Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

ventspace.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–219 of 219 posts

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

#211

Post by whatevaa »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #204
wkjagt wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understood is that these are supposedly bad because they look like video games instead of photographs. Not sure what the problem with that is though. I'm fine with video games looking like video games.

I also thought that, but then I scrolled down to the Breath of the Wild shot and got (part of) it: BotW has an awesomely rendered sky, whereas the CoD and to a lesser extent HZD ones have a desaturated, largely overexposed mess (despite all my affection for HZD). The Smaug shot is flawed in a similar manner. And the photography comparison does come to mind immediately, because that kind of thing is in fact what you’l…

I don't see how photo solutions applie to real time rendering. Unless your games are slideshows.

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

#212

Post by tobyhinloopen »

simoncion wrote: post #201
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VA screens have terrible black smearing though. I also bought an OLED display and returned it because it was just very dim. I own a miniled display that peaks at 1000cd full screen (it has a fan to handle the heat) and I'm still looking for an OLED replacement.

> VA screens have terrible black smearing though. It depends on the monitor and the colors involved in the transition. My VA monitor (a BenQ EW3270U) has limited-but-noticeable smearing between certain dark colors. Blacks and dark colors against mid-brightness and brighter are just fine. [0] It's my understanding that this monitor has quite-a-bit-less-bad color smearing than most VA panels, and has roughly the same -…

The Nexus 5 is 12 years old, don't know about a 5a. Your ASUS IPS monitor is 14 years old.

I'd suggest comparing technologies applied in monitors that aren't teenagers.

Still, I get your point - there's compromises in all technologies and there is not a single tech that excels in everything.

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

#213

Post by deadfoxygrandpa »

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #36
whizzter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the author posits that Zelda explicitly goes for artistry and ignores any pretense of realism (that then falls flat on it's face when using an over-contrasting tone-map like in the HZD screenshot).

The problem I personally have with the Zelda example given is that it looks really bland to me - the landscape looks really washed out - the author says "Somebody would paint this. It’s artistic.", but I don't think anyone would paint with such bleached-out colours.

are you familiar with any famous paintings almost at all?

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

#214

Post by alt227 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #199
alt227 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> definitely not Zelda nor GTA5. The zelda screenshot he uses as an example of how good things look without HDR, looks terrible to me. It is all washed out with brightness and bloom, and all the shadows in the landscape that in reality would almolst be black, are very light grey.

His argument is that it looks like something someone would paint and I quite agree with that.

His arguement is:

> There’s none of that awful heavy handed contrast. No crushed blacks. No randomly saturated whites in the sunset, and saturation overall stays where it belongs across the luminance range.

I disagree strongly with all of this. The blacks are crushed hard, they are just crushed to a light grey instead of a dark black. The saturation is washed out, to the point where all the colours are forced into a very limited colour range. It just looks terrible, and if someone painted this I would say the same thing about it.

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

#215

Post by ferguess_k »

charcircuit wrote: post #183
ferguess_k wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

HL2/Doom3 have built in mod support, so I don't think it's fair to compare it to games that don't have mod support.

I think it's fair to compare games to games though. Spending tons of $$ and time on shiny graphics features while totally ignoring the modding community (but I get that's probably because no one expects people to mod AAA games nowadays, unlike say 20-30 years ago) is a choice made by the developers.

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

#216

Post by immibis »

whatevaa wrote: post #211
mananaysiempre wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also thought that, but then I scrolled down to the Breath of the Wild shot and got (part of) it: BotW has an awesomely rendered sky, whereas the CoD and to a lesser extent HZD ones have a desaturated, largely overexposed mess (despite all my affection for HZD). The Smaug shot is flawed in a similar manner. And the photography comparison does come to mind immediately, because that kind of thing is in fact what you’l…

I don't see how photo solutions applie to real time rendering. Unless your games are slideshows.

You... apply the photo solution but in real time, to every frame.

Games are interactive movies (not like - they are) and movies are moving pictures. Of course techniques applicable to pictures are largely applicable frame-wise-ish to movies and games. Siloing knowledge stifles achievement.

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

#217

Post by immibis »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #103
pjerem wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree here. Nintendo games don't look like cheap cartoons at all. They are absolutely not photorealistic but they do put a lot of work on the aesthetics/art and it's most of the time relly impressive once you take the hardware limitations into account. Mario 64 ran on the same console that was known for its 3D blur. Mario Galaxy 1&2 (which are still totally modern in terms of aesthetics) ran on what was basic…

I think it's more that Nintendo's choice of hardware (and its relative lack of horsepower) force them into more stylized visuals because it means photo-realism is basically off the table to start with. We the audience tend not to care, because Nintendo has capable artists who can create something aesthetically pleasing outside of "realistic" graphics.

I think they don't want to make games that need more graphics power. Even back to the Wii, it was an enhanced GameCube GPU.

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

#218

Post by jan_Inkepa »

jcelerier wrote: post #54
jan_Inkepa wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I personally have with the Zelda example given is that it looks really bland to me - the landscape looks really washed out - the author says "Somebody would paint this. It’s artistic.", but I don't think anyone would paint with such bleached-out colours.

yeah, no one would ever do that https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_2000,h_1600,c_limit,f_...

In the painting there's a delicate interrelation between colours - you have browns/greens/blues in the dark parts, and more whites/yellows/blues/pinks in the light parts. I wouldn't describe it as bland, though it is in a sense washed-out. BotW doesn't, and probably can't have that level of handling of shades colour in the enviroment graphics if nothign else because of the technical constraints of the Switch hardware.

Compare, if you will the sunset shown here from BotW: https://imgur.com/a/TvS2iHa with the 'hand'-drawn art from the switch store page: https://imgur.com/5clZZjg

Looking at the screenshot, what can you say - you can say that it's nice that the green/yellow of the sky is mirrored in the green landcape with yellow rivers. And the back-lighting of the sun is helping give definition to some of the mountains/hills, which is nice. But I don't see very much subtle going on with the landscape.

Looking at the art, you can see a lot more dynamic range, clearer silhouetting of mountain ranges at various distances, whereas the actual game is more monotone-green. You can also see the fog doing a lot more work of making the shape of the land clear. There are some bits of fog/mist in the screenshot as well, but they're not doing as much heavy lifting in terms of giving shape to the landscape.

The Switch is really limited on the hardware front, and I can't imagine what kind of trade-offs the art team had to make to get to where they are - it's a very difficult balancing act that I only understand a small part of. Nintendo also tend to be very conservative/restrained in their 3d style (I remember being somewhat unnerved by Ubisoft's "Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle" Mario game, because it went super high-production-quality).

It feels a bit cheap to give as an example, but the 3D MMO Love by eskil steenberg tried to emulate the impressionist style, and did a striking job: https://imgur.com/9U18eRZ The bloom effect is doing a lot of heavy lifting to make the bright colours pop, but even in the less glowy areas there is quite subtle layering of colours going on and one does have the feeling that the colours are playing with eachother. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc02ijaw-Tg a video of it in action, if you are curious ).

As another comparison, looking at elden ring you can see they've gotten 'using fog to make landscape silhouettes pop' down to a fine-art (maybe they're even over-reliant on it) https://imgur.com/a/5GEePwL And looking at the landscape you have really nice looking brown/oranges in the fields in the foreground, black/greys/browns in the mid-ground, rocky cliffs, fog is actually glowing, and you have some green forests in the top-left. That's a lot of nuance for what's essentially a brown landscape. BoTW doesn't have that - would it have it if the team had the hardware capabilities and time and budget? Who knows...

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

#219

Post by simoncion »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #212
simoncion wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VA screens have terrible black smearing though. It depends on the monitor and the colors involved in the transition. My VA monitor (a BenQ EW3270U) has limited-but-noticeable smearing between certain dark colors. Blacks and dark colors against mid-brightness and brighter are just fine. [0] It's my understanding that this monitor has quite-a-bit-less-bad color smearing than most VA panels, and has roughly the same -…

The Nexus 5 is 12 years old, don't know about a 5a. Your ASUS IPS monitor is 14 years old. I'd suggest comparing technologies applied in monitors that aren't teenagers. Still, I get your point - there's compromises in all technologies and there is not a single tech that excels in everything.

> Still, I get your point - there's compromises in all technologies...

That's not my point. My point is that there are well-made devices that are substantially better than average, and poorly-made devices that are substantially worse than average.

People seem to think that OLED automatically means instant switching times and no color smearing... well, that all depends on how the panel is made and driven.

> The Nexus 5 is 12 years old...

Ah, crap. I meant to say "Pixel 5a". I do that all the damn time. I do wish they'd never changed the name.

> I'd suggest comparing technologies applied in monitors that aren't teenagers.

Fun fact #1: The Pixel 5a was released three years ago.

Fun fact #2: The OLED version of the Nexus S (now fifteen years old) had no smearing. It was a beautiful display. Its only problem was that it burned in the top status bar within a year or so of use.

Tech improvement isn't a ratchet. (If it were, we'd not have had that it-sure-as-hell-seemed-like-five year period where pretty much the only LCD screens you could get were "high definition" 1080p TN displays!)

Post reply on HN