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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)

#61

Post by dcrazy »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #52
mrandish wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's common for games to have an intentional designed aesthetic ... to create specific emotional impacts and effects. And before games this was true of movies and before that photos and paintings. A master cinematographer can spend hours lighting a shot that will later be praised for its 'gritty realism' :-).

Yup. I once came across a (picture of a) test print made by one of the old black-and-white street photography greats, and it was all marked up with development adjustments for better lighting, contrast, and subject separation. Those were always a photographer’s main concern. I think a Horizon Zero Dawn developer characterized their approach as “more realistic than reality” or something along those lines, i.e. they we…

> I once came across a (picture of a) test print made by one of the old black-and-white street photography greats, and it was all marked up with development adjustments for better lighting, contrast, and subject separation.

Likewise, Ansel Adams is particularly famous for popularizing manipulation of exposure, both in-camera snd during development.

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

#62

Post by hnuser123456 »

reactordev wrote: post #40
skippyfish wrote: post #10

I don't think the author makes a persuasive argument. Most of the photos they're analyzing are obviously lit by various point light sources, e.g.: https://nothings.org/gamedev/ssao/IMG_0064.JPG You can see a sharp shadow near the door frame. So yeah, ambient occlusion is not going to simulate that, but it was never supposed to? It's supposed to make 3D shapes look good without the need to place lights or do more comp…

one, the article is 14 years old. two, the point of ambient occlusion was not about making geometry look good, it was about making lighting look good. The main issue it solved was normal lighting at odds with the world, it was for fast general approximation of global illumination.

I think the prime example of SSAO being helpful was Fallout 3. FO3 has very simplistic lighting even for its time, kind of looking like "fullbright"/non-shaded mode in Source engine. SSAO, when it was added as a graphics driver feature, suddenly gave interiors depth that they were severely lacking, and while it didn't always look "realistic", it almost always looked much better than without.

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

#63

Post by 0x1ceb00da »

ahartmetz wrote: post #31

SSAO is cheap, doesn't work that well and looks terrible if overdone, as many games did 10-15 years ago. The simple workaround is to dial down the SSAO so that it's maybe weaker than ambient occlusion in reality, but also not noticeably wrong or overdone. Fortunately, the settings often allow that. Problem mostly solved! It's a common pattern that newly possible (usually due to hardware) effects are overdone for the…

> as many games did 10-15 years ago

Examples?

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

#64

Post by moron4hire »

reactordev wrote: post #40
skippyfish wrote: post #10

I don't think the author makes a persuasive argument. Most of the photos they're analyzing are obviously lit by various point light sources, e.g.: https://nothings.org/gamedev/ssao/IMG_0064.JPG You can see a sharp shadow near the door frame. So yeah, ambient occlusion is not going to simulate that, but it was never supposed to? It's supposed to make 3D shapes look good without the need to place lights or do more comp…

one, the article is 14 years old. two, the point of ambient occlusion was not about making geometry look good, it was about making lighting look good. The main issue it solved was normal lighting at odds with the world, it was for fast general approximation of global illumination.

Another point of context: at the time, several popular games had used a very exaggerated and/or poorly implemented ambient occlusion feature. I personally would frequently turn it off entirely because it was generally expensive (even if not as expensive as full global illumination) and looked bad.

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

#65

Post by ChrisClark »

munificent wrote: post #27
esperent wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think you may be underestimating how much photographers and cinematographers also compensate for this by choosing subjects and lighting carefully to re-convey a sense of depth lost by stereoscopic vision. This is, I think one of the biggest differences between a skilled and amateur photographer. Amateur photo and video work looks flat because they are pointing the camera at a scene that looks fine to them in realit…

Yes, there is so much I don't know about lighting and photos. I can recognize a good photo, I can't take a good photo

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

#66

Post by ahartmetz »

0x1ceb00da wrote: post #63
ahartmetz wrote: post #31

SSAO is cheap, doesn't work that well and looks terrible if overdone, as many games did 10-15 years ago. The simple workaround is to dial down the SSAO so that it's maybe weaker than ambient occlusion in reality, but also not noticeably wrong or overdone. Fortunately, the settings often allow that. Problem mostly solved! It's a common pattern that newly possible (usually due to hardware) effects are overdone for the…

> as many games did 10-15 years ago Examples?

I didn't play much at the time because of the lack of games on Linux, but I've played some Far Cry 3 (from 2012) recently where I did turn down SSAO in the settings.

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

#67

Post by jareklupinski »

ChrisClark wrote: post #65
munificent wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be underestimating how much photographers and cinematographers also compensate for this by choosing subjects and lighting carefully to re-convey a sense of depth lost by stereoscopic vision. This is, I think one of the biggest differences between a skilled and amateur photographer. Amateur photo and video work looks flat because they are pointing the camera at a scene that looks fine to them in realit…

Yes, there is so much I don't know about lighting and photos. I can recognize a good photo, I can't take a good photo

i think the trick is to keep taking photos until you see one you like, then only show those off and throw away the rest :)

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

#68

Post by tomhow »

Previously...

Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30595038 - March 2022 (43 comments)

Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18559477 - Nov 2018 (36 comments)

Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10105437 - Aug 2015 (19 comments)

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

#69

Post by aljgz »

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!

Oh my! Agree 100%. Tangentially, I love games without motion blur, with perfect and unrealistic graphics, and they happen to need much less intensive graphics. Also, animations with intentionally unrealistic dynamics and appearances that are well thought and go well with their invisible (to my non-artist eyes) contribution to the story. Not a big fan of extreme depiction of emotions in some styles of anime or cartoons though, to be clear.

I was excited when seeing things that are wonderfully realistic, but just as a sign of how far we have gone in computer graphics.

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

#70

Post by reactordev »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #62
reactordev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one, the article is 14 years old. two, the point of ambient occlusion was not about making geometry look good, it was about making lighting look good. The main issue it solved was normal lighting at odds with the world, it was for fast general approximation of global illumination.

I think the prime example of SSAO being helpful was Fallout 3. FO3 has very simplistic lighting even for its time, kind of looking like "fullbright"/non-shaded mode in Source engine. SSAO, when it was added as a graphics driver feature, suddenly gave interiors depth that they were severely lacking, and while it didn't always look "realistic", it almost always looked much better than without.

Crysis was the first, if you remember it. It changed FPS’ forever, introduced some new open world mechanics, as well as being the first game to utilize SSAO.
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