Your most hated graphical effect?

J

jbltecnicspro

[H]F Junkie
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Okay, so we're all jumping out of our seats for Titan and what it may or may not do. Will it be able to come close to a GTX-690? Will it help me solve calculus problems? Is 6GB of VRAM overkill? Who cares!

I wanted to steer the conversations into another realm that I don't see mentioned much here. What graphical effect used in 3D games/benchmarks/demos do you NOT like seeing? Which effect, when you see it, makes you sigh in despair? :p

Personally, my most hated graphical "effect" is motion blur. I can't stand it, and I probably won't ever like it. Usually if I'm playing a game, I disable it whenever I can. Just recently, I fired up Unigine's Valley Benchmark. I toggle the camera mode to "walk" and quickly turn to the left to discover... YEP! That damn motion blur! :mad:
 
Lens flare + bloom.

They aren't bad by themselves, but developers go way overboard.
 
Texture pop in and motion blur, but I HATE texture pop in.
 
Depth of Field... stop blurring everything around the center! I want to look at EVERYTHING.
 
Epic games' Screen-space-ambient-occlusion. Its developed for consoles that can't run crytek's original implementation. Its murky, its history-based and it's downsampled to half-res. Can't stand it.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Depth of Field... stop blurring everything around the center! I want to look at EVERYTHING.
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Yeah, DOF is also way overdone. It looks good in screenshots but in motion it's aggravating. I've yet to see it implemented well in a game except perhaps Metro.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Personally, my most hated graphical "effect" is motion blur. I can't stand it, and I probably won't ever like it. Usually if I'm playing a game, I disable it whenever I can.
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Same here. First thing that came to mind, in fact. A number of LCD displays tend to give us motion blur "for free" anyways. No point spending processing power on it. :cool:
 
Lens flair, Light Orbs, things of that nature.

I'm not a fucking camera. In these games I'm playing a person, I don't need camera effects on my "eyes", water doesn't drip down my eyes like it does a camera lense.
 
Texture Pop-in, disappearing textures & models, motion blur, film grain, greyed-out tv effects, and hidden loading times via doors, elevators, long hallways etc ( <---I know, not graphical, but annoying just the same! )
 
Disappearing models/textures top of my shit list.

Close second, film grain intended to hide shitty textures.
 
Texture pop in isn't a "graphical effect" guys, it's shitty engine design.
 
Bloom, Blur, Lens flare, AO. I believe they are cop-out effects to cover impurities in textures/graphics and make them "look good". I don't want "photo-realistic" graphics; I want "realistic" graphics.
 
I'd really like to see a game that replicates authentic use of powered scopes. For example, looking down an ACOG without the rest of the world outside of the scope zooming in at 4x as well...
 
Rizen said:
Texture pop in isn't a "graphical effect" guys, it's shitty engine design.
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This, ditto for disappearing textures and assets.

I hate dx9 type post processing, way to take a nice clean image then smear vaseline all over it with a 1/4 resolution "effect"
 
everything. We need to go back to Quake1 graphics and figure out where and how we went wrong with everything latter :D
 
Rizen said:
Texture pop in isn't a "graphical effect" guys, it's shitty engine design.
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In RAGE it is a "feature." :)

Love the fact that we can sink an infinite amount into our PC's and still be plagued by texture pop-in. .
 
1. Motion Blur
2. Depth of Field
3. FXAA/MLAA

They all get turned off immediately in the Options menu for every game I play. Even if they gave me a performance increase I would still disable them.
 
next-Jin said:
1. Motion Blur
2. Depth of Field
3. FXAA/MLAA

They all get turned off immediately in the Options menu for every game I play. Even if they gave me a performance increase I would still disable them.
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you would turn off fxaa/mlaa even if a game doesnt support MSAA? or are you using SMAA?
 
I'd go with two lighting effects tied for first. First is unnecessary lense flare, second is bloom/HDR. A little bloom can make a scene pop but when every map you play is lighted as if it's in evening sun and even the grass is reflective, it's too much.

Further down, motion blur is useless.

DoF, only when there's a performance penalty. Arguably, if there's a cost for making parts of the scene less detailed then you're doing it wrong.
 
pandora's box said:
you would turn off fxaa/mlaa even if a game doesnt support MSAA? or are you using SMAA?
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Yea I like sharp and clean images and at 1600p it's not that huge of an issue. I've said it before and I will say it again. FXAA/MLAA make images look like two monkeys smeared their #### all over my computer screen. I just looks so bad, I'm not even sure why people would roll with it.
 
Ha, add another to the motion blur camp. Always an option I disable when possible.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Personally, my most hated graphical "effect" is motion blur. I can't stand it, and I probably won't ever like it. Usually if I'm playing a game, I disable it whenever I can. Just recently, I fired up Unigine's Valley Benchmark. I toggle the camera mode to "walk" and quickly turn to the left to discover... YEP! That damn motion blur! :mad:
Click to expand...



this.

it gives me motion sickness.
it appears on LCDs anyway because they're mostly too slow, you can eliminate it with certain hardware, and then developers introduce it as a "feature" in games because it looks artsy?

generally, i don't like effects that makes it hard to see what you're shooting at, like lens flares and bloom. they're overdone.

some people seem to think that "tweaking" BF3 means setting everything to ultra, but this does not mean best visibility, which is important in online FPS.
 
Torr Samaho said:
Some people seem to think that "tweaking" BF3 means setting everything to ultra, but this does not mean best visibility, which is important in online FPS.
Click to expand...

Exactly, I play at custom with everything at ultra other than Motion Blur and FXAA or whatever it is labeled as in the options menu (havent played in a few weeks)
 
  • Motion Blur. It can look ok, but it's usually way waay overdone (especially by Crytek). It can be used properly to mask low framerates or to give a sense of movement to things (like rotorblades and gatling barrels) as otherwise it doesn't quite look right or smooth. But people just seem to do it wrong...
  • Blurry AA. Especially that fake AA that blurs everything...
  • Grain: It can look ok, but it's usually done to be noticable. Lot's of things are ok but tend to get used in an "hey look!! I just worked out how to do this effect based on this tutorial!!! copy/paste/copy/paste/copy/paste!!!" rather than subtley.
  • Speculars without proper mapping. Everything other than a black hole has some kind of specular level, but not to the level that everything is plastic. There is subtlety and lots of experimentation that needs to go on here rather than slathering global numbers on stuff. But if they don't include speculars it makes everything look very flat and dull...
  • Blocky objects because the maker either has no clue what a normal map is or just cant be bothered.
  • "4k" textures that are still shitty. One of the things that is kind of silly with lots of modders is when they just boost resolution without boosting quality or do so without returns. Face to the wall it's still going to look shit, but it will just hamper performance. Moar resolution does not = better visuals, but moar resoluton always = worse performance.
  • "4k" textures on shitty models. :D
  • "4k" textures around a bunch of 512k textures. I'd rather they were all the same low quality...
  • Desturate everythings! Lots of games do this...
 
Like others have said; Motion blur, film grain, and DoF.

IMO devs go crazy with some of these effects and things like wild lighting/smoke to try to distract you from the fact that they're often using medium to low res textures. I flippin' hate muddy low res textures.

Give me high res textures and I know that isn't going happen most of the time due to current console limitations.
 
all effects are great if used in a way where you don't really notice when they are on but you really notice when they are turned off.

some devs just seem to focused on singular effects rather than using their whole arsenal in a subtle way to create a sense of graphical harmony.

One thing does bug me is models never seem to by in sync with the world, lighting wise, always seem unshaded in alot of cases
 
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Motion blur is by far the worse, followed by any post processing effect. I also hate bloom, lens flare, water/blood/.../ dripping effect and FXAA.
 
(Overdone) bloom/HDR, strong glare, DoF, lens flare, any type of blurring, film grain, screen turning red with blood when on low life, and probably a few more as well.

Generally, I don't like having to struggle to see my surroundings in games. Okay for very short periods of time if related to a 'special event' in the game, but on the whole I like it much better without all of these.
 
Motion blur and extreme HDR/Bloom. We all seem to agree on the same thing though.

Motion blur looks decent if I was demoing the game for someone, but to actually play with it? Especially if it's a competitive game....no thanks. Let's not even talk about Bloom, oh god. I love seeing halos around my characters bodies. Ever try the Everquest 2 bloom? Makes the colors look great, but adds a friggin Super Saiyan aura around everything. I didn't know those mushrooms had a power level over 9000?
 
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