What is up with DoF? And why 3D movies?

I really, really, really don't understand why most games include and turn on Depth of Field by default.

In my mind, if you ask any movie director if he would want to use his current cameras, or new ones that are always sharp, from 0 to infinity, the only question he is going to ask is: "How much do they cost?" And unless that's a really exorbitant amount, he will buy and use them.

Simply, because focus depth is their main technical hurdle.


That's also why 3D movies suck, unless they're completely CGI: only the thing focused by the camera is sharp. You are only allowed to watch the small part of the frame the director wants you to watch.

And in that case: why not put a flashing rectangle around that part? Or even better, zoom in until only that part is visible?

Well, except for the part where it would make the movie hard to follow and they would have to shoot a different one for the 2D and 3D cinemas, it wouldn't fix the problem, as the background would still be fuzzy in most cases.

This is what movie directors worry about, and what can drive them crazy.


So, we have this medium where everything in the whole scene is sharp all the time. Something most movie directors would kill for. Games. And what do they do? They make most of the scene FUZZY.

Can we hit them on their head very hard until they understand?

 

Side by side image comparison plz? I dunno what you're talking about.

 

depth of field

 

Yes, and all the other things that make it fuzzy and/or remove anything from games that movies cannot do, like HDR and Bloom.

I am undecided about God Rays. But only that.

 

HDR is nice when it's used well. To make shiny things shiny.

 

I dunno what that is. I guess I have to google it...

 

Depth of field is how things look for a person who needs glasses. It's a thing mostly inherited from photography and film so games could appear as "cinematic".

 

HDR is like trying to simulate overexposure. Something technical that unfortunately happens to chemical film and any movie director would do much for to get rid of it. It's a technical artifact as well.

 

Yeah, DoF should only happen only when you got something really close to your face.

 

Publishers decided the future of games was to become movies, so they became movies. That explains DoF. DoF is always horrible. In theory it works in movies to signal to the watcher what to look at, but in games this completely falls apart because the player looks at whatever the fuck they want.

HDR used properly looks pretty good. In theory its a "good" effect in that its about more naturally mapping a world to the limited range of your display, and thereby more accurately representing what you would really see. Often looks crap though.

The real headscratcher is Chromatic Abberation. Seriously wtf. Now we're not just imitating movies, we're imitating movies shot by a complete imbecile using low-quality equipment. At this rate we'll have games in 2017 using cellphone portrait aspect ratios so you can really believe you're watching a shitty youtube video of a game. And the camera will shake constantly just like it really is being held by someone with Parkinson's.

 

Sounds like the cutscenes in nu-Far Cry games.

 

DoF is a product of format size, focal length and aperture (and only the latter two are significant in this context). It cannot be altered by "new cameras"; rather it is an inescapable product of physics. Sometimes a limited DoF in a shot is an unwanted compromise (most usually in dark scenes which necessitate shooting at wide apertures), but more often it is used very deliberately to isolate and emphasise elements in the shot. In other words it is, in part, just another visual tool.

However, this brings me on to...

If emulating human eyes, yes. And this is why it looks dumb in games most of the time, because it is used in character POV shots where it has no business being used. If it is used otherwise (like in a cutscene), then it can have some merit for the reasons outlined above, but otherwise it makes no sense and is only there to evoke "muh cinematics".

 

DoF is worse than cancer. It is a technical limitation of cameras, and game developers shouldn't use it at all. How retarded do you have to be to make your graphics deliberately worse, just to make it look more cinematic?

 

FFS can someone just link some screen shots? I'm still playing 2D games and CoD 1 you know...

 

DoF is defined as the area of "acceptably sharp focus" within an image at a certain focal length, focus distance and aperture. To wit:



And an example of its retarded misuse in games:

 

Ugh. Gross. Wtf is the point?

 

Cinematic immershun.

 

Retarded game developers try to mimic camera effects in games even though it makes absolutely no sense. 99,99% of the games out there, especially first person ones, give you no reason to think that you're viewing the game through a camera lens. Devs are just stupid and ruin their games' visuals with shitty and nonsensical effects because it's trendy.

 

Alien: Isolation is the only game that even came close to do something with DoF other than visual faggotry.

When you pull up the Motion Detector, the entire background blurs out to demonstrate Ripley's attention on the device.

It made for a somewhat neat gameplay element, until a mod was released that allowed for DoF to be disabled...and people barely noticed that it was gone.

 

An example of a game which approached the POV DoF stuff correctly is Alien Isolation. Normally your DoF as the player is infinite, unless you are looking at the motion tracker, and then it gets reduced. Admittedly, the effect is too extreme, as you would only get that kind of look if the tracker was inches away from your eyes, but at least they got the general point right.

edit: Damned ninjas

 

Another "cinematic" influence, this time coming from directors who don't know anything about action.

 

Motion blur is even worse, gives me headaches. Piece of shit.

DoF effect can look nice if it's applied to the really distant stuff but mostly it's shit. HDR and Bloom can be used well but DoF much more rarely can.

 

Even that sounds rather unnecessary, as just because you have the motion detector in front of you doesn't mean that you (or your character) would keep looking at it all the time.

On the other hand having a DoF effect while, say, reloading your weapon would make more sense, but only in a specific type of a game (it'd completely suck in a fast-paced shooter, for example), and even then its "benefits" would probably be negligible. Aiming down iron sights is another case where it could be used.

 

You don't. You press a key to focus on its screen; at other times you are focusing past it. Like so:





Which begs the question, why don't any other items appear out of focus when held? But I digress.

 

Discuss!
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