s Sci-Fi look of No Man's Sky. Gives the game a Super 8 look. I think it's terrible in games like Arkham Knight. Chromatic Abberation in that game just makes it look bad and doesn't add anything. It looks so much better with clean image quality.

 

[Chris_C]

Aesthetic? Style?

Visuals aren't just graphical fidelity

What he said. Games aren't purely functional products and tools made solely for you to eke out the maximum amount of enjoyment in as efficient a manner as possible. They're made by artists and storytellers, and post-processing effects such as vignetting, motion blur, chromatic aberration etc are used to help provide atmosphere.

Whether or not you should have the option to turn these off or not is another thing, and both sides of that particular argument have merit.

 

[KDR_11k]

Vignetting frames the center part of the shot and chromatic aberration makes people fill in the blanks better. Both should lead to more immersion.

I find camera effects reduce the immersion for me, it makes the difference between me and the game character much more pronounced, like there's a thick wall between me and the game world. Most immersive IMO is something like Arma 2, when you stand in a field it looks (style wise if not quality wise) like standing in a field does in real life. Makes you feel like an actual human doing a real thing instead of a mech with human hands shooting at animatronics.

Also focusing on the center doesn't make much sense in a game where you move the camera around. Even more because moving the camera should be more like moving your head while your eyes focus on different things across the screen. Screens aren't big enough for the distorted areas to actually end up in your peripheral vision.

 

[Kilau]

I notice vignette at all times and I hate it. It doesn't help focus my view or whatever it's supposed to do, it just looks awful.

 

[Branduil]

Because a lot of video game art directors are hacks who don't know what they're doing so they copy everyone else's shitty ideas.

 

[supernormal]

This is false.

It's a real effect but it's not necessary for photo realism. In fact, many photographers even try to buy specialized cameras that limit the effect or just remove it all together in post process.

I think he/she meant it makes it look less like a game and more like a photo since it's not an inherent feature of graphics but people can always relate it photography.

 

[Surface of Me]

Because a lot of video game art directors are hacks who don't know what they're doing so they copy everyone else's shitty ideas.

Someone's head is pretty far up their ass.

 

[Giolon]

CA's style is "defective electronics", makes sense in a game where your camera is supposed to be junk but in games where you're not supposed to have a camera like most first person shooters?

Vignetting seems to me like it's either invoking those very rounded ancient CRTs or very old cinema projection tech, might fit for a game set in the early 20th century but anything else? I don't get how that fits the style.

Recent examples with both of these effects are Doom (fortunately optional) and No Man's Sky, neither of which seems like a thematic match.

Chromatic Abberation isn't an electrical defect, it's due to the physics of how light of different wavelengths (colors) bend by different amounts when passing through a lens (the same way you get a rainbow by passing white light through a prism). You can get rid of it either by software algorithms to detect and correct for it, or by using more (specialized) lenses to focus the light back together.

 

[flipswitch]

Not a fan of it in movies.

e.g.: Chromatic Aberration in this small sequence from T2 always sticks out for me.

Might be hard to see it in gif form though.

Chromatic Abberation isn't an electrical defect, it's due to the physics of how light of different wavelengths (colors) bend by different amounts when passing through a lens (the same way you get a rainbow by passing white light through a prism). You can get rid of it either by software algorithms to detect and correct for it, or by using more (specialized) lenses to focus the light back together.

Lenses and coatings or using fluoride help minimise it, but I'm not sure if there's anything to completely remove it in optical equipment. My swarovski el 32 feature very little.

 

[Kilau]

Chromatic Abberation isn't an electrical defect, it's due to the physics of how light of different wavelengths (colors) bend by different amounts when passing through a lens (the same way you get a rainbow by passing white light through a prism). You can get rid of it either by software algorithms to detect and correct for it, or by using more (specialized) lenses to focus the light back together.

On my parent's old rear projection TV you could mess with the convergence and give everything chromatic abberation all the time!

Not that you would want to.

 

[Hcoregamer00]

This is false.

It's a real effect but it's not necessary for photo realism. In fact, many photographers even try to buy specialized cameras that limit the effect or just remove it all together in post process.

I am a pro photographer, so I have a little niggling fix here. Chromatic Aberration is a LENS effect, not a camera effect. It typically happens in fast primes, from f0.95 to f1.8 lenses. It is fixable in fast lenses when you add more elements, but more elements means more glass, and more glass means pricier lens. Canon is trying to fix it by adding a blue element so you won't need to add more glass while fixing CA.

I have a canon 50mm f1.2L lens and 85mm f1.2L lens and it has CA up the wazoo wide open, and it is very annoying. Especially when I take photos of people with light colored outfits.

 

[Patchy]

I like CA in some games and HATE IT in others.

I think it looks great in Dying Light a s like absolute dog shite in No Man's Sky.

I think it was in Alien Isolation as well and I enjoyed it there.

Weird.

 

[Clark W Grizwald]

I have no idea what it is or what it does. I read post after post after post of people saying to turn off CA in The Division. I ran around the for 30 minutes going back and forth between it on and off and everything looked the same.

 

[spekkeh]

Chromatic aberration in any capacity is something actively fought against with camera lenses, and any amount of it makes the game look worse. Bloom is bad when overused, but any CA is bad. I don't get at all how it even took off.

Do you also wonder why so many photographers shoot in black and white, when camera manufacturers have fought so hard to make color possible?

I find camera effects reduce the immersion for me, it makes the difference between me and the game character much more pronounced, like there's a thick wall between me and the game world. Most immersive IMO is something like Arma 2, when you stand in a field it looks (style wise if not quality wise) like standing in a field does in real life. Makes you feel like an actual human doing a real thing instead of a mech with human hands shooting at animatronics.

Maybe that's more the environmental design though? The closer something mimics real life (mimesis) in general the more difficulty people have losing themselves in it. Then again, Arma 2 is nowhere near high fidelity in the first place, so what works there might not work so well anymore.

Also focusing on the center doesn't make much sense in a game where you move the camera around. Even more because moving the camera should be more like moving your head while your eyes focus on different things across the screen. Screens aren't big enough for the distorted areas to actually end up in your peripheral vision.

Yeah I don't think it makes much sense for games either, because in general from research we know people don't look further away than a few centimeters from the center. If anything you need to draw people's attention away from the center, not have them focus on it.
However, the game vision is by definition distorted. If you calculate the correct FOV as you sit some ways away from the TV, you should have a FOV of 30 degrees tops. That would make you functionally blind in a game though, so designers up it to 75-90 degrees. A vignette could be applied to mask some of the barrel distortion at the edges of the screen.

 

[Giolon]

Not a fan of it in movies.

e.g.: Chromatic Aberration in this small sequence from T2 always sticks out for me.

Might be hard to see it in gif form though.

Lenses and coatings or using fluoride help minimise it, but I'm not sure if there's anything to completely remove it in optical equipment. My swarovski el 32 feature very little.

Yep, I don't believe you can get rid of it entirely, but it can be reduced to the point that it's not noticeable.

On my parent's old rear projection TV you could mess with the convergence and give everything chromatic abberation all the time!

Not that you would want to.

LOL that's super awesome. I remember projection TVs.

 

[Keratay]

For people who have issues with CA, is problem made worse by the knowledge of why CA occurs in real life? Like in Bloodborne, I see it and think of it as a "nightmare effect" rather than a "I'm looking at things through a lens" situation and I don't mind it at all.

 

[Mega]

Yup.

Just because a niche of GAF is obsessed with sheer IQ doesn't mean that visual effects aren't appreciated by other subsets of a game's audience. I think when used well chromatic abberation is dope. I love it.

Nope.

This is not about a niche of GAF being obsessive. Chromatic aberration is quite literally an unfortunate and undesirable flaw in the light capture of photographic lenses. Its origins are not an intended or wanted effect like film grain or motion blur. It's a universally reviled and ugly mistake outside of games. This is garbage that some developer with no understanding of photography threw into his video game because it looked cool. It's no different than an amateur dropping excessive lens flares in Photoshop or a kid abusing Instagram filters.

What's next? Can't wait until overexposure, moire, extremely off color balance and excessive camera shake become new gaming PQ standards. Yay.

 

[wapplew]

Hide imperfection.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Mimicking cameras is the short answer. Which is something that makes sense as an stylistic choice since photography and film are such influential mediums to many artist in many industries, including games. It makes sense, for instance, that Alien Isolation (even if the film itself is pretty clean) and Cuphead want to emulate something that can pass as physical distortions of camera lenses, since both are based on film aesthetics. That doesn't mean that it makes sense for all games.

It is the same as throwing a canvas texture or paper texture under a digital paint.

 

[Clockwork5]

I like CA. I don't consciously notice it most of the time but it does add a bit of depth to the image.