Modern games and over the top bloom

[sxr7171]

So I started a thread in the video card forum and I realized this is the more appropriate forum. I'll start off with a link to the thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2370483

I don't know if anyone has strong thoughts about this issue which is universal among modern games. IMHO it just spoils otherwise gorgeous games.

 

[Cerb]

Bloom needs to DIAF. As does soft focus (which, luckily, isn't so common, anymore). Bloom and soft focus covering most or all of scenes are fatiguing to my eyes.

All of them have their place in cinematic sequences, certain times of day, and certain surfaces. But, not everywhere. Not only that, but Bloom looks silly when done by object/surface, half the time, because the effect it's trying to mimic should properly be applied to reflected light, and generally only affect a portion of a surface, or vary in intensity over the length of a surface, even if it's from sunlight.

 

[BSim500]

Agreed. Just because they can doesn't mean they should. What gets to me is not Bloom, but the absurd "Depth of Field" effects that aren't even remotely realistic as to how the human eyeball works either in appearance or duration when changing 'focus' from near to far. It's far less realistic than simply not using it at all.

 

[BrightCandle]

What would you use instead of bloom? You don't have genuine global illumination so the edges of the objects would be the same lighting as the rest of the object without bloom. Its a fudge to make the lighting look more natural, its obviously not a good effect but its cheap enough that todays limited GPUs can render it. Without bloom those edges looking out into bright light would look awful and flat and really unnatural.

 

[futurefields]

I like bloom. And soft-focus, DOF, motion blur, and all the other fx everyone seems to hate. Its all in how the developer chooses to use it.

 

[Cerb]

What would you use instead of bloom? You don't have genuine global illumination so the edges of the objects would be the same lighting as the rest of the object without bloom. Its a fudge to make the lighting look more natural, its obviously not a good effect but its cheap enough that todays limited GPUs can render it. Without bloom those edges looking out into bright light would look awful and flat and really unnatural.

They already do look unnatural, to the point of being uncomfortable to look at. A pasty white guy's skin shouldn't have bloom. A random block of wood shouldn't have bloom. Dirty matte surfaces shouldn't have bloom. And so on. Also, some things that might warrant it, like snow, should have the strength adjusted over the course of a day, at least. If an engine that can do it better isn't an option (like Frostbite 2 or 3), it should be used sparingly, rather than everywhere, on everything.

 

[Karstein]

Reminds me of this.

 

[BrightCandle]

Bloom is used because anything more accurate and expensive in computation is too much for todays hardware. Without it the flat edges that go to a bright sky are the same lighting as the area that the bloom doesn't cover and I can assure you that looks very unnatural indeed. All of its a fake, Ambient occlusion is a fudge for producing shadows because we aren't actually lighting things properly. Bloom is there to hide the fact that there is no global illumination being applied to the edges that are nearest the supposedly bright outside or room. Shadow maps are used instead of cast shadows based on rays of light. Depth of field is there to simulate the focus point of the eyes by making the assumption you are always looking at the centre. Motion blur is there to mostly hide low frame rate but its also there to hide how bad the monitors are at crisp images. The eyes will naturally blur things that are moving so you don't really need to add more so long as the frame rate is OK, but mostly its not. None of this stuff is good, you wont ever hear me argue for these effects being great and real looking. Its just the alternative of not having them is often worse.

 

[norseamd]

have any of you guys been in a forest with light beams coming through. if you walk right through the sunbeam it can be very bright. not sure if this is what you guys are talking about. remembering some poeple compaining about the dust in battlefield messing too much with visability when that is what dust does. although these are battlefield players and while i have never played multiplayer battlefield i have heard many people talking about how they doe nothing but try to gain leaderboard statistics and that they might be an upgrade to the cod crowd or something.

any one here play arma 2 multiplayer? how is it? i have messed around in the free singleplayer stuff but have never tried the multiplayer even though i have been meaning to

 

[Dankk]

Bloom can be good, if it is tastefully used. Good bloom implementation is when there's just enough of it to make the lighting seem more natural, but still subtle enough that it doesn't look all blurry, goofy, and overblown. You shouldn't be able to notice it unless you're looking for it. Unfortunately it just so happens that a lot of games tend to over-rely on it, often times as an attempt to mask other visual imperfections of the game.

This reminds me of an older thread on here where people were complaining about how motion-blur is so ridiculously unnecessary in games. People didn't realize it, but the problem isn't necessarily that motion blur exists; the problem, rather, is that it's just overdone most of the time. The examples people used were games that had way too much motion blur in them.

I mentioned Portal as an example of a game with a very modest, tasteful implementation of motion blur. Most people disbelieved me and said they didn't remember any motion blur in Portal. Well, yeah; exactly. You're not supposed to notice it. But there's just enough of it to make those scenes where you're flying at high-speed through the air that much more intense.

 

[BrightCandle]

If you combine all of these relatively new rendering technologies together you can produce something that really does look quite real compared to without them. I agree its the overuse that makes it look bad. BF3 and BF4 are some of the most overdone saturated colour/HDR/Bloom games I know of. They turn the HDR effect and bloom up so its so obvious that its all you see. Its part of the "style" of battlefield now, it was I guess never meant to be realistic but instead appeal to people who wanted that over styled look.

Arma 3 uses all of the same techniques, light rays, AO, bloom, HDR etc but it doesn't have the same ridiculous effect, instead it just ends up looking almost real. There are moments in A3 on both of its maps where the first time you see a scene you do just stop and admire its beauty, its breathtakingly lovely in places and the attention to detail in the maps is exquisite. The game has performance problems but in many ways I see it as what BF4 could and should have looked like.

 

[norseamd]

If you combine all of these relatively new rendering technologies together you can produce something that really does look quite real compared to without them. I agree its the overuse that makes it look bad. BF3 and BF4 are some of the most overdone saturated colour/HDR/Bloom games I know of. They turn the HDR effect and bloom up so its so obvious that its all you see. Its part of the "style" of battlefield now, it was I guess never meant to be realistic but instead appeal to people who wanted that over styled look. Arma 3 uses all of the same techniques, light rays, AO, bloom, HDR etc but it doesn't have the same ridiculous effect, instead it just ends up looking almost real. There are moments in A3 on both of its maps where the first time you see a scene you do just stop and admire its beauty, its breathtakingly lovely in places and the attention to detail in the maps is exquisite. The game has performance problems but in many ways I see it as what BF4 could and should have looked like.

have not played any of the newer battlefields so maybe they are overdone. the main reason i said something is like i remembering hearing that people were complaining that moving into sunlight in battlefield would completely ruin their vision. yah that is what bright sunlight does. seems that battlefield gamers will complain about somehting if it messes with their competiveness. am i way off?

what exactly is bloom?

 

[sxr7171]

Reminds me of this.

That sums it up pretty well.

 

[BrightCandle]

what exactly is bloom?

When you are somewhere dark and look into somewhere lighter than edges of the thing you are looking through have a glow of the light leak onto them. You also see it when looking at a light source, it has this glowy effect to it that smears the colour of the light over the surrounding area.

 

[shortylickens]

Modern optics has pretty much killed things like lens flare yet they still add it in post processing on many movies.

My eyes have never experience such a strong lighting effect and I've been stationed all over the world, I've even hallucinated in 120 degree heat at Death Valley. Yet bloom still gets used in video games.

One of the big advantages in Windows gaming is you can always turn that shit off.
If its not in the regular settings menu theres a way to do it in some config file somewhere.
Or force it off thru a utility like Catalyst Control center or the Nvidia eXperience control panel or whatever the hell it is.

 

[PingSpike]

I generally turn bloom off, but it seems some games have finally stopped overdoing it.

But this shit has been going on forever. Remember when colored lighting first came out? It was like every game released for the next few years took place in a fucking a dance club.

 

[darkewaffle]

Me no likey bloom usually. I remember starting Guild Wars for the first time and it looked ridiculous.

 

[Chaotic42]

I agree with this:
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=222

I turn off bloom and DoF as soon as I start a game for the first time.

 

[mmntech]

Bloom and Depth of Field are problematic because they're often misused in games. These effects represent the world how a cinema camera sees it.

When you shoot video, you adjust the camera's exposure to the ambient light in the environment. Bloom is caused by overexposure from a light source brighter than your ambient light. A good example of this filming a room with a window. Since the room is naturally darker than the exterior, the light coming in from the window will appear blown out.

Unless your JJ Abrams, you generally want to reduce bloom as much as possible. It looks ugly and its now how the human eye sees the world. Our eyes are pretty good at automatically adjusting exposure so our world doesn't appear blown out. The only time you'll ever encounter this effect in real life is in very bright environments.

Depth of Field is used to emphasize a particular object or character. It's one of the most basic tools in the videographer's grab bag. It also does reflect how the human eye sees the world. We only have a narrow focus point. Everything outside of that appears blurry to us.

Now Bloom and Depth of Field can work if you're trying to go for a cinematic effect on a game. However, you have to limit it to where it makes sense. Having the whole world blown out is unrealistic. Now bloom can be useful in a few cases. Looking at a brighter than ambient light source or exiting a dark area into the outdoors. However, it should be used subtly to achieve a natural effect.

During gameplay, DOF can be jarring because you're watching it on a 2D screen. Your own eye already blurs what your not focusing on. So it makes little sense to use it. This is especially true in FPS games. DOF should only be used for cinematics and only to emphasize a particular subject(s).

I get the sense though that DOF is being used to replace the fog effects used in the past to cover for low draw distance.

 

[AdamantC]

I agree with this: http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=222

One of my favorites, and pretty much sums up what I think about modern graphics.
I mean for years developers have been pushing clearer and more defined graphics and then around '04-'05 it seems everyone thought: "Nope! Everything looks too real! Let's make everything look like a DOS game with a software renderer at 320x240!"

 

[Stuka87]

Any feature can be misused.

Depth of Field works really well in games like Mass Effect where it changes depending on who is talking. This changes the focus of the screen to that person. I also think the bloom used in the Mass Effect series really works well for it.

They just need to be used in the right places, and not to an excessive amount.

 

[AdamantC]

DoF tends to be fine in a tightly controlled environment like cut scenes and conversations, but the effect tends to quickly spiral out of control once you hit gameplay.

 

[dmoney1980]

I had an issue with The Witcher 2 and its use of DOF. It actually caused me to get dizzy and get headaches. The game also uses a very aggressive bloom setup, so I turned both settings off and I was a happy camper

 

[futurefields]

One of my favorites, and pretty much sums up what I think about modern graphics.
I mean for years developers have been pushing clearer and more defined graphics and then around '04-'05 it seems everyone thought: "Nope! Everything looks too real! Let's make everything look like a DOS game with a software renderer at 320x240!"

I dont think games from 2004-2005 look very real...

Crysis 3 looks way more real with all its evil graphics.

 

[sxr7171]

I agree with this:
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=222

I turn off bloom and DoF as soon as I start a game for the first time.

Exactly what I'm talking about. Someone said it before me.

The tech is good. The misuse of it is the issue. Somebody needs to send a message to video game art departments.