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Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

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Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#141

Post by ferguess_k »

pradn wrote: post #140
markus_zhang wrote: post #30

One big issue I never understood is why do we need photorealism in games at all. They seem to benefit card manufacturers and graphic programmers, but other than that I feel it has nothing to do — and in fact may have negative impact on game quality.

A large section of the gaming public sees photo-realistic games as serious, and prefers them for high-budget games. It's a rat race for devs though - its just incredibly expensive to create high quality models, textures, maps. I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077, and while the graphics are great, it's clear they could do more in the visual realm. It doesn't use current gen hardware to the maximum, in every way, because…

I think chasing photorealism also hurts the modding community, which hurts the players. No ordinary modding community could push out photorealistic contents in a realistic span of time. I think that's why we are seeing less and less mods nowadays comparing to the late 90s and early 2000s.

For FPS, HL2/Doom3 is probably the last generation that enjoys a huge modding community. Anything above it pushes ordinary modders away. I believe it is still quite possible to make mods for say UE4, but it just took such a long time that the projects never got finished.

In certain way, I so much wish the graphics froze by the year 2005.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#142

Post by dahart »

carlosjobim wrote: post #139
dahart wrote: post #98

I truly don’t understand the author’s opinions about contrast here. The RE7 image is the only one here that looks ‘realistic’, and at a glance could be mistaken for a photograph, and he says it’s got way too much contrast. No other image here comes anywhere even close, definitely not Zelda nor GTA5. Personally I think the whole problem with the first 5 images is that they don’t have enough contrast, and they have too…

You're arguing that game engines should imitate photographic cameras, but they should imitate our eyes, which will never blow out whites outside in the sun.

Our eyes absolutely blow out whites in the sun. Doubly so when looking at the sun or even reflections immediately after being in the dark for a while, and when looking at bright that is very near dark in your visual field.

I’m not necessarily arguing games should imitate cameras, I really only think over-compressing the dynamic range is bad, and I don’t understand why the author is arguing for that.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#143

Post by dahart »

PaulHoule wrote: post #131
dahart wrote: post #98

I truly don’t understand the author’s opinions about contrast here. The RE7 image is the only one here that looks ‘realistic’, and at a glance could be mistaken for a photograph, and he says it’s got way too much contrast. No other image here comes anywhere even close, definitely not Zelda nor GTA5. Personally I think the whole problem with the first 5 images is that they don’t have enough contrast, and they have too…

For me games being too dark and not being able to see anything is a pet peeve. I can see the point in a horror game, but I will set the gamma or turn up the brightness if it makes the game hard to play.

Oh I agree. The art director needs to be exposing the important gameplay elements to be visible. That doesn’t mean they should avoid blacks for everything though, and that’s what all images except the RE7 image are doing.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#144

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

os2warpman wrote: post #88

Why does everything (in big-budget video games) look shiny and wet? If it is an attempt at realism, reality is not constantly shiny and wet. If it a subjective artistic choice, it is objectively wrong and ugly. Is there an expectation that everything look shiny and wet to make it seem more "dynamic"? Is it an artists' meme, like the Wilhelm Scream in cinematic sound design?

It is amusing now that you point it out. There are always trends that come and go in these large scale industrial artforms. As others point out in this case likely a response to technical advancements and desire to emphasize those. Another example that would come to mind here is is the orangey-sunlit ears that seemed to show up everywhere to show off subsurface scattering.

Thinking back - films also are always doing some new exciting thing all at once. That wild colored lighting aesthetic of the past decade comes to mind. That's a result of refined color correction software and awesome low-cost LED lights. Or drone shots. So many drone shots.

It's usually a group-think phenomenon where everyone was previously unable to do something and now they can and everyone wants to try it. And then there are successes and management points at those and yells 'we want that, do that!', and distribution follows, and if becomes mandatory. Until everyone is rolling their eyes and excited about another new thing.

It's a silly phenomenon when you think about it - any true artist-director would likely push back on that with a coherent vision.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#145

Post by dartharva »

senko wrote: post #39
markus_zhang wrote: post #30

One big issue I never understood is why do we need photorealism in games at all. They seem to benefit card manufacturers and graphic programmers, but other than that I feel it has nothing to do — and in fact may have negative impact on game quality.

This, in a nutshell, is why Nintendo is doing so well. Their hardware is underpowered, games look like cheap cartoons, but the effort spent into gameplay more than compensates.

There are tens (if not hundreds) of indie and B-games that offer the same experience as most current Nintendo titles. Nintendo is doing well more because of nostalgia - it's the parents buying those consoles for their kids because they have very fond memories with Nintendo from their own childhoods.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#146

Post by dahart »

markus_zhang wrote: post #96
glimshe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need photorealism in games, but it does help with immersion. Many people, like me, feel like they are inside the game world, rather than playing a game with a TV/monitor in front of them. Photorealism is essential for this feeling - at least for me . The most amazing gaming experience I've ever had was walking around the city at night in Cyberpunk 2077. For the first time in my life, I felt I was actually in…

I’d argue that immersion has little to do with graphics, even for FPS. Actually I had more immersion in some text adventure games than in some AAA games — and not out of nostalgia because I never played the said text adventure games before. I’d agree that certain degree of graphics helps with immersion, but photorealistic graphics only offers cheap immersion which turns off the immersion centre in the brain — Ok this…

I recall a paper from GDC many years back that studied the perception of immersion and they measured and ranked maybe a dozen different factors. Graphics and visuals were surprisingly low on the list. The number one thing was the player’s sense of identity and clear understanding of their goals. Players tended to correlate realism with high immersion too.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#147

Post by int0x29 »

I suspect contrast in a lot of the games he's skewering is high because they are shootery type games where players need too see things, understand them, and react to them quickly

Also I don't necessarily see a need to make everything look like physical film.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#148

Post by CupricTea »

pflenker wrote: post #127

I skipped the text and looked at the images and was unable to understand if they were supposed to be bad or good examples. I liked them. Then k read through the text and learned that they are supposed to be bad examples. But why though? I suspect that either I am not good at this kind of thing, or this is a purist thing, like „don’t put pineapples on pizza because they don’t do that in Italy“. I don’t want games to l…

>I don’t want games to look realistic. A rainy day outside looks gray and drab, there is nothing wrong with rainy days in games not looking like the real thing, but awesome and full of contrasts.

In photography and cinematography contrast and color curves are near ubiquitously modified artistically to evoke a certain feeling. So even without 3D renderings added colors are adjusted for aesthetic over raw realism.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#149

Post by diob »

pflenker wrote: post #127

I skipped the text and looked at the images and was unable to understand if they were supposed to be bad or good examples. I liked them. Then k read through the text and learned that they are supposed to be bad examples. But why though? I suspect that either I am not good at this kind of thing, or this is a purist thing, like „don’t put pineapples on pizza because they don’t do that in Italy“. I don’t want games to l…

Reminds me of how movies / shows these days have gotten so dark, when in the past even dark scenes were often lit in such a way as to show details.

Re: Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

#150

Post by dartharva »

simoncion wrote: post #52
SomeoneOnTheWeb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's normal. For HDR to look good, you need a monitor that hits approximately 1000 nits in brightness. Your monitor only hits 250, which is completely insufficient to display HDR content. This is one of the stupid things with many monitors, showing HDR at 250 nits is worse than showing no HDR at all. So no matter what you do, 99% of HDR content will look bad on your screen.

> For HDR to look good, you need a monitor that hits approximately 1000 nits in brightness. I disagree. The wide color gamut is -for me- a huge thing about HDR. My VA monitor provides ~300 nits of brightness and I've been quite happy with the games that didn't phone in their HDR implementation. Plus, any non-trash HDR monitor will tell the computer it's attached to what its maximum possible brightness is, so the soft…

> Plus, any non-trash HDR monitor will tell the computer it's attached to what its maximum possible brightness is, so the software running on that computer can adjust its renderer accordingly.

My monitor does do that, but alas the software itself (Windows 10) wasn't good enough to adjust stuff correctly. It did made the decision to switch to ArchLinux easier by being one less thing I'll be missing

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