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

61–70 of 219 posts

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

#61

Post by Arainach »

windward wrote: post #59
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.

Some games are sold just so the end user can enjoy exercising their new GPU and monitor. Crysis and Control come to mind.

>Control

Did we play the same game? Some of the best lore-building and environmental theming around, paired with some cool mechanics?

Sure, the combat got repetitive but this was hardly something to "just sell GPUs"

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

#62

Post by ranguna »

phoronixrly wrote: post #16
refactor_master wrote: post #7

This is [...] a series examining techniques used in game graphics and how those techniques fail to deliver a visually appealing end result All I see is opinions though. And the internet is full of them. You just have to Google "why does this game look so ...". At least if the author had compared the search stats of "good/bad/beautiful/washed out" it would've carried some weight. The GTA 5 screenshot is a terrible exa…

I think the author's list of "ugly" games is missing Witcher III, Hellblade, God of War (2018), Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate... And we need some examples of good, cinematic, artful tone mapping, like any scene of a Hollywood movie set in Mexico...

I'm not sure you were being ironic, I find the witcher 3 and elden ring beautiful

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

#63

Post by dahauns »

abhpro wrote: post #14
paulluuk wrote: post #13

I feel like this is very much a personal preference thing. They even called out Horizon Zero Dawn for looking very bad, and Zelda for looking very good.. while in my opinion the exact opposite is true.

The author is more pointing out that these games don't look realistic. Look at the foreground of the HZD shot - why is it almost black in daylight?

To be fair - if I remember the location correctly - that screenshot is somewhat misleading because it's camera position is from the inside of a large ruin, with the ceiling and right wall of the "cave entrance" being just outside the frame.

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

#64

Post by sgarland »

This is apparently an unpopular opinion, but in many games (fantasy RPGs come to mind), I like the fake look. It helps it look other-worldly, IMO. I think for something like Flight Sim, I’d prefer photorealism, but otherwise I’m fine with it looking like, well, a video game.

It might be a generational thing, too; I was born in the late 80s, and my formative years were spent playing cartoonish games like Commander Keen, Command & Conquer, etc.

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

#65

Post by tmtvl »

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.

Photorealism is a bad idea if your movement engine isn't good enough to handle the character walking around on uneven terrain. For racing games or flight simulators or such it is less of a problem, but seeing a regular person being absolutely flummoxed by a knee-high wall is massively immersion breaking.

It's something I really noticed when playing Disaster Report 4, where the people look amazingly realistic but some restrictions are clearly just 'developers didn't make this bit walkable'.

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

#66

Post by sgarland »

> The exposure level is also noticeably lower, which actually leaves room for better mid-tone saturation.

Decades ago, when I shot film, I remember discovering that I really liked how photos looked when underexposed by half a stop or so. I never knew why (and I wasn’t developing my own film, so I’ve no idea what the processor may have been doing), but I wonder if this was a contributing factor.

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

#68

Post by PaulHoule »

I was excited when I first heard about HDR but when I saw the implementation I thought: gee, they're going to screw up both the SDR and the HDR and that seems to be the case quite often. Going from SD -> HD your picture got better although it often got stretched out, but it's not so clear the HDR version of a movie is really going to be an improvement.

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

#69

Post by PaulHoule »

ranguna wrote: post #62
phoronixrly wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author's list of "ugly" games is missing Witcher III, Hellblade, God of War (2018), Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate... And we need some examples of good, cinematic, artful tone mapping, like any scene of a Hollywood movie set in Mexico...

I'm not sure you were being ironic, I find the witcher 3 and elden ring beautiful

I think Elden Ring is a little ugly but still a world I want to experience.

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

#70

Post by ekianjo »

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.

sales of games say otherwise. 2d pixel games have some occasional hits but the large number of games that make money go for more realism.
Post reply on HN