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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!
Given that accuracy isn’t the goal anyway I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t be better in many cases to apply a sort of pre-calculated AO that uses a relatively small atlas of shading textures rendered on flat surfaces as decals (disclaimer: I am not a graphics programmer). It’d apply only to angular surfaces (so for example human faces wouldn’t be included) but I’d say that 80-90% of the benefit of AO lies in things like corners of rooms anyway — it’s really just manmade objects that look bad without AO, organic shapes don’t suffer nearly as badly.
The thing that’s always bugged me about SSAO is the “jitter” visible when the player character or camera moves, which I would imagine is due to it being calculated in screen space. In some cases it’s so distracting it breaks immersion. Given that accuracy isn’t the goal anyway I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t be better in many cases to apply a sort of pre-calculated AO that uses a relatively small atlas of shading…
Also, looking just at inner corners of the room is too specific, SSAO affects creases everywhere, not just at the inner corners of the box.
The thing that’s always bugged me about SSAO is the “jitter” visible when the player character or camera moves, which I would imagine is due to it being calculated in screen space. In some cases it’s so distracting it breaks immersion. Given that accuracy isn’t the goal anyway I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t be better in many cases to apply a sort of pre-calculated AO that uses a relatively small atlas of shading…
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.
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 reality, but the resulting 2D image is flat and they don't know why or what to do about it.
I find a particularly stark example is forests. Walk into a random forest and you will find your sense of being surrounded and in an immersive, evocative, deep space to be very strong. Then fire off a quick photo and the result will be a chaotic uninspiring flat mess.
The thing that’s always bugged me about SSAO is the “jitter” visible when the player character or camera moves, which I would imagine is due to it being calculated in screen space. In some cases it’s so distracting it breaks immersion. Given that accuracy isn’t the goal anyway I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t be better in many cases to apply a sort of pre-calculated AO that uses a relatively small atlas of shading…
The jitter is because it's usually rendered at 50% resolution - you can render it at full framebuffer size and it doesn't jitter but it's kind of hard to justify.
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 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!