Many modern games have very uncomfortable graphics or is it just me?

I just tried Prey today, but ended up refunding it like quite a few other games recently because I just feel like they're straining to play. Granted my reasons for refunding Prey were numerous I feel like the main culprit was the eye adaptation effect, or their attempt at it. Whenever you turn your head the game adjusts its brightness and most of the time you can barely see anything because the game is either too bright or too dark. And it's like this in many modern games. Rainbow Six Siege, a game that I actually liked a lot is rendered completely unplayable for me by this effect. They just apply these effects in such an awful way. Subtle is the keyword here, but they just pile it on.

I watched someone play a fair bit of Prey on Youtube before I bought the game so I was a bit surprised I reacted so negatively to the visuals because I didn't notice it on Youtube, but when I go back and look at the same video again I can see it's just as bad there so it's not something wrong with my computer/gpu at least. I guess it just doesn't bother me as much when I'm just watching someone play it on a second monitor while I work on my main monitor.

But is it just me? I modded Skyrim a lot and I know some of the most popular graphical mods for that game were post processing mods that just cranked the game's saturation and sharpness to the max and apparently people thought these mods looked amazing, when they ... *cough* most certainly did not.

Am I out of touch with what is considered good looking graphics these days or am I just sensitive, i.e. a cranky old man, when it comes to the average looking games?

There are definitely games that I think look amazing, GTA 5 comes to mind, in my opinion one of the best looking games ever made. Also the original Crysis, and more recently Outlast 2 looks spectacular. But these games are few and far between and when it comes to games like Prey and Rainbow Six Siege it feels like I'm the only one really bothered by how these games look. They just look amateurish in my opinion. Like someone applied post processing in Unity and dragged all the sliders to the right. In GTA 5, Crysis or Outlast 2 everything just feels right, and it's so easy to immerse yourself because it just feels so natural, nothing looks out of place. GTA 5 certainly doesn't have the most realistic looking models or the sharpest textures, but everything just fits together seamlessly and it effortlessly recreates natural phenomena that other games fail at again and again.

 

I actually don't remember many games which obviously had this effect. Probably because I haven't yet played Prey, and possibly because I lost interest in modern shooters when they all turned into team-based multiplayer arena games. Thinking about it, I think Half Life 2 had eye adaptation but it was done in non-horrible manner.

One game where I remember a problem with eye adaptation effect was Fallout 4.
This game had a glitch - if you're wearing a cloaking armor, then when you crouch and stop moving, you'll see a slightl bright flash when the effect kicks in. The flash, I believe, was done by adjusting brightness of the scene post effect.

That one effect was absolutely infuriating, caused discomfort and finding a mod to disable it was quite hard.

 

My only real complaints are with Depth of Field, Lens Flare, and Motion Blur. I'm perfectly fine with Depth of Field if it is configured properly but Lens Flare is immersion breaking since it's telling me I'm looking through a camera and Motion Blur just drives me crazy especially with Let's Play videos.

 

Ah, right. Motion Blur. This one never looks right. Not sure who thought it is a good idea to make the game look as if it was rendered by a cheap webcamera.

 

Prey actually has motion blur that you can't turn off, which was one of the other, albeit minor, reasons for refunding it. It also had fairly severe texture issues. But the eye adaptation was definitely the primary reason because it's just so obnoxious, and it's always there, hat goes for motion blur as well obviously, but it was subtle in this game. Having the brightness change every time I turn my head is just unacceptable for me.

I feel like it's common in a lot of modern first person shooters. And it's a genre I love, because it can be so immersive. Although it doesn't have to be a shooter obviously.

The game is supposed to have a cool story and I love sci-fi stuff, but I realize now that the instant I start alt-tabbing and googling for fixes to technical issues it's over. Then I may just refund the game right away because I will never be able to immerse myself in it. It's like when you watch a (pirated) movie and you have to adjust the subtitle or audio delay constantly because something is out of sync and in the end I just say F*** it and watch a different movie.

 

Could be. Could also be your monitor. Most flatscreens on default settings are way way too bright and high contrast. Iirc one of my screens is set to 10% brightness. Maybe you've experienced some of the games you remember so fondly on a different screen or in different lighting conditions?

I know someone who experiences severe eye strain from having AA turned on. There definitely are people who react different than the majority to certain effects.

I like motion blur. Kinda "ties everything together". Chromatic aberration is the one that I can't understand why it got popular. I always turn it off if possible.

 

"Prey actually has motion blur that you can't turn off" ....well that is certainly a new level of retarded that is reaching game developers.

 

It didn't. At least not the original game. They introduced in a free map later (I believe it was called Lost Coast). It was kind of subtle. (the episodes probably had it as well, but I don't remember)

 

That is correct. The original HL2 game did not have HDR and bloom. It was added after launch in the Lost Coast level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2:_Lost_Coast

 

Um...you're referring to bloom, correct?

 

Motion Blur as an effect on objects looks cool sometimes. As an overall visual application I think I dislike it with extreme prejudice.

From my sketchy memory one of the earlier Metal Gear games had a Motion Blur effect on one of the boss battle characters, I can't remember which, but it was a very over the top effect that looked real cool.

 

My take on this is kind of like the old TV showrooms, which would have TVs really bright, high contrast, dark, or whatever the "in" flavor was for the moment. It was all designed to sell the unit. Most people don't notice the fine details once the purchase was made and just got used to their TV. I feel games have gone this route as well with a lot of these post effects and the trends change from time to time but especially AAA follows the trend to boost sales. Again most people don't notice these things.

That being said since we work in the industry once you start to see these effects you can't unsee them. I have a feeling it was very similar for people that calibrated TV's that would go my god the brightness is always that high, or man that's way oversaturated and then fiddle with the TV settings. Everyone has there personal preference for aesthetics and comfort but the overall industry trends usually follow whatever is "in" and that's almost never what's comfortable.

That being said not having a settings panel where you can change all of these is pretty bad.

 

I'm definitely deep into the camp of being tired of WAY too much post processing crammed into every game. I especially hate how games chase new techniques and use it to gratuitous levels.

When bloom came out, that was particularly annoying. Everything was just drenched in bloom and nothing was visible.

Then with cube lighting everything was made reflective, even when it's something that shouldn't be.

Now the trends are motion blur, god rays, and that white haze that Unreal slaps on everything.

But the two that I really wish would be put to bed is things on the camera like blood or water (There's not a camera there, guys) and desaturation of color.

Apparently in video games rain and snow turns everything black and white. I'm looking at you, Skyrim.

 

(Giggling)

Skyrim also has eye adaptation; at the beginning, it was disturbing but I eventually got used to it. Maybe you should have just played a little longer, until your brain adapts?

 

That only works if I'm actually absorbed before I'm taken out of the experience and start looking for ways to fix technical issues imo. In Prey I spent the first hour with no luck trying to resolve my issues and by then I just wasn't into it anymore. If I had managed to solve some of the issues I may have been motivated enough to push on, but I got nowhere. I've played through Skyrim twice, once when it came out with no mods and once many years later with a thousand mods, none that changed the graphics though, only gameplay and content mods. I know many games have eye adaptation, screen space ambient occlusion, screen space reflections, god rays etc. etc. and I personally like all these effects, I use them in my own Unity projects, but I feel so many AAA developers apply them in a ham-handed fashion. If I can play a game and not really notice the effects then they are used properly in my opinion, or if there's one particular spot where there's a really cool effect that makes you stop and look at it, but it's not used in 100% of the game, then that's also cool.

Like Not_Sure I remember when HDR/Bloom was first discovered and then it looked completely ridiculous in Oblivion and Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast. I remember even back then that I was baffled by how anyone could think this was a good look. It looked like someone with way too much makeup on, which is basically what a lot of modern games look like as well. Then Halo 3 came out and showed everyone, or at least me, what HDR/Bloom could look like if you actually used it properly. But I won't shy away from the fact that my experience is mainly with first person games, and shooters in particular.

I'm trying to make a Unity project with realistic graphics at the moment and I feel ambient occlusion, eye adaptation, depth of field and all these effects add to the overall look of it, but if you stop and look at for example ambient occlusion in the real world (or what could be classified as it) you'd see that it's extremely subtle. You'd only notice it if it wasn't there. There isn't a big black halo around every object or deep black shadows in every corner. That's the key in my opinion, an effect should be so subtle that you don't really notice it when it's there because it just looks right, but when it's not there you feel like something is missing.

But like I said in the beginning I'm pretty sure eye adaptation is the real killer for me. In my own project I'm trying to make it as subtle as possible, ie. the difference between min and max exposure should be minimal, and I'm experimenting with making it realistically slow. So when you actually transition from dark to light and vice versa it takes 10, 30 or even 60 seconds for it to fully adapt. It shouldn't flux between min and max exposure constantly as you turn your head. You'd perhaps find it odd that I'm using this effect in my own project when I dislike it so much in a lot of games, but I feel like it's a great effect if it's done properly. It gives you a lot of extra dynamic range to play with.

But yeah, another one of my small rants, I guess. This is where I hang out these days so you're the ones who have to endure them.

 

I found it really hard to tweak and find a "ground truth" for it, so I just switched it off. With outdoors scenes only I don't have a real need for it anyway.
Setting it to 60 seconds adaption time sounds like it could harm gameplay when you go from bright sunlight to an indoors scene because it would make you almost blind because everything would be too dark. It doesn't matter how long adjusting your eyes in real life takes, real life isn't inherently fun. Effects like this should neither get in the way of immersion, nor of the game's usability. If you find constant heavy switches in exposure jarring, I'd first try to light differently so that the dynamic range of light values gets smaller. Sunlight is crazy bright compared to artificial light sources.

 

Well, this particular project is more an attempt at realism over gameplay though. I can't remember exactly because it's a while since I worked on it, but my sunlight is 10-20-30 times brighter than my indoor lights in this scene. And even with extremes like this my eye adaptation is nowhere near as extreme as it was in Prey or most similar games. And when I apply it I usually find what I consider to be the average in my scene, in this case it's the sunlit living room of the house when looking away from the sun and then I adjust the eye adaptation such that turning it on changes nothing about the image. I then try to tweak it such that walking outside lowers the brightness slightly and walking into a dark room like an unlit bathroom increases the brightness slightly compared to my average. I'm experimenting with all of these, but so far I like it when it adjusts very quickly to increases in brightness, i.e. you walk out from the bathroom and into the sun, but it adjusts very slowly when you walk from the sun into the bathroom. So if you spend x amount of seconds in the bathroom you can tell that you're slowly getting adjusted to the darkness.

But like all my projects it's just a prototype. You'll be able to see it if I'm ever happy with it, but if I'm never happy with it then you'll never see it.

 

This. Truth is though, it's really hard to resist the temptation of overusing effects.

When you're actually in development, throwing some kind of effect on, and seeing amazing effects is so... tempting.

Bloom is probably the biggest culprit for sure, but sun shafts and stuff come close.

Eye adaptation also.

Anything that provides a 'dynamic' feel and responds strongly to changes in camera composition. It feels so good during the dev/testing period to have these kinds of dynamic changes, that it's very tempting to not draw the line correctly.

Personally, I hate bloom but man, when you spend a ton of time on a scene and you throw an effect like bloom on, and suddenly things feel like they're "popping" - it's very hard to say no.

I also had the same experience with eye adaptation, it felt sooo cool having those changes be dynamic. It's so tempting, even when it does a disservice to actual players.

 

Honestly, I love a little bit of bloom. A tiny amount of bloom can really make certain scenes pop.

 

Bloom is also functionally useful. Computer screens can't display a brightness difference between a well lit white object, a light bulb and the sun. Even though they might be approximately the same colour those things have very different effects on our eyes because their brightness levels are so different. But on a monitor once you've reached full white you can't go any further to show a brighter version of the same colour.

I see bloom in particular as being really useful for that. A bright thing can be the same colour as other things but then show its relative brightness by the size and strength of its halo. It's not the same as actual glare from an actually bright object, but it's a reasonable approximation that gets the job done.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's always good, or that a post process is the only way to achieve that. A good ol' glow quad positioned appropriately can often get a similar effect.

 

Watch Dogs 2 has motion blur during gameplay which I thought would be annoying, but it actually doesn't bother me at all when playing. And just as others have said about the other effects, I don't think motion blur is necessarily always bad, the key is in subtlety and when it's enabled; during cutscenes motion blur can give a more cinematic feel, but during gameplay we want things to be crisp and clear so we can have spacial awareness.

So that makes me wonder... how does Watch Dogs get it right? When is the correct time/place to use motion blur (only for action games?)? How much is too much? If a game didn't require spacial awareness, would that justify use of motion blur?

 

@theANMATOR2b aluded to it, but "per object" motion blur is typically considered good, while the more general very smeared across the whole screen is not.

 

I think that everything has it's place in the right context and to a reasonable degree. A little light bloom can indeed go a long way.

My main hang up is when games try to create a "common knowledge" way of doing things that is removed from the real world.

Like why is the camera doing eye adjustment when I have my own eyes doing eye adjustment to their eye adjustment.

And why does my medieval knight see lens flairs and blood on the "lens"?

It's like they're trying to make it into a movie because that's the way we've experienced such things for so long.

But isn't it time that we move beyond movies and treat the industry as it's own emerging art and build from reality rather than Hollywood story telling?

That said, I will concede that light adjustment can be a good way to hide texture loading.

 

HDR/eye adaptation can easily cause problems.

The worst I've seen was the Drive Club demo on PS4, at one point the track curved and I was driving towards a low sun. The sky was very bright but everything else - the important stuff, the cars and track - basically became a black sillhouette, rendering it fairly unplayable.

Now that was just one track and one lighting setup out of many, but it was the second race I played in the demo, so a very bad first-time experience. It also shows the risks of adding dynamic time-of-day and/or weather, certain combinations can negatively affect gameplay more than you might expect.

For driving games, clean and high-contrast works way better than 'realistic', IMHO. Yes, certain lighting and weather conditions in real life do make driving difficult/dangerous, but do you really want to simulate this in a video game, if you want the game to be good fun rather than a serious simulator?

 

I still think about better rain and weather effects, even though there is no reason, it adds headache and the player would barely care other than being annoyed.

It's just...cool. You get to use the cool reflection tech. The ground color changes, puddles are awesome looking on terrain. It feels so rewarding (for the developer), even though it's just pointless.

Plus you can take a screenshot of it for PR!

 

Because your real eye adjustment is happening based on a few hundred candelas difference between the darkest and brightest colours your screen can display. In the real world contrast differences can be many, many times that.

Even without taking unusually bright stuff into account, looking out my window right now there's lots of stuff that's way brighter than the full-white things on my computer screen. For instance, there's a tree with shiny leaves, some of which are reflecting sunlight towards me. The little bright spots that result from even that are things that my computer screen can not, ever, reproduce accurately. It is simply incapable of displaying a colour that bright.The best it can do is draw little white patches on the leaves.

If I look out the window for a while (particularly if I look at bright things) then when walk into a dark area of my house my eyes do indeed have to adjust. However, because of the limitations of my display device, my eyes do not have to make the same adjustments moving between bright and dark areas in video games. On their own the brights aren't bright enough and the darks aren't dark enough in comparison to one another. So if a game wants to make areas feel that different to one another they have to simulate that effect on top of their rendering of the scene.

The catch is that different screens are different ranges of brightness, and some screens build in their own "dynamic contrast" systems on top of all of that. So if a game's eye adjustment is calibrated to look good on a run-of-the-mill TV then it's going to seem overblown on something brighter and/or with richer colours, and it's quite possibly going to mess up either lights or darks on inferior displays. (Which is probably why games that really care about this have a monitor calibration screen.)

 

Just to emphasize this a quick search of Google turned up a luminance rating for the sun of 1,600,000,000 cd/m2.

http://www.ransen.com/photometric/Candelas-Lumens-And-Lux-Chapter-Samples.pdf

Whereas Wikipedia claims LCDs are within 200 to 300 cd/m2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candela_per_square_metre

Naturally since you don't want to go blind playing video games you need to fake it.

 

Okay, fair enough.

 

Motion blur is great. Most games should have it.

 

It's also "functional". The real world isn't a series of still images, which is how games are rendered by default. Images are made by capturing light over short periods of time, and any motion within that time causes blur. The result, essentially, is that things which are moving look like they're moving.

Simulating that effectively can make things look more natural and feel smoother. Doing it poorly or overdoing it either gets you something stylised... or a mess.

 

A little motion on objects moving relative to me is fine.

Having everything on the screen turn into a Monet because I turn is freaking ridiculous.

 

I actually modified the motion blur in the post processing stack to make longer streaks. Too long and they look weird though.