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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Graphics Effects, Love em or hate em.

 

Most hated effect?

Chromatic aberration 35 21.47%
 
Motion blur 39 23.93%
 
Bokeh depth of field 9 5.52%
 
Bloom 15 9.20%
 
HDR 2 1.23%
 
God rays 7 4.29%
 
Lens flare 12 7.36%
 
Dirty lens 16 9.82%
 
Film grain 15 9.20%
 
CRT effects 11 6.75%
 
Total:161

Excessive bloom instantly ruins games for me.



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Xbox One - PS4 - Wii U - PC

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SvennoJ said:

Any effects that I missed? 

Shaky cam?



SvennoJ said:

It was quite cool to see it in action in Lost coast. Honestly I couldn't find any really bad screenshots of HDR that quickly, screenshots of a tunnel with a white square as exit aren't that interesting of course. Coming out of the tunnel on High speed ring in GT5 looks kinda bad though.

HDR + bloom is a deadly combination. And using it to constantly white out the sky is kinda ugly too. It annoys me to no end when I try to take a picture in real life, you can never capture the full scene as you see it, with a digital camera. Why simulate that in games.

 Fallout 3 seems to have uncanny sky. 

Agree, some of these fancy tech things may sound good in developer meetings. In reality, they do end up ruining end user experience and age really badly. 



Lost cost was technically just a tech demo so the effects were exaggerated to make them stand out more, unfortunately people took it for a baseline and have been using simimarly blown out effects ever since.

all of these effects and look wonderful if implamented correctly and to the right amount, but rarely does that balance find its footing.

But let me add some more effects to the list.

Screen distortion/tinting.

A stupid and ultimately flawed effect, if you had vomit in your eyes you would fucking close them.

SSAO

Used in place of effort for lighting and to hide low quality lightmapping, SSAO looks awful, adds shadows where shadows should not be and is the hallmark of graphical stupidity.

Water distortion

Not too bad on games where you're wearing a gasmask or its happening on a vehicle windscreen but beyond that it should not be used, at all.

Injury/scratch display

Oh no, you.. scratched my eyeballs.

 

And last but not least, less graphical and more audio related, i hate heavy breather characters for the most part, HUFF HUFF HUFF.. okay we get it.. HUFF HUFF... SIGH, HUFF.. if you're going to huff and puff that hard, seeing as i can see through your eyes how about some breath smoke if im outside people, just an idea.



Definitely chromatic aberration. That shit hurts my eyes.



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curl-6 said:
SvennoJ said:

Any effects that I missed? 

Shaky cam?

Yeah, luckily mostly reservered to cut scenes, although certain racing games are overusing the bumpy road effect. Come on, my head is not screwed onto the chassis.



I fucking hate the "dirty lens" effect. Playing Battlefield 3 was a horrible experience by itself, and this effect made it even more annoying. Honorable mention to excessive bloom, film grain (on most cases) and chromatic aberration.

I actually like depth of field, some lens flare and HDR.



lucidium said:

Screen distortion/tinting.

A stupid and ultimately flawed effect, if you had vomit in your eyes you would fucking close them.

  What is that?? I can't even make out in that screenshot what it is trying to achieve.
  The whole no health bar, distort the screen instead rage has gotten pretty annoying too (maybe that's it?) And also often combined with heavy breathing and/or exaggerated heart beats.

SSAO

Used in place of effort for lighting and to hide low quality lightmapping, SSAO looks awful, adds shadows where shadows should not be and is the hallmark of graphical stupidity.

  Anti light indeed. It is time for ray tracing to take over instead of keep patching up a fundamentally flawed lighting system.


Water distortion

Not too bad on games where you're wearing a gasmask or its happening on a vehicle windscreen but beyond that it should not be used, at all.

  Raindrops on my eyes! Totally realistic. good one. Another form of dirty lens. I can't remember the name but here was a racing game where mud continuously kept sticking to the lens then slowly fading away. DiRT?


And last but not least, less graphical and more audio related, i hate heavy breather characters for the most part, HUFF HUFF HUFF.. okay we get it.. HUFF HUFF... SIGH, HUFF.. if you're going to huff and puff that hard, seeing as i can see through your eyes how about some breath smoke if im outside people, just an idea.

Color tinting is a good one too. So jarring when you walk from one scene into the next and the color palette suddenly changes. "He wasn't that bush a totally different color 2 seconds ago..." WoW was pretty bad with that.



Motion blur is by far the worst for me, it almost ruined Half Life 2 for me after playing it for a short while and getting a really nauseous feeling, I am so glad you can turn it off.



No problem with god rays and other volumetric lights. They're often over used, but they are part of the scene. Everything else you listed however is caused by observation of the scene. With a different observer (ie human verse camera) these effects change. These are just a matter of taste.

Personally I love it all.