Muzman on 18/11/2008 at 02:52

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I don't know where you get this idea from. Brightly lit thngs playing havok with vision is a common occurence as there is simply more light coming from them and the retina can't recover fast enough. A greater volume of light will spread and become bigger in the viewpoint. Mostly this is known as glare.
Brightly lit things becoming 'over exposed', thanks to what you're looking at requiring a wider iris than what's outside, happens all the time. You just haven't noticed. Right this minute I can stand in my kitchen and observe my dishes in the sink. In the corner of my eye the neighbour's tin roof becomes nothing but a featureless white expanse (and the light's not so bright that I can't make out details on it when I'm looking straight at it. And I'm not so close to the dishes that I'm focussing close). It's easy to miss in comparison to games since much more than a small bit of a bright object in the corner of your view will cause adjustment to compensate. And the dynamic range of your eye is much wider and its iris adjustments are much faster than most games impliment (as you and others are saying, this is probably to be showy about it).
I'm not sure what you mean by flare. If that's lens flare then no, humans don't get lense flare. The lens flare we know and love requires multiple lenses. We get coronas around bright points of light (which I'm not sure what the proper name for is, but I think it's filed under glare).

jtr7 on 18/11/2008 at 03:23

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If specified areas of game maps could have it for atmospheric effect, instead of on or off all the time, and if objects weren't given a glow, weapons weren't given glowing streaking effects, etc., it could be nice. Treat it as an occasional flourish, not a constant, wearisome, inappropriate, out-of-place, over-used gimmick, just because...

In the meantime, continue to make it an option in the menu.

DDL on 18/11/2008 at 11:55

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A lot of the problems with DOF come from the fact that while, as humans, we actually live in a world of almost constant blur (the area of your viewfield over which you actually have detailed vision is roughly the size of your thumbnail, held at arms length), we can't, kinda by definition, focus on that blur. As soon as we focus on anything, it gets snapped into focus (duh).

So on a computer screen, where our eyes are not locked to the dead centre, any kind of blurring is superfluous at best, and incredibly irritating otherwise. The distant scenery magically blurs for you when you're concentrating on nearby objects because you're not focussing on it. Having the game engine try and do that for you as well is just silly. Sure, if done correctly, it's a nice effect to apply to..say, a sniper scope (where this sort of effect WOULD be noticable), but that's about it.

As for bloom, it is something you can observe in real life, but it does require a truly stupidly powerful lightsource: as I think ZB pointed out in another thread, in the real world, light sources can vary over a near-infinite range of intensities, whereas on a screen they're limited to 0,0,0 up to 255,255,255 as their dynamic range, and the raw light-producing power of your monitor as their intensity. Since it's impossible (or at least, incredibly unwise) to make your monitor display things so brightly they actually bloom in real life, they fake it by making the light bleed into its surroundings. And furthermore, since it's (I assume) impossible to make textures that go beyond the 0,0,0 - 255,255,255 limit, it's difficult to teach a game engine to distinguish between things that are 'bloom worthy', like a spotlight, and things that aren't, like a very well lit piece of paper. Both are just 'white' to the engine, but the real-life equivalent intensities of the 'white' would be very different.

Also, similar to above, it's difficult to observe directly in real life, since the moment you focus on it your iris tightens up and minimises the effect.


I still think subtle bloom looks quite pretty though. :o

EvaUnit02 on 18/11/2008 at 14:52

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Except that it's already slowed down. Console dominate the market, thus there's significantly fewer companies pushing the envelope graphically on PC then there was once upon a time.

It's pretty much just CryEngine 2, GSC's X-Ray Engine and possibly IdTech 5. Unreal Engine 3.0 was optimised for Xbox 360; Call of Duty games have been using the same engine since CoD2, similar to Valve.

CCCToad on 18/11/2008 at 17:58

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Nail on the head.

Its what Will Wright called "movie envy"