Graphical effects that are standard by now but shouldn't

[joker454]

I agree fully about the 30fps, but there is some truth in that because effects like chromatic aberration have existed unintentionally in the past, it makes sense in games like Alien: Isolation to recreate that 80s movie feel, for instance.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. I also fully agree with 30fps, but chromatic aberration makes perfect sense in Alien Isolation because it does remind me of 80s movies that often had that artifact unintentionally. Like Blade Runner had it a fair amount, in this shot for example:

So it's like many effects that in certain cases can be both very cool and appropriate.

 

[Ethatron]

Shadows can have massive amounts of chromatic abberation when they fall though cheap window glass (glass elevator in the night lit from street lamps fe.). If games would be so sophisticated that thay'd only do it for refraction from scene-objects, I would be very impressed. Caustics from water is also very much visible.

 

[London Geezer]

Shadows can have massive amounts of chromatic abberation when they fall though cheap window glass (glass elevator in the night lit from street lamps fe.). If games would be so sophisticated that thay'd only do it for refraction from scene-objects, I would be very impressed. Caustics from water is also very much visible.

One thing is for sure. As soon as it becomes possible to have such sophisticated lighting in games where light refracts and produces CA like in real life, that's all we'll see turned all the way up to 11.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I agree with sebbbi on the theory that the images should be clean, however the practice is a little bit different.

One thing is that CG, both offline and especially realtime, is just not good enough to look realistic on its own, in its raw form. Obviously the realtime renderers are suffering a lot on image quality, all kinds of aliasing and such, and also the geometrical complexity is not enough either, even for simple scenes and simple objects. Offline is better in many things, but it's still too perfect and artificial looking. The various kinds of lens effects and other post work can help a lot here to hide these issues and add subtle imperfections that help to sell the results.
The Order is probably the best example of this, even if the effects are used a bit excessively.

Which brings me to my other point, which is stylization. Even in photography, many artists chose to abandon realism intentionally, to add their own artistic touch. Things like black and white, using certain types of lenses or film stock, filters on the camera and so on are pretty common and a perfectly valid approach. Or there's studio lighting, smoke and wind machines, or even artificial lighting and other trickery when shooting outdoors. We shouldn't ask CGI to avoid using such tools either.
And then of course a lot of photographers also do heavy retouching, particularly with female subjects, but also with things like food. Yeah it's usually used to excess and I don't like that, but that's also more of a question of style.

So in the end, I believe that anything goes - although preferably with good taste Certain games would benefit from as little post work as possible, while others would look better with all the tools in the box - it's not something that should be set in stone IMHO.

 

[Ethatron]

One thing is for sure. As soon as it becomes possible to have such sophisticated lighting in games where light refracts and produces CA like in real life, that's all we'll see in games turned all the way up to 11.

Maybe we'll see green CA, because why not.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Actually as far as I know CA is usually about shifting the red channel in one direction - and the green in the opposite Could be a uniform value across the entire image or it could be starting at zero in the center and increasing in strength radially towards the edges.

 

[Infinisearch]

One question I've had about some effects like CA is would they get the same hate/criticism if they were rendered at ultra-high resolutions (300dpi?)? I wonder if there is subtlety to be had or something unconsciously perceived at higher resolutions that is lost at lower res's and bothers viewers? Basically i wonder if render resolution affects perception of various effects... maybe at lower resolutions the effect is to pronounced/in your face/affects IQ@res negatively.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

CA isn't really driven by resolution, except when the frame is really small like 640*480. But I believe even in that case it could be using a subpixel value for shifting the channels, and of course an overall mask to restrain it to the edges of the screen.

So it should have more to do with the strength of the effect. Even at 4K it could be strong enough to become disturbing

As far as I know it's pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop or a similar 2D image editing app. Go to the channels, select the Red and move it 1 pixel to the right; then go to Green and move it 1 pixel to the left.
Quick job:

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Little more complex Photoshop filter, which varies the amount based on distance from the center:

 

[L. Scofield]

That is not CA. That's just bloom. Maybe with a little bit of DoF thrown in. It's a little too much if photorealism is what you're after, but then FFXV clearly isn't. I think it looks quite striking, especially the way it's shining through the characters' hair.

Yeah, it seems like a combination of bloom and DOF.

Shadows can have massive amounts of chromatic abberation when they fall though cheap window glass (glass elevator in the night lit from street lamps fe.). If games would be so sophisticated that thay'd only do it for refraction from scene-objects, I would be very impressed. Caustics from water is also very much visible.

Maybe in 20 years.

 

[orangpelupa]

@Laa-Yosh
my fore-head directly goes bye-bye seeing that lol

@L. Scofield
looks like that effect will animate beautifully when mixed with light reflecred from water/pool

 

[Billy Idol]

Crysis 3 had water caustic effects on high settings...it was super fun to play around with it

 

[Ethatron]

I should correct my sentence there, I wanted to say "[Chromatic abberation in] caustics from water is also very much visible".

 

[L. Scofield]

Crysis 3 had water caustic effects on high settings...it was super fun to play around with it

They looked nice but weren't even remotely realistic.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just came across this and quite frankly couldn't believe it:

In my day, green and pink artefacts like that were called a rendering bug. Now it's a rendering feature??

 

[London Geezer]

You only just saw it? CA in Bloodborne can be a bit over the top in certain scenes.

 

[milk]

Just goes to show how the Apple II was ahead of its time. It had post-aa with CA by default. Maybe someday these modern games will get to look as good as those! hehhehe...

 

[Globalisateur]

Just came across this and quite frankly couldn't believe it:

In my day, green and pink artefacts like that were called a rendering bug. Now it's a rendering feature??

Yep. . Here is another rendering feature (TLOU PS3): it's called "Flou cinématique" in french, literally "cinematic blur". I like how the french name is semantically more honest here: the first and main objective of the blur is really to reproduce a cinematic effect (exactly like CA and DOF), not to allegedly take care of judder because of the motion.

Can you believe how wrecked the originally beautiful scene, particularly here, is? It's much much worse than CA and the vast majority of console games have it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You only just saw it? CA in Bloodborne can be a bit over the top in certain scenes.

I haven't looked to too many screenies. This isn't over the top though - it's plain broken. The grass is pink and green rectangles, rather than having pink and green fringing. And the guy on the right look like anaglyph 3D. This is CA done wrong and badly and making a ghastly mess.

Yep. . Here is another rendering feature (TLOU PS3):

Can you believe how wrecked the originally beautiful scene, particularly here, is?

When the camera's in motion, I think that blur looks much better. It only breaks when you try to track apiece of scenery with your eyes, and why exactly is one wanting to do that while spinning around a camera in a game?

 

[HTupolev]

Yep. . Here is another rendering feature (TLOU PS3): it's called "Flou cinématique" in french, literally "cinematic blur". I like how the french name is semantically more honest here: the first and main objective of the blur is really to reproduce a cinematic effect (exactly like CA and DOF), not to allegedly take care of judder because of the motion.

Have you actually played TLoU on PS3? The motion blur looks like iffy from any "cinematicness" perspective, but is IMO one of the most successful implementations I've seen for making a poorly-performing game feel smoother.

I'd actually agree with your gist for a lot of implementations, but you've chosen the worst example possible.