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

Are you just guessing stuff? Main technical hurdle? What the fuck. Even carrying equipment is a bigger hurdle than that.

Chances are that any time you see a shallow focus shot in a film it's a deliberate choice and not due to a "technical hurdle." Possible exceptions include shooting 70mm film or with some 28K digital monstrosity, low budget/natural light night scenes, longish telephoto close-ups, and general incompetence. Maybe you heard about Orson Welles, Citizen Kane, and deep focus and though that maybe people have the same difficulties more than 70 years later. They don't.

No. There was even a small industry (before modern DSLRs capable of shooting video with respectable quality) around deliberately making the focus more shallow (35mm adapters).

Games have no place for shallow focus though except for possibly an "I'm feeling woozy" effect etc.

3D movies suck because the 3D effect itself is pointless. (And because 24 fps is horrible in 3D but 48 fps on the other hand doesn't look like a movie anymore.)

 

A bit harsh. Critical focus pulling is no easy task, especially in dark conditions without any digital focus aids. With the advent of 4K remasters of older films released on Bluray you can see how commonplace small inaccuracies actually were, but they were "good enough" for the intended viewing medium at the time.

 

Why need side by side pictures/videos?
Just see Crysis1 vs Crysis2+3, where first game still looks ok while sequels are effect-bloated and ugly.

 

I would also add that while IRL DoF, regardless of whether it involves eye or camera, generally only involves shallow DoF when focusing on something close up, as otherwise close-up objects may be out of focus, but pretty much everything from moderate range to infinity will be sharp, the game DoF tends to inexplicably be shallow all the time whether you focus on the tip of your nose or a tree halfway to the horizon.

About the only exception to this rule so far has been Skyrim where, against all such idiotic trends, DoF is used for everything - including selectively blurring underwater view, adding *subtle* *slight* blur to fog and blurring menu backdrops - apart from actual depth of field emulation.

 

I don't really see the need for all the fuss - maybe it's because I wear glasses so I'm used to very mild CA IRL, or maybe it's because slight imperfections in the image - such as chromatic aberration or film grain - help mask its artificial nature and make tokenizing assets slightly more difficult which is a clear gameplay gain.

 

I don't mind chromatic aberration or film grain. Doesn't work for everything but was fine in some games I've played.

 

That actually happens to neatly mirror the difference between keeping a steady, consistent view of a scene - using static or otherwise predictable camera OR player controlled one - allowing for good situational awareness, and modern trend of constantly interrupting the flow and chopping into it with cinematic finishers, cutscenes and whatnot - all flash, no substance and all it really accomplishes is keeping player confused and unable to perform optimally or use their surroundings effectively.

 

Not at all: telephoto lenses with large maximum apertures can render images with a very limited DoF even at quite large distances.

For example:



It's just not something you can achieve with a phone camera or kit lens.

 

I just remembered, you know what I hate even more than these effects? The modern shooter "looking at my hands while doing something" and the amazing "moving your camera/face to point at the things we want you to see" trope. I guess it's supposed to be immersive but nothing immerses me less in a game than disconnecting my input and having my character fuck around on his own because I can't be trusted to enjoy the cinematicness of the scene on my own.

 

While your eyes do have the same problem, whatever you focus on is sharp. If you look out of the window from up high, everything is sharp and not fuzzy. And while it can be effectively used in some cases, like the picture above, for a movie or game it requires that everyone watches the same piece of the screen where the camera is focused.

I get a headache with 3D movies where two people are talking and the camera focus changes from one to the other all the time.

 

If you look out of the window from up high, then you are also unlikely to need much refocusing when looking around.

I don't have any physical issues but it's ultra-annoying to have your focus locked on a particular part of the scene.

 

This is because your eyes are focused at infinity, or near enough, and they have a relatively short focal length and small aperture. Even a lens like the one used in the (admittedly extreme) example I posted above would do the same if focused far enough away. Here is another example shot with an 85mm lens at f1.4 on full frame:



Everything is sharp, even at such a wide aperture, because the lens is focused at ~infinity.

Now here is the same lens at the same aperture, only focused close:

Deliberately narrow DoF is used all the time in films, as it is one of the most common ways of isolating a subject (typically an actor) from other elements in the frame. You probably just don't notice it because you are so accustomed to seeing it in films.

This is because the means of reproducing the 3D effect (via polarised glasses etc) is generally crappy and imprecise. It's a bit like looking at one of those T-shirts with the deliberately fuzzy letters made up of loads of dispersed dots, only not as extreme.

 

Yes, depth of field/focal blur mostly is an issue at close distances. From a camera lens' perspective, the difference between 1 inch and 10 inches is much greater than between 100 feet and 110 feet. Has something to do with the tangent of some angle.

This image doesn't have DoF but you can see how distance and angle are not 1:1 ratio.

 

The main problem is still that you feel like you should be able to choose what you focus on, but you can't.

Deliberate DoF in 3D is the highest form of fucktardry.

 

That animation is illustrating how the level of perspective distortion varies with focal length. Not really relevant to a discussion of DoF.

 

Yo dawg I upgraded your next-genness

 

Too subtle. The CA shit needs to be like 10 pixels minimum on every edge for tr00 nextgen luk.

 

Disclaimer: I never watch TV and very rarely movies. Mostly because TV has become extremely boring, and movies today require both a very high suspension of disbelief as well as no independent thought. They're like the epitome of the highlights of streamlined games in a nutshell. If you have seen the trailer, you have seen all the interesting bits.

 

The ratio of distance/effect is the same though, for similar reasons.

 

God rays shouldn't blur the image nor be something considered "cinematic" they're a naturally occurring effect that look like this in real life:

The post-process ones are kinda meh though, the ones in Fallout 4 which were actual 3d rays of light that cast shadows and affected the overall lighting of the scene were good though, if expensive.

The problem with HDR is that the actual benefits of the effect is really only that great when you have the monitor that has that expanded color range. Recently, we've seen more of these appear on the market as they become commonplace so games have now begun to support true HDR.

 

Strictly speaking HDR isn't about colour depth, it's about the range of brightnesses (contrast ratio) that can be displayed at any one time.

 

Post-process god rays tend to be geometrically wrong, but it's not that you can't do honest volumetric ones.
STALKERs did starting from CS and they looked p. awesome.

 

Most games do crepuscular rays wrong, they just add them anywhere because OOH SHINY, but in reality you need to have something in the air that will disrupt the light, so places like dusty interiors. I wonder why no game uses something like a "godray volume" where the rays would only be visible within the defined area, as that makes the most sense. They also often become invisible when facing away from the light source due to the way they are rendered, but that makes no sense either, that's not how fucking light works.

In Stalker's case, the way they are rendered flooded your scene with a color making everything appear flatter, which is why in the original game they are only visible during a short period of the day (though that does make sense, it just doesn't look good).

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

No rays


With rays enabled

It can add some nice atmosphere if you ignore the issues though