Anyone else not like HDR?

Do you like the look of HDR?

  • Yes

    Votes: 112 81.8%
  • No

    Votes: 25 18.2%

  • Total voters
    137

imzjustplayin

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
1,171
Just looking at these screen shots:http://firingsquad.com/media/gallery_index.asp/2025 emphasizes how developers have put much emphasis on HDR. The more I see HDR in games, the more I see how it distorts the look of the game, it looks like you're looking through haze covered glasses, instead of enhancing things, it makes the light sort of "blurry". Anybody feel this way? I've yet to see how HDR improves the look of a game, I realize HDR is suppose to me High Dynamic Range but all I'm seeing is an extreme exaggeration of Bloom which I too think adds nothing but "haze" to a game.

Just looking at the images of that benchmark by 3Dmark just looks awful, like adding halos to every light source some how "improves" the look of it..:rolleyes:
 
I can't just say "Yes" or "No".

In some games it helps, others it hinders. It just depends on the game.
 
HDR also comes with other effects that give realism to light, such as going from dark rooms to light and the other way.

I like it.
 
It was amazing when it first came on the scene. Now developers just need to tone it down a bit in some games. I'm sure they realize that.
 
I think what you're referring to is the sepia tone that has pervaded a lot of games in the last few years. It's a film/lens effect popularized by Hollywood movies like Black Hawk Down and Gone In 60 Seconds, where it's usually used at least somewhat tastefullly and in moderation, unlike in some games where the designers just see a cool effect and plaster it on the whole game (NFS Most Wanted, GRAW).

That's not HDR. HDR in moderation is great. It's up to the artists to implement it in a way that adds to the immersion, not takes away from it by being too strong or overblown.
 
you are thinking about "bloom" effect. HDR is high dynamic range, as in if you go from a lit up outside into a dark room, it'll feel extra dark, and then slowly lighten up. Bloom is the extra "SUPER OMG FUZZY EXTRA SLEEK LIGHT GLOW" effect that every 3rd rate developer is attaching to games (im looking at you epic and Gears of war) In moderation even bloom makes a game look very good. It gets rid of dull textures and gives them life, however when used over-excessively it kills the game and hurts your eyes.
 
you are thinking about "bloom" effect. HDR is high dynamic range, as in if you go from a lit up outside into a dark room, it'll feel extra dark, and then slowly lighten up. Bloom is the extra "SUPER OMG FUZZY EXTRA SLEEK LIGHT GLOW" effect that every 3rd rate developer is attaching to games (im looking at you epic and Gears of war) In moderation even bloom makes a game look very good. It gets rid of dull textures and gives them life, however when used over-excessively it kills the game and hurts your eyes.
Amen. More is not better with bloom, it is WAAAAAAY too much in most recent games, to the point that it totally kills any realism they might have been going for (on other games that aren't going for realism, it fits in perfectly).
 
People still don't know what HDR is.

HDR is used to render images with much higher colour depth.

Bloom is added when parts of the image are brighter than what can be displayed within the limited colour range of your display. This looks very different to fake bloom or overbright added to a non-HDR image.

Tone mapping is used to adjust and calibrate the brightness/contrast of the HDR image for a normal 32-bit display. It can be tweaked to give the eye adjustment effect.
 
HDR can look very good when its used with some common sense.

Some developers, especially in the early days of HDR/SM3.0, really went crazy with the effect. Sometimes they even added lots of bloom to hide how crappy their textures and models looked. It didn't look like a movie, and it certainly didn't look like real life either. It just looked stupid.

I think developers and game artists are starting to come to their senses now. Newer games feature much more balanced HDR.
 
I think developers and game artists are starting to come to their senses now. Newer games feature much more balanced HDR.
In 2004 when Doom3 out, I considered it the game with the most realistic lighting, being that I said "wow" in amazement the first time I fired it up. When I first played Crysis, I said the same thing again. The lighting in the game, while not perfect, was still incredible. Actually, some mods have hit it to look pretty damn near perfect. STALKER was another game, after I got some shader mods and a realism mod or two (forget their real names), outdoor areas looked damn near realistic in points. Anyway, my point is that I agree, it is definitely coming along.
 
Loved it in HL2 lost coast.

thought it was so so in oblivion.
the bloom feature seemed to do a bit more.
 
HDR needs to be seen in motion...like motionblur that looks crap on screenshots, but good in games.

I like HDR.
 
No. I shouldn't have to wear sunglasses to play a video game when I sure as hell don't have to wear sunglasses in real life.
 
No. I shouldn't have to wear sunglasses to play a video game when I sure as hell don't have to wear sunglasses in real life.

So you can see and shoot boogies that come in with the sun to their back? :rolleyes:

I wish more people has real life military traning, so crap like that gets debunked by learning by doing...
 
So you can see and shoot boogies that come in with the sun to their back? :rolleyes:

I wish more people has real life military traning, so crap like that gets debunked by learning by doing...

I don't see how military training is relevant at all. You can simply walk outside when the sun is shining to see real life effects vs HDR effects. The simple fact is that I walk outside, the sun is shining, and I'm not blinded by every object around me. I can play game XYZ with HDR on and the second I leave a building, I'm blinded anything and everything.
 
I don't see how military training is relevant at all. You can simply walk outside when the sun is shining to see real life effects vs HDR effects. The simple fact is that I walk outside, the sun is shining, and I'm not blinded by every object around me. I can play game XYZ with HDR on and the second I leave a building, I'm blinded anything and everything.

I repeat my question:
So you can see and shoot boogies that come in with the sun to their back?
 
I repeat my question:
So you can see and shoot boogies that come in with the sun to their back?

Well considering I don't own a gun, how would I know? Don't pretend that HDR is limited to first person shooters either though.
 
HDR and occlusion lighting working in conjunction can look really nice (Crysis). I was a fan of HDR the moment I saw it. Just before HDR, there was light bloom, which I thought was amazing when I first saw it in KOTOR. Poor "bloom," didn't have much time in the spot light.
 
People still don't know what HDR is.

HDR is used to render images with much higher colour depth.

Bloom is added when parts of the image are brighter than what can be displayed within the limited colour range of your display. This looks very different to fake bloom or overbright added to a non-HDR image.

Tone mapping is used to adjust and calibrate the brightness/contrast of the HDR image for a normal 32-bit display. It can be tweaked to give the eye adjustment effect.

HDR isn't about light colour range at all, but light intensity. HDR techniques attempt to simulate the washingout/glaring effect you experience on your owns eyes when exposed to highly intense light that you normally get from the sun. Your monitor can't possibly put out the same intensity of light as the sun and so the washingout/glaring effect you experience is simulated via a variety of techniques. Bloom is simply one effect used in most HDR techniques.

Personally I think HDR, when done well, is a very good thing. HL2 and Crysis are good examples.

Any mediocre shit on a console is bound to have shitty HDR. That's expected.
 
I have not seen HDR implemented in a way that didn't annoy the crap out of me. A video game display is still not anywhere close to simulating the real world, so stop making it even harder for me to see what the hell is going on right in front of me.

It's a cool idea that does not translate well to games. It's like saying "well not everyone has good eyesight so we will now blur everything. See how real it is?" Depth of field in games gets a similar treatment. They handle it like a still photo but motion depth of field is not at all the same.

Eh. They have to keep trying new stuff to enhance the experience and stand apart from the competitin but most of that new stuff is just crap.
 
I like HDR, it produces a more realistic image if done correctly.

It seems like a lot of people don't really know what it is and mistake it for bloom. Although an HDR render may include some blooming, that isn't all thats going on. HDR is basically 64-bit color (or higher). Most everyone's monitors are going to be set at 32-bit so you can't even see a real HDR image natively. Thats why devs use over-exposure and things like that to make up for information thats not there.

So this poll is about as useless as: "Do you like 16-bit color or 32-bit color?" because HDR is just higher quality period (ie more information). Although there is an argument that many developers have crappy or faked HDR implementations, don't blame that on HDR.

Just look at some real HDR photography to get an idea of the difference:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=hdr
 
I'm OK with HDR and a little bloom. Some games implement this correctly but some games just do it completely wrong where some areas will have too much glare (bloom) or some areas that seem to "flicker" or become too dark (HDR).

I remember a lot of the games around the dawn of seventh-generation gaming consoles overdid the whole combination (hay guyz, HDRandBLOOM. Now our games are officially "next-gen"). As a matter of fact, I remember the flickering problem with HDR whenever I enabled it in Chaos Theory.


As for "bloom" : http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=224
 
You know I have to say, it was distracting when I saw it in CounterStrike: Source. However, I think they've come a long way on making it look good, so it's not as bad as it used to be.
 
So you can see and shoot boogies that come in with the sun to their back?

Whoa there! Remove your finger from your nose so you can type correctly. Bogeys.


Elaborate disclaimer: trying to be funny here, not to ridicule you.
 
I like HDR, HDR made the biggest "difference" in farcry, it was a bit too extreme, and it was dependant on where you were looking, if you look at the ground for 20 seconds, then look up, your screen is a wash in light until it corrects. HDR in the HL2 engine looks pretty nice, with the exception of the map de_dust in CSS, every other map in all the HL2 bassed games ive seen with HDR look great.

In stalker, HDR (refered to as dynamic lighting) looks very realistic and as real and as good as ive seen HDR (I haven't played crysis however), but it sucks because you can't add AA to it, dispite the fact that HDR+AA was one of the key selling points for x series ATi cards, maybe thats because its under the nvidia TWIWMTBP program.

Moar High Dynamic Range pls.
 
STALKER, Crysis and most recently, TF2 use HDR to some great effect. They keep it subtle and it can add a lot of richness to the colors and the scene in general. Valve kept the effect more on the subtle side of things in Episode 2 rather than BLOOMFEST like the lost coast demo was. Seems most developers are starting to figure out that it looks retarded... except EPIC, somebody please inform them. I just played through Vegas 2 and the bloom is almost non existent, it's there, but it's FAR less.

STALKER can't do AA because it's a deferred renderer, DirectX10 can do AA with a deferred render, DX9 can't.
 
I've been very pleased with it so far except in UT3/Gears of War.
 
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