25 replies to this topic

[TheNut]

I was thinking about games like Crysis and TF2 where motion blur is so grossly exaggerated that it actually makes the game more difficult to play. I watched your video, but it lacks contrast to make a reliable judgement. A scene with detailed textures, decent lighting (with highlights and shadows), and textual sign posts would be a much better indicator. Personally, I wouldn't accept anything more than a 4 to 5 pixel shift in blur. That would be acceptable and as you say, enough to smooth out the edges. More than this and you have yourself a washing machine. Cinematics are a different matter though and I think, artistically, the sky is the limit here.

[David Gallagher]

oh yes i see what you mean, washing machine effect is so not cool . I'm glad you said how much you think would be acceptabe for you, as I think rather than just add it as an on/off setting i will give the user control of the 3 parameters aswell (camera blur intensity, object blur intensity and sample count) that way the user can decide for them selves whether to use it or not and how much they would like or even only use object bluring and no camera bluring.

[moe]

Personally I don't like motion blur in games. It makes it just harder to recognize what's going on. It's ok in cinematics though as it can create a specific atmosphere and set the tone of a game. The same goes for depth of field. I think you tend to look at something out of focus and just keep wondering what it might be instead of playing the game. It makes you miss details that you as a player might find interesting.

I like that you want to let the user decide if he want's motion blur or not. Though, it might be a bit of a pitty if you do all the work and the user just turnes it of
None the less these are the things that leave the user with an impression that you care for him (since you give him the choice) which can go a long way.

[David Gallagher]

Quote

I like that you want to let the user decide if he want's motion blur or not. Though, it might be a bit of a pitty if you do all the work and the user just turnes it of
None the less these are the things that leave the user with an impression that you care for him (since you give him the choice) which can go a long way.

yeah at the end of the day it's the players game, and if something is annoying to them they should be able to turn it off (offtopic rant: there are so many games I wish had quick saves rather than check points and allowed skipping of the cutscene,especially before taking on a boss, as after watching a cutscene once or twice i really don't need to see it again unless i want to for nostalgia's sake, and i hate games when i have to traverse a very large distance in a game only to get axed and have to go right back to the checkpoint and do all the mind numbing stuff all over again, these are features i'd like also to be decided by the player//end rant lol).
But being I'm making my game for me too and i myself like motion blur, even if every potential player turned it off I'd be happy because i can still use it, I also want to do ingame only cinematics rather than rely on video so it's good to have in the arsenal, at least from my needs, but yeah everyone has different needs.

[Stainless]

In my code base I have about a dozen effects that I don't use.

I have things like GPU based 3D spherical harmonics, iterated fractal functions, speed based mesh distortion, etc. etc. etc.

They are all things that I have either seen somewhere and wanted to have a go at, or I wanted for a project that never got finished.

They are great to have in the back pocket... JUST IN CASE

I agree with your rant, I have actually stopped buying Square Enix's games because of this issue. I am one of those anal bar stewards

[Vilem Otte]

I think that counts for everyone stainless. F.e. in my code you can switch to pure ray-tracing or even path-tracing (through console). It's only through CPU now (because it's quite impossible to re-use meshes, textures, etc. that are used in scene for both - rasterizer and ray tracer ... though I'm working on GPU solution). The thing is that almost everything I implement can be turned on (and lots of things with undefined behavior - "It's not a bug, it's a feature").