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Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

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Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#11

Post by applfanboysbgon »

overgard wrote: post #7

I agree with his overall point, but I would point out: realism is not usually the point, the point is to look good. The problem with realism is once you get past "wow the computer can do that now", it's not very interesting -- most of reality is pretty dull looking!

> most of reality is pretty dull looking!

This is extremely untrue. It may be true that you spend most of your time in a dull-looking office or apartment, but most of reality -- at least here on Earth -- is quite visually interesting, and games are usually placed in visually interesting environments rather than set entirely within an office or apartment.

Beyond that, I would argue that the entire point of realism is not looking good (although it can look good), but rather immersion. The intent is to transport you to another world and make you feel like you're actually inside the scene. If your goal isn't to do that, then there's no need to bother with realism at all, and you can instead opt for highly stylized graphics that are intentionally designed to maximize aesthetically pleasing appearance and gameplay readability.

Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#12

Post by wincy »

overgard wrote: post #7

I agree with his overall point, but I would point out: realism is not usually the point, the point is to look good. The problem with realism is once you get past "wow the computer can do that now", it's not very interesting -- most of reality is pretty dull looking!

I think there’s a value in realism, ARC Raiders is one of my favorite games right now and it reminds of of movies like Stalker or The Shape of Water, movies that show old run down buildings and industrial complexes in their full glory, paint flaking, water in the wrong place, it’s just fantastic. It really sells me on being in a once busy space that’s been abandoned and fallen from its former glory.

Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#13

Post by monster_truck »

Regardless of how right or wrong this is, I woulda walked around with a vacuum first to get all those cobwebs before trying to make my point.

I'm far from a neatfreak but if those are there can you imagine what the inside of bro's computer looks like? Poor thing is probably so hot

Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#14

Post by BearOso »

I think part of this is the mach bands illusion. We perceive some darkening at the transition between shades and think we have to replicate it in rendering. But we really don't because the brain creates the effect, so artificially adding it makes it really exaggerated.

Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#15

Post by corysama »

logdahl wrote: post #5

I find this very interesting. I have implemented AO myself and understood that its physically inaccurate (it should really be radiosity presence, not ambient occlusion), but have believed the results to look realistic. Or rather; better than flatly lit, which makes geometry hard to understand. Thank you for these photographs! It would be awesome to have a CG benchmark like this (geometry + light properties) that we c…

Classic SSAO is very similar to performing an "unsharp mask" based on the depth buffer. This has been proposed "a simple and efficient method to enhance the perceptual quality of images that contain depth information" in the paper "Image Enhancement by Unsharp Masking the Depth Buffer" which came out a year after SSAO was published by Crytek.

https://www.uni-konstanz.de/mmsp/pubsys/publishedFiles/LuCoD...

Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#16

Post by nkrisc »

esperent wrote: post #9
munificent wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, something the article doesn't mention is that videogames have to overcompensate with things that provide the illusion of depth because the viewer is missing their usual stereoscopic vision. The game is already at a disadvantage, and players need to be able to read scenes quickly to play the game effectively.

> videogames have to overcompensate And yet somehow we can understand videos and photos just fine. Videogames have to overcompensate when they're missing lots of other important cues, but the closer they get to realism the less they have to overcompensate.

And that’s fine, if you can get close enough to realism at 60 fps or better. If you can’t, fake it, even if it’s technically less realistic.

Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#17

Post by Pxtl »

overgard wrote: post #7

I agree with his overall point, but I would point out: realism is not usually the point, the point is to look good. The problem with realism is once you get past "wow the computer can do that now", it's not very interesting -- most of reality is pretty dull looking!

Not only look good, but also to be informative. His photos demonstrate the exact problem: Without the lighting hack you can have a 90° angle with almost no visible line, if the two surfaces are evenly lit. That's important visual information you've just left out.

As a player, I'd rather compromise realistic rendering in order to be able to see the contours of things.

Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#19

Post by dist-epoch »

logdahl wrote: post #5

I find this very interesting. I have implemented AO myself and understood that its physically inaccurate (it should really be radiosity presence, not ambient occlusion), but have believed the results to look realistic. Or rather; better than flatly lit, which makes geometry hard to understand. Thank you for these photographs! It would be awesome to have a CG benchmark like this (geometry + light properties) that we c…

For a benchmark you can just use a "vfx/cinema grade" path-tracing renderer of the same game scene?

Re: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)

#20

Post by dcrazy »

wincy wrote: post #12
overgard wrote: post #7

I agree with his overall point, but I would point out: realism is not usually the point, the point is to look good. The problem with realism is once you get past "wow the computer can do that now", it's not very interesting -- most of reality is pretty dull looking!

I think there’s a value in realism, ARC Raiders is one of my favorite games right now and it reminds of of movies like Stalker or The Shape of Water, movies that show old run down buildings and industrial complexes in their full glory, paint flaking, water in the wrong place, it’s just fantastic. It really sells me on being in a once busy space that’s been abandoned and fallen from its former glory.

I’m not on the ARC Raiders art team, nor have I even played the game. But I can say with some confidence that what people react to in computer graphics isn’t realism per se, it’s verisimilitude.
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