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RPS Asks: Depth Of Field, Motion Blur?

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cncplyr

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Posted by unregistered user: cncplyr
Personally I’m very against them. Both of them hinder your viewing, and when trying to frag lots of people online, I find it really distracting and annoying. The first thing I do when I get a new game is jump into the options and change the resolution, so DoF normally goes before I’ve even played anything yet. Motion blur I’m not so much against, but I do turn it off normally, if only to save some fps. One of my housemates would disagree with me, saying it’s much more realistic and looks much nicer. Having said that, he doesn’t play many fps games online…

Posted 2 months ago #
MinisterofDOOM

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Posted by unregistered user: MinisterofDOOM
Post-processing effects are like stagehands: at their best when you DON’T notice them. They’re supposed to compliment the scene. They should not define the scene, nor should they take over the scene. I strongly dislike motion blur, moreso in FPS games than anywhere else. DOF is great when used well, but it is very rarely ever used well.

The effect that is really starting to get on my nerves (and Borderlands is a great example) is the shift in FOV when running. Last I checked–hang on, I’ll be right back…….yeah, when I run in the real world, my vision does not distort. Whose idea was it to implement this stupid effect? It’s terrible. It looks stupid, it is distracting, it adds nothing of value to the game. I miss the appeal completely. Fortunately some simple .ini editing can work around this in Borderlands.

Posted 2 months ago #
ziv

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Posted by unregistered user: ziv
Motion blur is critical for me. Without it games seem jittery, even at 60fps. it can be done badly but i haven’t seen a single game that was ruined by it. DoF on the other hand is fiddly for me, as a photographer I’m sensitive to this kind of stuff. the only good dof effect i’ve seen was in crysis. with cod4 being the worst. developers need to understandthat dof is distance depandant; it doesn’t mean just blur the top and bottom of the screen.

Posted 2 months ago #
mrmud

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Posted by unregistered user: mrmud
Depth of field and motion blur are stupid as hell. Both these effects occur because our eyes have to focus on something but it is our eyes that focus, not the characters in the games eyes.

Posted 2 months ago #
mrmud

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Posted by unregistered user: mrmud
But its neither realistic or immersive as has been said several times in this thread already. The problem is that the game equates your mouse movements to your eye movements but those are not the same. Anything that your eyes are looking at should be in focus and since the game cannot see where your eyes are looking (without eye tracking) it also can not know what it can blur.

Posted 2 months ago #
Matzerath

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Posted by unregistered user: Matzerath (URL)
You know what would be awesome? A 2-D sidescroller with depth of field. Either with both sides of the screen falling into blurry obscurity, or just the whole thing being blurry.

Posted 2 months ago #
jason

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Posted by unregistered user: jason
I like the DOF in borderlands as it shifts when your “iron sighing” down a gun, and as in real life when your concetrating everything on one object you dont pay as much attention to the other things.

i think the DOF is too narrow (the distance vales from camera which register in focus are too close together) a subtler use would make the effect sit better. as with all sfx if you notice it, its done badly

Posted 2 months ago #
bhlaab

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Posted by unregistered user: bhlaab
Can’t wait for eyetracking to control dof THE FUTURE THE FUTURE

Posted 2 months ago #
Bobsy

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Posted by unregistered user: Bobsy
I love depth of field effects. Absolutely love ‘em, and I lack the patience for the argument that it’s an unnecessary effect. Unlike, say, bloom, which served no practical mechanic unless the game has a “Oh dear the sun’s in my eyes – who’s that waving at me, is that you Simon?” feature, depth of field is a great way to draw attention to elements in the foreground and the background. It also helps to subvert the uncanny feeling that you’re playing a godjaAmmed videogame because your eyes are apparently so perfect that you can focus on everything at once simoultaneously.

Assassin’s Creed did this well, for missions where you’re tailing people. The rest of the world just blurs away and it helps you stay utterly focussed on your objective.

Posted 2 months ago #
Alexander

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Posted by unregistered user: Alexander
Instead of being an illustration of cheapness, motion blur is a very valid effect when used adequately. Eyes will perceive fluid motion at 23 frames per second however our eyes can perceive motion quite a little faster than 23 frames per second. Running a movie at 23 frames does just fine as our camera´s do not record perfectly sharp images of motion and have just enough motion blur for us to interpret the image as sharp but still see fluid motion. Computer generated images are by definition perfectly sharp, in order to achieve a more ´natural´ look, motion blur compensates for the far too surperior sharpness.

In essence it is the same with depth of field, our eyes focus automatically, but they are not too fast at this. You could experiment with this by putting an object in front of your window and focus on it, then look outside in the distance. So DoF intends to simulate this, however most gamedesigners and filmmakers resort to improper use and the effect becomes an annoyance. DoF is a bigger problem to do well than motion blur (the latter needs only to be slight and relative to the speed of the object, but this means running the filter for every entity separately and will eat your computer´s guts and chew on it and then burp loudly and you will not like the game because you might´ve compensated for the lack of cinematique but you are now watching a slideshow) because DoF is in fact related to the user watching a still image and the eyes´ scanning pattern which cannot properly be interpreted.

Posted 2 months ago #
Nicu

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Posted by unregistered user: Nicu (URL)
I think DOF is good. It provides extra realism to a game. The example you gave when you reload the gun but you wanted to look for the next barrage is exactly what I mean: you see what your character sees, so if he’s focusing on reloading the gun, so should you, the player. You have time to look around and when you feel it’s ok to reload, you do it.

DOF also attenuates the problems of game engines that can’t render details that are far away in the scene. Making them blurry is the best thing to do. Look at GTA IV.

So yes, DOF is definitely good.

Posted 2 months ago #
c-Row

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Posted by unregistered user: c-Row
I thought ME’s grain filter made it look more organic than the sharp, non-processed standard images.

Posted 2 months ago #
mrmud

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Posted by unregistered user: mrmud
Your eyes arent good enough to focus everywhere at once in a videogame either. Its just that your eyes move, giving the impression of focus everywhere.

DOF is not realistic.

Posted 2 months ago #
mrmud

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Posted by unregistered user: mrmud
Have you ever reloaded a gun?
It does not take 100% concentration all the time. Sure you need to spend some time looking at it but you definitely do not need to stare at it the entire duration.
You only really need to look down to ensure that you are lining up the mag to the mag well.

Posted 2 months ago #
mrmud

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Posted by unregistered user: mrmud
Thats exactly the problem. Its photorealistic instead of realistic, it is the world as viewed by a static lens and that is not how the mind interprets the data coming from your eyes.

Posted 2 months ago #
Rostock

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Posted by unregistered user: Rostock
I keep it on, why not… I like the look.

Posted 2 months ago #
Quercus

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Posted by unregistered user: Quercus
I don’t really know – I certainly tend to turn down motion blue because it can be annoying and isn’t that realistic (if you look around you don’t take in as much, but things don’t actually blur do they?).
As for Depth of Field, can’t say it has bothered me that much.

Posted 2 months ago #
SiUnit

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Posted by unregistered user: SiUnit
DOF, ambient occlusion both make single player campaigns more immersive.

Borderlands was nuts, there was an awesome juxtaposition between crazy cartoon outlines and super realistic DOF & AO that helped create a real sense of atmosphere in the game. Plus the crazytime delayed AO effect is mega trippy and totally epic

Post processing rules (especially in Shattered Horizon)

Posted 2 months ago #
Schmung

Goblin
Posts: 76

ker-what? I think you have misunderstood what ambient occlusion is TBH

Posted 2 months ago #
Schmung

Goblin
Posts: 76

DoF is a lovely thing when done well, the trick the lies in tweaking it so that it’s not too obtrusive IMO. If it’s overdone then it goes straight off, but a nice subtle bit of DoF is great and can actually help you out.

Posted 2 months ago #
Sharpblue

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Posted by unregistered user: Sharpblue
Personally I usually cant stand either feature. Both feel completely unrealistic and uneccesary. Depth of field makes more sense from a first person perspective, seeing it used in a strategy game however…. /facepalm
The only motion blur ive liked has been in the source engine. Looks rather nice in TF2 because its quite subtle. although this i turned off also because it made all my screenshots blurry =(

Posted 2 months ago #
Confidence Interval

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Posted by unregistered user: Confidence Interval
@mrmud
I reloaded a gun once. Took me about ten minutes, what with dropping things and trying to put them in the wrong way up. And that was a breech-loading shotgun. It perhaps depends on how used you are at handling a weapon. Thus reloading times: Trained mercenaries = relatively slow. MIT-trained lab physicists fighting off alien invasions = relatively fast.

Posted 2 months ago #
jakob rogert

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Posted by unregistered user: jakob rogert (URL)
In my mind, it’s of course a divide between players who play to win/game the game system, or players who play for a specific experience – not primarily to make a maximization of all dynamics and mechanics. (Traditional Table Top) Role play – for example, is a gaming activity where players cannot play to win, it doesn’t work out, but instead, players play to experience something. The same goes, surprisingly for some hardcore war games, where you play a specific battle with a specific set of forces. Some of those scenarios you simply cannot win, but lose to different degrees. The enjoyment for grognards in these games are sometimes cited to be allowed to put oneself in the specific commander’s situation.

Posted 2 months ago #
CMaster

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Posted by unregistered user: CMaster
The thing I find odd about a lot of these effects is that despite the fact that in a lot of games we are supposedly there or seeing through a characters eyes, we get effects you don’t see with eyes. I’ve never seen lens flare. I do see the starburst effect sometimes though. I’ve seen depth of field effects of course, but that normally needs a much more extreme difference in distances than you get triggering DoF effects in games. Motion blur, again I’ve seen, but only in really low light conditions or when moving much faster than it is normally triggered in games. And film grain is just plain weird in most situations.

That said, sometimes these things can be effective – motion blur can give an additional sense of speed or impact. DoF sometimes makes things pretty, as does Lens Flare. And a lot of the HDR/glow effects you see really do replicate being in a dark room looking out or vice versa.

Posted 2 months ago #

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