If other games looked like The Order 1886

[Nesh]

I do love colorful games, but I wonder if part of what makes those hard to balance is that we all prefer slightly different shades/tones of colors. Where as the more muted games we are less nit-picky because your don't have a shade or blue that your preference might not like. I really hate picking colors when I am working on level art, it drives me mad moving the sliders around searching for that perfect tone that I want. I show my wife later and she goes blah! (Picking out wall colors, we finally learned to just buy paint and deal with it...)

Or could it also be that the lighting seems better in Gears/The Order with those tones. Fallout 3 for me was not great, and I felt it just look drab. I was playing it a few nights ago and had to adjust to it. Maybe we should take a Fallout 3 image and apply some noise to it?

More colors the more our brain realizes and catches that it is all fake?

Our perception I believe appears to prefer images with more depth. This is applicaple also with paintings. Dark tones when applied correctly give a warmer impression. Some of the most impressive paintings of the renaissance gave lots of attention not just to colors and detail but special attention was given to shades and shadows as well. They pronounce shapes and detail when they come from the correct angle and the light has the right intensity.
Usually very bright paintings look "flatter". For me shadows and shades in a painting are like the bass in music. They give depth. Something similar applies also to graphics. Even if you use the same lighting and the same materials, a simple change of the light placement as well as its intensity does a HUGE difference. The feeling you get is completely different.
Managing the right composition of colors and lighting is just as important as the detail of the assets themselves. I think The Order does this extremely well

 

[L. Scofield]

And the reason why those materials work well under different lighting conditions is because they retain their properties including correct colors.
The assets do look realistic. The extra realism you get is thanks to the fact that with the filters it conveys a feeling that the game is shot from a real camera

What do you even mean with correct colors, particularly when they've been passed through color grading filters?

Also real cameras aren't that blurry today nor have they been so for decades. They don't suck all the color of the footage they shoot either.

I think you are alittle confused here. The game retains a CGI look whether it has the filters or not. But you mix your preference against such post processing effects with whether the game has a CGI'ish look

And yet although there is a difference, none looks better or more CGI'ish than the other. If the right assets and conditions are not there it just doesnt impress.

What then, according to you, "looks like CGI"? Specifics, please.

 

[Nesh]

What do you even mean with correct colors, particularly when they've been passed through color grading filters?

The "grading filter" isnt as intensive as you claim. The lighting conditions and the materials of the environment contribute more to that look than color grading filters. The images you posted as an example is proof of that. London of those times wasnt a bright colorful place to begin with

Also real cameras aren't that blurry today nor have they been so for decades. They don't suck all the color of the footage they shoot either.

It doesnt matter if there are better cameras. The post processing effects mimic camera effects, sucky or not.

What then, according to you, "looks like CGI"? Specifics, please.

I said CGI'ish . Not CGI. Also it is not simply "grain" and "desaturated colors". Edit: The point was that the original isnt that better than the photoshopped

 

[MrFox]

 

[BRiT]

I really wish there was LOL rating because Like doesnt convey the full sentiment on posts like the popcorn...

 

[L. Scofield]

The "grading filter" isnt as intensive as you claim. The lighting conditions and the materials of the environment contribute more to that look than color grading filters.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=151780103&postcount=2257

It's one step away from B&W.

The images you posted as an example is proof of that. London of those times wasnt a bright colorful place to begin with

Was it a monocromatic place?

It doesnt matter if there are better cameras. The post processing effects mimic camera effects, sucky or not.

To convey that it was shot from a camera it has to look like it was shot from a camera. If the game camera doesn't produce results like that of cameras people are used to (non-grainy and in color) then what's the point?

I said CGI'ish . Not CGI. Also it is not simply "grain" and "desaturated colors". Edit: The point was that the original isnt that better than the photoshopped

Still waiting for your definition.

I really wish there was LOL rating because Like doesnt convey the full sentiment on posts like the popcorn...

You can always quote it and reply with a ""

 

[orangpelupa]

color grade an image, and photoshop can be used. But what to use for coloring a video?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Seems like another person couldn't be bothered to read this thread. Also, downsampled GIFs aren't a good way to measure how blurry a game is. The direct-feed screenshots we have have been far more useful.

I have read your thread. It's nonsense. The Order 1886 is going for a specific look (photorealism, which is unobtainable in realtime so it ends up CGIish not too disimilar in look to Assassin's Creed's cinematics that also use simulated camera optical effects because they want the same filmed look). To achieve that look, the game has to render in photobelievable quality and add camera-like processing to the render, creating something that resembles filmic CGI. Now a different game with a different style, say Mario, aiming for CGI would aim for something Pixar-like, which means no desaturation or camera blur. Here's an image without CA, ever-present blur, film grain, and with bright colours. Does it fail to look like CGI?

Ummm, no. Interestingly, DOF is present - cinematographers need that for composition and so it's needed in CGI, hence is much needed in a game to hit the same visceral quality response. True motion blur is also necessary, and achieving that well in game is far from a cheap trick.

The argument you are really asking is, "is the post processing in The Order 1886 vital to making it look like CGI, and by extrapolation does that work for other titles?" By extrapolation is instantly disproven by not all CGI and CGI-like games having the same post effects. So we're left with the question of what rendering features in TO are responsible for it looking like CGI? For The Order, the post effects are vital to its historical setting. They possibly cover up some flaws and make the results more believable, but every other aspect of TO is part of the overall look. Remove the post effects and you'll have great shaders, lighting (maybe moderate rather than great), animation including cloth physics, characters, skin, and everything else. It would lose part of its aesthetic with the post effects, but it'd still be visually complete in the components that CGI aims for.

You're assertion that cheap post effects are a significant part of what make TO look like CGI is bunk. Firstly, CGI doesn't need that style to look different to games. Secondly, you need a heck of a lot more than just those post effects. The implication that any indie dev can apply some cheap post effects to a weak renderer and elevate it to RAD's attainment is completely disingenuous to RAD.

Here's a couple of images to mull over as to what makes a CGI animation look different to a game. How much do you attribute to cheap tricks?

 

[Nesh]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=151780103&postcount=2257

It's one step away from B&W.

Oh great. On one hand you say that downsampled GIF doesnt show how blurry the game looks then you use them to prove a non exising point.

Black and White??? Where???

Edit: also I dont understand what was the point in the neogaf link you posted. Both builds look impressive? Not to mention that the original may be more apealling to some? So the point you were trying to make that "cheap tricks" like color degration (in the final build and not in the older?) give a pseudo quality or psudeo-CGI look is mood. The assets themselves and the rest of the effects do the job. That link you posted show exactly that. They look only different and it is clearly a change in art direction. Not a cheap trick to make the game look better than it is. I would say that it supports even farther what Shifty desrcribed above

Was it a monocromatic place?

No. And neither is the game "monochromatic" I think you suffer from some kind of colorblindness
But outside it a was a very foggy non colorful place not very disimilar from what the game conveys.
During the industrial revolution, there was so much polution from coal use that grey dust covered everything and there was a constant fog of ashes in the air.
The problem was actually so bad that many people were dying from lung problems and it was very hard to see far into the distance.

To convey that it was shot from a camera it has to look like it was shot from a camera. If the game camera doesn't produce results like that of cameras people are used to (non-grainy and in color) then what's the point?

The difference is...it does look like it was shot from a camera.

Still waiting for your definition.

Still waiting from you to prove how one image impresses while the other doesnt. You are the one who was making a fuss about the game's cheap tricks that conveyed others that it looked great and CGI while it doesnt anyways. So if there is someone who needs to give a definition and support his points is you. Every point you made has been disproven multiple times

 

[Scott_Arm]

While I don't really agree with L.Scofield, because I don't think there are any cheap tricks, or that a game can look "better than it is," I do also kind of wonder why gamers love screen-space blur. I think the game looks fantastic, but it doesn't really look like film to me. Even old films are sharp when they want to be. I can't think of a movie I've seen, except for something really low-budget on cheap film stock, that looks equally blurred in foreground and background. Calling it a filmic look, to me, is not correct. It obviously shares a lot of visual traits with cinema, but in cinema the object or person of focus is sharp. Even films that have a bit of a film grain look to them, they're still pretty sharp when drawing your eye to the point of interest.

 

[Nesh]

About the grain effect the game isnt trying to achive cinema high quality imagery. It is instead trying to mimic the effect of something that was shot and recorded by a camera. The extra grain effect is there simply to fit the game's very old setting and art style. It suits better to give the subconsious impression of something recorded from a very very old camera, not something recorded from a high quality HD digital camera. We all have at the back of our heads very very old movies like Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy. It gives a vintage look

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yep. And these cameras had lousy lenses.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/12/30/article-0-0F4D2D3200000578-80_634x475.jpg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19423951

Also, bare in mind the speed of film was poor and there was no Steadicam harness or optical image stabilisation. On a camera with a slow shutter speed, you'd introduce low level blur just from the person holding the thing.

IMO The Order's choices seem a reasonable compromise between historic style and what real Victorian footage would look like (unplayable!), although it's still debatable if that's the right choice for a game.

 

[dobwal]

If a game uses techniques that require little effort either on the part of the dev or gpu and produces visuals that resonate with people, whats "cheap" about it?

Some people may not like what RAD is doing visually overall with TO or may have issues with certain aspects of its visuals (I fall into this camp), but shouldn't devs be allowed to explore and create different looks for their titles without coming under fire for their choices?

Why should a developer's creativity and the expression of that creativity be stymied because they choose something other than standard checkbox features?

 

[Scott_Arm]

You guys really think they're trying to emulate the look of camera footage from the 1920s? I highly doubt it. Even later, movies were either still black and white or colourized, like technicolor, which is an entirely different aesthetic. I'd be very interesting in knowing what films they were looking at specifically when deciding on their filmic look. I was thinking more along the lines of horror in the 1970s and 1980s, vampire and werewolf movies etc.

If I could find a good uncompressed screen of American Werewolf In London, that would probably be a good movie to compare to. While it's foggy, a bit grainy and dark, it's still a very sharp movie.

I'm not sure that the blur subconsciously makes me think of something vintage ... but I guess that's why it's subconscious. I actually don't mind the soft look of the game. I have no complaints about it. I'm just curious about it. It's obviously a conscious choice on their part. Gamers seem to like it.

Edit: The idea of taking other games and photoshopping them to add a bit of a blur, some fake depth of field, vignetting, film grain etc to see if people like the images more or less is kind of interesting, whether L.Scofield is being a bit uncompromising about it or not.

 

[Globalisateur]

Snip...

Snip...

To be fair this one was artificially recolored by @L. Scofield to make his previous point...That was the original pic:

But your argument still stands, yes The Order 1864 has colors.

 

[orangpelupa]

The order does those things to reach the final graphic quality. I don't get it why those considered as cheap.

Hmm... Okay, consider those as cheap. Then I would like to see more games using cheap tricks to looks awesome. Goes to the extreme, Like those ps1 era with combination of pre rendered and real-time stuff.


As a gamer, I don't mind how cheap the trick is as long as it give the results.

 

[orangpelupa]

The order does those things to reach the final graphic quality. I don't get it why those considered as cheap.

Hmm... Okay, consider those as cheap. Then I would like to see more games using cheap tricks to looks awesome. Goes to the extreme, Like those ps1 era with combination of pre rendered and real-time stuff.


As a gamer, I don't mind how cheap the trick is as long as it give the results.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You guys really think they're trying to emulate the look of camera footage from the 1920s?

No, they're trying to create an aesthetic that's fitting for the setting, IMO. Razor sharp visuals don't match that when the POV is a camera. In a first-person game, the choice of camera would be pretty whack because you ought to be seeing the world through the protagonists eyes, which hopefully don't have blur and grain and desaturation. For the game and setting though, the post effects work. They are are a key part of TOI's visual identity.

Edit: The idea of taking other games and photoshopping them to add a bit of a blur, some fake depth of field, vignetting, film grain etc to see if people like the images more or less is kind of interesting, whether L.Scofield is being a bit uncompromising about it or not.

It does. There's value in a discussion about choice of post effects and their impact, and furthermore which compromises post effects could facilitate for games of a certain style. eg. If blurro-cam is acceptable for some titles and that blurro-cam destroys high frequency material detail, could the game get away with lower fidelity textures and use those resources elsewhere? Or is per-object motion blur vital to a higher fidelity look (for most gamers) or is it optional? Although there's considerable limitation with reference only to stills, and even more so when we don't have free access to source our own images and have to use whatever's found on the web.

 

[Nesh]

To be fair this one was artificially recolored by @L. Scofield to make his previous point...That was the original pic:

But your argument still stands, yes The Order 1864 has colors.

Ooops thats the one I wanted to use.

 

[L. Scofield]

I have read your thread. It's nonsense. The Order 1886 is going for a specific look (photorealism, which is unobtainable in realtime so it ends up CGIish not too disimilar in look to Assassin's Creed's cinematics that also use simulated camera optical effects because they want the same filmed look). To achieve that look, the game has to render in photobelievable quality and add camera-like processing to the render, creating something that resembles filmic CGI. Now a different game with a different style, say Mario, aiming for CGI would aim for something Pixar-like, which means no desaturation or camera blur. Here's an image without CA, ever-present blur, film grain, and with bright colours. Does it fail to look like CGI?

Ummm, no. Interestingly, DOF is present - cinematographers need that for composition and so it's needed in CGI, hence is much needed in a game to hit the same visceral quality response. True motion blur is also necessary, and achieving that well in game is far from a cheap trick.

The argument you are really asking is, "is the post processing in The Order 1886 vital to making it look like CGI, and by extrapolation does that work for other titles?" By extrapolation is instantly disproven by not all CGI and CGI-like games having the same post effects. So we're left with the question of what rendering features in TO are responsible for it looking like CGI? For The Order, the post effects are vital to its historical setting. They possibly cover up some flaws and make the results more believable, but every other aspect of TO is part of the overall look. Remove the post effects and you'll have great shaders, lighting (maybe moderate rather than great), animation including cloth physics, characters, skin, and everything else. It would lose part of its aesthetic with the post effects, but it'd still be visually complete in the components that CGI aims for.

You're assertion that cheap post effects are a significant part of what make TO look like CGI is bunk. Firstly, CGI doesn't need that style to look different to games. Secondly, you need a heck of a lot more than just those post effects. The implication that any indie dev can apply some cheap post effects to a weak renderer and elevate it to RAD's attainment is completely disingenuous to RAD.

Here's a couple of images to mull over as to what makes a CGI animation look different to a game. How much do you attribute to cheap tricks?
View attachment 565 View attachment 566

I find this hilarious. When I first postulate that the use of filters is what gives The Order the edge in many people's minds I'm told that I'm exaggerating their importance. When I call them "cheap tricks" people tell me they're actually essential to achieve the level of realism RAD is going for. Make up your minds

"A problem I see is that many people like the effects these filters produce but won't acknowledge them as important. I don't understand why."
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...like-the-order-1886.56507/page-4#post-1824568

Turns out all I needed to do was attack them, not put them in a positive light LOL.

First of all, to clarify, I specifically stated which filters I think are cheap tricks:

"Desaturation, CA, noise and an always present blur filter are indeed cheap tricks."
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...like-the-order-1886.56507/page-4#post-1824568

You may notice that at no point did I consider DOF or motion blur cheap tricks.

Now, you state that to achieve a believable photorealistic style with realtime graphics you need those effects. If that's true, how do you explain Driveclub? I would never mistake a TO1886 screenshot for real life but I would one from Driveclub.

You seem to be under the impression that I think that in order to look like CGI, games require the use of heavy postprocessing effects. I don't and I never stated such thing.* However, I do think that others do think so since the games most widely considered to look CGI'ish (as Nesh would say) are blurry, dirty, desaturated ones: KZ2, TO1886 and P.T. I could be wrong about this so I'd like to see some counterexamples if anybody wants to present them.

*The only one I personally consider necessary is high-quality motion blur though applied in moderation like in Ryse.

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Oh great. On one hand you say that downsampled GIF doesnt show how blurry the game looks then you use them to prove a non exising point.

Black and White??? Where???

First shot is desaturated and monochromatic. Third shot is from an old build, in the newest version (as shown by the comparison I posted before) the screen is under a very strong blue filter making the image almost monochromatic. The fourth shot also uses muted colors and an almost monochromatic color palette.

Oh and the second shot is a color corrected, lens aberration corrected, sharpened version of an image from a tech presentation where the blur and grain filters hadn't been applied. Seriously, try to pay attention

Edit: also I dont understand what was the point in the neogaf link you posted. Both builds look impressive? Not to mention that the original may be more apealling to some? So the point you were trying to make that "cheap tricks" like color degration (in the final build and not in the older?) give a pseudo quality or psudeo-CGI look is mood. The assets themselves and the rest of the effects do the job. That link you posted show exactly that. They look only different and it is clearly a change in art direction. Not a cheap trick to make the game look better than it is. I would say that it supports even farther what Shifty desrcribed above

I posted a comparison between and old build and the most recent one. And yes, it shows a drastic reduction in color from one to the other.

No. And neither is the game "monochromatic" I think you suffer from some kind of colorblindness
But outside it a was a very foggy non colorful place not very disimilar from what the game conveys.
During the industrial revolution, there was so much polution from coal use that grey dust covered everything and there was a constant fog of ashes in the air.
The problem was actually so bad that many people were dying from lung problems and it was very hard to see far into the distance.

Your point being that The Order's going for the look of a hundred-year-old B&W video?

The difference is...it does look like it was shot from a camera.

A game camera.

Still waiting from you to prove how one image impresses while the other doesnt. You are the one who was making a fuss about the game's cheap tricks that conveyed others that it looked great and CGI while it doesnt anyways. So if there is someone who needs to give a definition and support his points is you. Every point you made has been disproven multiple times

How can a point be disproven when you can't even define what it is? You're just avoiding comitting to a definition because then it could be refuted. This was your statement:

"The game retains a CGI look whether it has the filters or not."

You still haven't defined what that means at all.

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While I don't really agree with L.Scofield, because I don't think there are any cheap tricks, or that a game can look "better than it is," I do also kind of wonder why gamers love screen-space blur. I think the game looks fantastic, but it doesn't really look like film to me. Even old films are sharp when they want to be. I can't think of a movie I've seen, except for something really low-budget on cheap film stock, that looks equally blurred in foreground and background. Calling it a filmic look, to me, is not correct. It obviously shares a lot of visual traits with cinema, but in cinema the object or person of focus is sharp. Even films that have a bit of a film grain look to them, they're still pretty sharp when drawing your eye to the point of interest.

That's one of the greatest contradictions I've seen around. Everybody apparently hates upscaled games because they're not as crisp and clean as native resolution games. Yet, the game they think has the best graphics, including IQ, is a game designed to be blurry and grainy