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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)

#81

Post by dostick »

Nicook wrote: post #75
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…

Out of curiosity do you not get immersed in books?

You can get immersed in anything. With games or VR realism, it’s like extra depth of immersion when your brain switch to think in same way as you think in real world rather than adapting to physics or terrain of fake world.

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

#82

Post by WithinReason »

rag-hav wrote: post #34
craxmerax wrote: post #4

When HDR is implemented properly, and you have a proper HDR display, it's such a transformative experience! Most games, however, don't have good HDR implementations. And for whatever reason HDR on Windows is still awful in 2025.

Any examples of good HDR in games?

I liked the talos principle 2 inside the pyramid after reducing the gamma a bit on a WOLED display

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

#83

Post by Tyr42 »

glitchc wrote: post #80
tmtvl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is true in Wukong too, which is otherwise a very good-looking game. There are various points where rocks and scaffolds look just as climbable as those in the game area, yet the game engine places an invisible wall in your way. It breaks immersion instantly.

I think it's more that they didn't have the display language to mark those inaccessible parts of the world as "boring", and prevent the player from wanting the walk into that invisible wall in the first place. Or placing the invisible wall 1m infront of a real wall for NO REASON.

While also expecting you to go around searching for hidden goodies nd secret paths.

I swear, the invisible walls are the only thing pushing it to a 9/10 from a 10/10 for me.

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

#84

Post by perching_aix »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #55
akomtu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard a good point that our eyes have, in fact, a boring 1:100 range of brightness. Eyes can rapidly adjust, but the real game changer is our ability to create an image in our video memory, which has an unlimited brightness range. Eyes give us maybe a 2d uint8 framebuffer, but our mind creates and updates a float32 3d buffer. This is why this experience cannot be reproduced on a screen.

If our eyes can only see 100:1, why is OLED taking off? LCD has been claiming 1000:1 for decades

Because of fast & per-pixel level light control. Though this is true even if we completely ignore whether human eyes actually manifest a 100:1 auto-adapting dynamic range window.

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

#85

Post by badsectoracula »

windward wrote: post #73
Arainach wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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"

Nevertheless, it was commonly used for showing off (cloudy, particle-y) raytracing.

Yes but Control isn't sold "just so the end user can enjoy exercising their new GPU and monitor", it is sold for gamers to play a great game. And IMO it is Remedy's best game since Max Payne 2 (i haven't played Alan Wake 2 though) because of its gameplay and atmosphere, not because of its visuals (which, do not get me wrong, are great, but that is largely because of the art direction and visual design, not because of raytracing -- in fact personally i first played and finished the game on an RX 5700 XT which has no raytracing at all and had to tone down a few visual effects, but still found the visuals great).

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

#86

Post by __s »

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.

Solar Ash is a good example of a non photorealistic 3d game

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

#88

Post by os2warpman »

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?

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

#89

Post by Swizec »

tmtvl wrote: post #65
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…

> For racing games or flight simulators or such it is less of a problem,

Cars are also easier to make photorealistic. Less uncanny valley effect, lots of flat shiny surfaces.

What absolutely breaks immersion for me in most AAA car games is the absolute lack of crash, scratch, and dirt mechanics. Cars racing around the track for 2 hours don’t look like showroom pieces! Make ‘em dirty darn it. And when I crash into a wall …

I’m really excited to try Wreckfest 2 when I get around to it. Arcade-ish driving, not super photorealistic, they put it all on realistic soft body collision physics instead.

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

#90

Post by lieks »

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.

It's a lot easier to get a large team of artists to follow the same artstyle when that artstyle is just "realism". Also, photoscans are convenient.
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