By Jim Rossignol on November 18th, 2009 at 6:00 pm.
So here’s a discussion I’ve been having on Twitter and elsewhere: do you turn off depth of field and motion blur effects in games? I recently realised, when looking at some Borderlands screenshots, that I now do that by default, and didn’t wait more than a couple of minutes to kill the depth of field in that game. It was most scream-worthy, in my opinion, in Stalker: Clear Sky, where reloading the gun put everything except the gun out of focus – precisely when I wanted to be looking into the distance and judging my next barrage. So I’ve asked about, and opinion is clearly divided on the issue. For some people it’s a clear cut decision, while others see depth of field and motion blur effects as welcome prettiness, and beneficial to their experience. If that’s the case, can any of you point to situations in which these effects are useful, rather than just pretty? And if these things are merely visual spangle, then are they an effect too far? Have we reached a point in graphics where there’s too much extra processing? Or am I just getting too old to deal with these new-fangled visuals with my decrepit visual cortex? Speak your eyes!
I like a bit of field of view, but i turn off motion blur, it annoys me (and slows fps down alot)
report
Depth of Field, except maybe in non-interactive cutscenes, is pure stupid. My eyes happen to do to Depth of Field internally. Whereever I’m looking at on the screen is amazingly clear while where I’m not looking is unclear. I don’t need where I’m looking to become blurry because some guy thought it looked cool.
report
I turn off motion blur and depth of field instantly. The biggest complaint I had with the new wolfenstein game is the motion blur effects. Gave me the worst headache when playing through the game.
Honestly, I’m one of those weird people who would put field of view at 120 degrees (with the slight fishbowl effect that comes with that) just to see more of the game at once.
report
And that illustrates it for me right there – the focus of this discussion seems to be whether the features improve your tactical efficiency, rather than immersion. A few people say it looks good, and a few others say it looks bad, but the bulk seem to be more concerned that it prevents them from pwnxoring n00bs.
Like Vinraith (a fellow single-player die-hard) I find myself confused, and looking to improve the atmosphere and immersion of my experience, rather than improving my Optimzed Dude Shooter Program. I’m also not sure it’s fair to characterize that as simply “pretty”.
Surely we can find merit in the visual presentation of STALKER SOC, without calling it “prettiness” ?
report
Well in Crysis I keep them both on, but for different reasons.
Depth of Field looks nice with the long viewdistance, islands and mountains miles away.
With motion blur, that’s actually a judgement call. The thing about motion blur is that it eats up quite a bit of processing power, which can reduce your framerate. However, it can also make your game look smoother. In Crysis I find that the benefits of having motion blur on (in terms of how smooth things look) outweigh having the framerate upped by a few more FPS.
If motion blur is overwrought it can be an annoying effect, but they have a slider for that.
Also, if you’re talking in-game narrative and cinematics, or just trying to create the right visual effect, depth of field is a good way of focussing the player’s attention on certain aspects of the picture. It’s used in film all the time for precisely that effect.
report
My own sight is enough of a visual impairment, don’t need that stuff on screen too. It doesn’t work and people should really know better than implement this kind of effects in games. Do these guys know anything about how vision works and that player has to watch the screen to watch the battlefield?
report
My answer to this is boring, but that’s because I think the question is silly. Motion blur and depth of field are visual effects that can be used well or used badly. If they’re overused, they tend to be bad, just like lens flares. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t games, visual styles or moments when they are extremely effective.
report
Come to think of it, it’s been ages since I’ve seen a game try to use Lens flare. It was such a huge thing in 3D games back in the mid-to-late 90′s. Now it seems to have been largely replaced by Bloom. Bloom everywhere.
report
Crysis is, I think, the only game I’ve played that had these effects. To be honest, I haven’t even noticed motion blur. Depth of field, I think, adds a nice touch of reality. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to turn it off, anyway. It sounds like I probably would in Clear Sky, though, as reality is broken in that example by the fact that I wouldn’t be focused on the gun in that situation.
So I suppose my answer is: it depends on whether it deleteriously affects game play in an unrealistic way, or adds a nice visual flourish and bit of extra reality to the proceedings.
report
Crysis is also one of the very few games that got motion blue AND depth of field right.
But then that game got pretty much everything graphical spot on.
report
I like both.
report
I’m torn. In Borderlands, which plays fast and loose with reality, it felt odd to stare down iron sights and have things blurred around the small cone that I was supposedly looking at. In Stalker: Clear Sky, on the other hand, one of the things that endeared me to the game was how seriously even the sci-fi elements were treated, and as such I appreciated that my mercenary character had to actually look at his weapon when he reloaded it — the little details like that made me feel less like a beefcake badass and more like a human being who was just very very good at what he does.
But from personal experience, I dislike the notion of depth of field blur when looking down iron sights. I own three guns — a Glock, a shotgun, and an AK-47 — and am relatively proficient with their use. If you’re sighting down a rifle at a target and you see something peripheral (motion off to the side), you can look at the other thing without moving your gun at all. You do something novel: you move your eyes. That’s what bothered me most about the depth of field blur in Borderlands — in real life I could look to the side without having to swing my gun around, so why can’t I just see things without an unrealistic added effect (added for realism’s sake)?
report
I tend to keep these on for two reasons:
a) it’s pretty and since I have a gaming computer I’ll be damned if I don’t turn all the bells and whistles on (TF2′s motion blur and CoD4′s depth of field make both of those look a bit prettier);
b) it adds to the game, as in ArmAII or STALKER.
In ArmAII’s case, the motion blur is very strong, specifically because it’s supposed to be a simulation and you can’t exactly execute a 180 degree spin while retaining complete awareness of your surroundings. A couple of my friends have turned it off because they found it annoying, but I didn’t pick up a soldier sim to get another mildly tactical FPS – I picked up a soldier sim to have every realism slider dialled to 11.
With regards to STALKER, it makes sense, since you can’t really reload a gun without paying at least some amount of attention to what your hands are doing, especially in the middle of a firefight. Short of having the ability to dynamically change the strength of the depth of field effect every time you reload (so you can set it to 50% of what it’s supposed to be but you have a 50% chance of dropping your magazine due to not paying attention in combat, natch), I’d rather have it on if the game I’m playing is at all attempting to be realistic.
I never understood the people who turn all their settings down in order to get a minute fps advantage in competitive gaming, though.
report
I’m with you on this. Turn em off.
Originally, depth of field and motion blur were visual artifacts generated by our own imperfect visual processing gathering and processing systems (the eyes and the brain). Let’s not simulate these biologically-generated mistakes, please.
And don’t even get me started on lens flare in video games. *stabby stab stab stabby stab*
report
Motion blur I usually turn down, I like a little bit of it, just enough to take the jitter out of turning and fast moving objects, as even at 60fps it is noticeable. Sadly some games seem to go a bit overboard with it. A light sprinkling of blur is all you need.
Depth of field is the same, when it subtle and done right it is amazing, but sadly most games over use it.
Borderlands is the PRIME example (which I’d imagine you’d agree with given the screenshot) of a game that makes you feel like your character is so near sighted he probably couldn’t read.
Turning off DoF in Borderlands is almost like giving your avatar contacts, I feel deeply sorry for console gamers that they can’t turn it off.
Still, when done right it can add to the experience, unfortunately that is rare and depth of field is usually an on/off choice, not something you get with a slider.
report
We most certainly are in a period where these various screen effects are being used gratuitously, just like with bloom a generation ago, but I do enjoy their additions in some games. I think depth of field is done pretty well in Batman: Arkham Asylum, like when you silently take down somebody and you can see the oblivious other guards in the distance, slightly blurred. Motion blur is quite costly to performance, so I tend to have it off unless it makes very little effect on my framerate. So I don’t really place that much value on the effect, and consider it sacrificable. If sacrificable is a word.
report
Disable both, Most games blur out everything that is further than 10 metres and to keep this short, screw that. I wouldn’t mind if they blurred some ugly low poly building on the horizon, but most games aren’t that intelligent.
report
I turn off Depth of Field but I turn on Motion Blur.
Sometimes both can be annoying, but I find that Motion Blur especially helps in racing games, where it suddenly feels, like you are driving much faster.
report
Depth of field makes for great screenshots, but that isn’t a good enough reason to include them in a game. The effect isn’t realistic since you won’t always be focusing on the centre of the screen, or your weapon during a reload etc.
The only time I imagine it would be worthwhile including it would be if there was a camera that monitored where your eyes are currently focusing and process the depth of field accordingly (this technology already exists, but not everyone has a decent webcam etc).
report
DoF based on where you’re aiming is a bit problematic because you don’t always want to look where you’re aiming, although it is quite pretty. However for reloading, like in Stalker, I think it’s a good thing – not in the sense of being ‘helpful’, but by increasing immersion and realism. You’re not supposed to be able to look around and judge your next barrage – you’re busy reloading, so find some cover! It just makes things that little bit more tactical. Of course, given the ambitious-but-sloppy nature of combat in Stalker, it becomes kind of moot, but.. well, I like it in principle. I think it could work especially well in something like, say, Gears of War (I forget if those games have DoF or not).
I’m pretty ambivalent about motion blur; my rig isn’t great so I usually turn it off in the interests of frame-rate.
report
I don’t think there was DoF in Gears, although I may be wrong. That game did do great stuff with FOV, though, as when you “stuck” to cover the FOV would narrow slightly and zoom in. It was fairly subtle stuff, but great. It meant you had an instant visual reminder that you were in the cover mode rather than just standing near a wall. Then when you went into aiming mode it zoomed in even more. Maybe there was some blurring there, I don’t remember.
Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever turned off DoF, and I generally don’t bother with fiddling with motion blur settings unless its really inappropriate or annoying.
report
Both are good effects, but only if used properly. Motion blur shouldn’t really be noticable unless your character is actually moving really fast. Any blur while turning should feel natural, and actually make things look more realistic than if you were just spinning a polygonal world around.
Depth of field can look really nice as well, but can be horribly overdone in places. In static scenes, it’s a great way of drawing the eye to a certain piece of scenery, but in action, it’s best used only mildly. In a first-person game, it should be off on everything but the most distant scenery, and if you’re looking down the sights on a gun, it should only slighty fuzz anything you’re not looking at, providing a level of feedback that makes you feel like you’re really zeroing in on a target.
Crysis pretty much nailed both.
And as mentioned, motion blur actually makes low framerates look a lot better. Keep in mind that gamers often freak out over framerates around 30fps, but films are only 24fps, and nobody complains about them being jerky.
report
True, but also not quite true – film us usually projected in such a way that each frame is flashed 2 or 3 times which fools the brain into smoothing out the image for it (It’s also the reason video interlacing works).
There’s also the fact that film cinematographers know how to film at 24FPS – avoiding fast pans (moving the camera more than X degree’s per second based on focal length) because it will cause jitter just as you get in videogames or home movies at 24fps.
Also tricks like in the editing process adding blur filters to mask any fast camera movement, or selective blur that wasn’t possible during filming itself.
report
I personally just like it for the immersion effect. If you’re reloading a gun or whatnot, you’re going to need to focus on the gun.
Granted, I’ve never even really noticed that effect. Maybe I just saw it as pretty and filed it away as the way things should be. Or, perhaps, it’s mostly because I’m mainly a console gamer, and they often don’t have all of the options to turn off different effects like the PC does.
I could just be assuming things and the consoles don’t even normally have these effects. XD
Regardless, I’ve never even really noticed this is my video game career, and I’d like to think I’m a pretty big gamer (but, again, only on consoles for the most part).
report
I found turning off depth of field in on Borderlands helped reduce visual fatigue, which made those stupidly long play sessions that much easier on the eyes (of course, going to work the next day was another matter)
report
Glad this got some attention, I turn off both instantly. Also instantly turn off film grain, HDR, and bloom.
I also set shadows to low or medium aa to 2x af to 8x and max textures. To me its all about textures detail for immersion. Smooth 50-60fps and high nicely filtered textures is the best gaming experience IMO. Why so many people want LSD like special effects ill never understand.
report
Both seem a little pointless to me, if not incredibly irritating. I mean why add in something that our eyes should be doing automatically? Half the time it just looks messy as in Arma II where I found it a real pain in the arse.
report
Motion Blur doesn’t make any sense. I was working on a shooter, and the lead designer added Motion Blur, and asked us what we thought. I told him to go for a run outside and tell me how much his vision blurred while it happened – it’s unrealistic, and annoying. It adds nothing.
Depth of Field has a purpose, in that it focuses you on a specific area – but that isn’t how your eyes work, so it’s disorienting. I turn it off too.
I also turn of Bloom, which has always confused me. What does it DO for people, exactly? Make things harder to see? Any game that has it looks TERRIBLE.
report
I think that both Zeno Clash and Left 4 Dead 2 use these effect in a real good way
report
Chances are that half the people who categorically say no to these two effects don’t even notice them when they’re done well and with subtlety, as in Left 4 Dead.
report
I don’t think motion blur is a bad effect, if used tastefully and in limited amounts, such as limit it to when a character is really running. If motion blur is on all the time, it makes me feel nauseous, so I have to seek out the ability to turn it off real quick.
Depth of Field always goes off, right away, immediately. It’s migraine inducing, it makes me feel as though I’m totally going blind, and whilst cameras work like that, the human eye doesn’t. Depth of Field makes me feel like a camera-man, who’s got an ancient, crappy analogue video camera. The problem is that most games don’t have the draw distance of human sight, and at the edges of human vision, things do blur out. Bu something that’s almost right on top of you shouldn’t be blurry.
However, with depth of field in almost every game I’ve seen, the effect is on even things very close to the player, the effect is on things close to the player in a very heavy handed way, this leads to the short-sighted-camera-man-wot-has-crappy-equipment effect I spoke of earlier. If depth of field was restricted to only the furthest away things, and was very mild, then it would work.
So yes, I always turn those two off right away.
report
The blur in Clear Sky was clearly going some way toward simulating the attention you’d give toward reloading a gun IRL, so it was supposed to get in the way. Other DOF effects are similarly case specific – when looking through ironsights, for example, I much prefer a blurry sight, and I’m sure there are people who’d rather see everything as it was rendered. I suppose in some cases this depends on whether you’re looking for a functional or aesthetically pleasing experience. I’ve never been a fan of DOF in a players normal view, though, because you don’t really see it in real life.
As for motion blur, you wouldn’t turn it off in a CGI movie, right?
report
If a CGI movie had the amount of default motion blur that Grand Theft Auto III had, I would simply get up, leave the cinema, and possibly demand my money back on the grounds that I hadn’t expected the film to actively try to get me to throw up. :p
report
I happen to like the use of depth of field in Borderlands. It applies when you’re aiming your gun. And it is pretty useful for me. (I’m visually impaired too.)
I’m with Thirith here: If used well effects like these can enhance gameplay pretty much. Overused they tend to be annoying. We’ve seen it all with lens flare and bloom.
report
I leave them both on, if only for the prettiness. Also, TF2, HL2e2 and Portal did motion blur really well – it gave a great sense of speed and it’s nice to see things distort when you spin around. CoD4′s depth of field is ok, but a bit annoying when you’re lying in some grass and it focuses on the blade in front of you, rather than the gun-wielding baddie 75m away.
report
DoF – it depends. Don’t think it’s ever useful, but it can look pretty (even if it’s mostly implemented badly yet).
Motion Blur, as others have pointed out, does more than that. If it’s done well, like in Crysis (when a bit toned down) makes movement just look a lot smoother and more natural. I also loved how motion blur was applied not only to player/camera movement in Lost Planet, but also to quickly moving objects. It makes things literally pop out of the screen.
report
Depth of field and motion blur are done just fine by my own (and everyone else’s) eyes. I don’t need a game doing it a second time. It’s quite annoying and I always turn these things off. They make screenshots look good, yes, but whilst playing they are unnecessary.
report
Both are very game-dependant. For example the new Source engine games IMO do motion blur really well (looks especially good in TF2), and for example Crysis does DoF really well. So, if I think it looks crappy (like, for instance, in Mass Effect), I’ll turn it off, but otherwise leave it on.
report
Of the two I generally keep on depth of field and turn off motion blur if I notice it at all. (Normally I just leave it at default settings if it runs well the first time I paly the game. My computer is old and messing with the settings can lead to dramatic frame rate drops for me when newer games.)
report
Same as lens flares: only use it if it makes sense, not for the shake of it (See latest Star Trek film)
report
I enjoy them both purely for their prettiness. Sometimes they seem a little gratuitous, but I think they give games a more cinematic look, which I appreciate. As others have mentioned, motion blur can also help give the appearance of a smoother frame rate.
report
mmm.. maybe he should have gone driving on the highway at midnight. He could have seen some motion blur on the passing streetlamps.
report
We’re making videogames with visual effects that emulate cheap camcorders in the name of realism. Give it five years time and these games will look extremely tacky.
report
The only time I’ve thought the depth of field effects actually added to a game was World at War- part of the joy of the game was the immersion, and having the battle raging blurrily around me while I was trying to shoot a man in a face with my iron sighted gun made it that much more of an ‘experience’ (and for a game with about 400 different ways your vision could be blurred, I didn’t get sick of it). Motion blur never really works for me (in first person shooters, at least) with the notable exception of Mirror’s Edge, where it was so artificial that it didn’t matter.
report
I have yet to see a game that manages to do DoF the way a real lens does.
report
real people actually have this shit turned on? crazy. i think it looks fucking ugly.
report
I tend to turn those off as well, but there are exceptions. As others have said the Depth of Field felt pretty well done in Crysis and never annoyed me there, so I left it on, but I think that’s the only exception. The option to decide how much motion blur you wanted was a nice touch there as well, but it seemed to be either too much or not enough to be noticeable so I turned it off.
I don’t think either effect serves that much of a purpose: It looks nice in screenshots and videos, but when I’m actually playing I only notice them when they’re bothering me (like the Clear Sky example mentioned).
report
I like object based otion blur (like in crysis and GTA) but I turn off screen based m. blur and I hate deph of field.
I also hate bloom, and turn it off whenever I can.
report
What I really don’t like is games that add grain to the picture (I believe L4D2 does this) but at least most if not all those offer the option to turn it off.
report
I got sick of this kind of visual gimmickry a few years ago when bloom, HDR and related effects were all the rage. This really doesn’t seem any better.
report
Single player, sure.
Multiplayer, hell no.
report
Whenever possible in FPS games, god yes. I hate them with a passion, moreso motion blur. Fucking Left4Dead2 hasn’t got the option to turn it off without disabling other stuff too, which really annoys me.
Whats worse is being stuck with a console oriented FoV that hurts my eyes.
report
In clear sky, you’re reloading so your character is meant to be focusing on the gun instead of the barrage. When aiming in Crysis it’s meant to simulate tunnel vision. I think that these should be left on because they’re part of the gameplay.
Motion Blur’s primary focus seems to be to make the framerate seem slightly smoother while drawing in new objects during quick turns, but it’s also useful for simulating the disorienting effects of a quick spin round. The reason we don’t see motion blur while turning is because, well, we don’t actually “turn” in real life, we are able to use our inner ear and reflexes to just snap to the position we want to be in. Yet another leg up we have on FPS characters are moveable eyeballs.
Keep in mind that motion blur also applies to objects, and if you wave your open palm in front of your face you’ll see that object motion blur does have at least some grounding in reality.
report
“Keep in mind that motion blur also applies to objects, and if you wave your open palm in front of your face you’ll see that object motion blur does have at least some grounding in reality.”
Now, don’t you go using none of those fancy ‘facts’. Didn’t you read about the game developer above who doesn’t believe that motion blur exists in the real world?
report
Mostly no. Yes in Call Of Juarez, because using it is totally optional, and looks brilliant (I already play it like I’m in a western, the quick zoom effect is awesome)
report
Personally it comes down to a case by case basis. I will leave it on, see how the game utilizes it, and then turn it off if I don’t like it. If it is overused, off it goes.
report
I think they’re pretty much just visual spangle, but I like both motion blur and depth of field a lot. Not least because they look absolutely *gorgeous* on my pair of Radeon 4850s.
report
I like to play games in the way that the makes considered best. If the makers want motion blur and depth of feild make the game the prettiest then I’ll go with that because I want to experience the game as it was intended. I don’t wear tinted glasses in art galleries and I don’t turn down visual effects in games (except to get a decent framerate). I’m really not bothered if visual effects get in the way of playing the game. I did find on occation during Borderlands that when trying to snipe that guy way over there when the game had decided I wanted to focus on the rock in the middle distance that I was using for cover but it only annoyed me a little bit and not nearly enough to make me want to turn it off.
report
I usually go with whatever the game gives me for defaults, whether they’re on or off. I figure that if the game designers believe that my computer is capable of it, and they’d rather it be played with a certain feature set a certain way, I’ll leave it there. I’ll sometimes go through and other settings on (bump up the AA or AF), but I’ll pretty much never turn a specific feature off.
report
I have a feeling a lot of the people violently opposed to the very concept of these features are the same people who can’t play an online FPS without dropping texture detail levels to the lowest, installing neon-bright teamskins if possible, and jack the gamma up so that shadows cannot hide anything. You know the guys – the sort of people who consider 60fps a bare minimum.
The speed-freaks and the twitch-junkies, basically.
report
Like me. ;)
However, most of my mates would put depth of field off and they are not “speed-freaks and the twitch-junkies”. It’s just an annoyance to those that want to appreciate the visuals or the gameplay and not the shiny new effect.
report
I consider 100 FPS minimum and I use custom programs to tweak my gamma / contrast levels :P
So you’d be right
report
Actually, the more expensive camera, the more depth of field it can give you.
Try getting and depth of field out of your compact camera.
report
The ‘narrower’ the depth of field. not more, you can’t have more..
little digital cameras just have a very large depth of field everything is in focus.
report
Yeah, ‘more’ or ‘better’ DOF usually means blurrier backgrounds (or foregrounds, but that’s not as exciting). Don’t blame me, it’s not my fault.
report
Oh Jim. It is possible for things to exist without having to be useful.
report
I have always hated both and got rid at first opportunity.
report
singleplayer – turned on
multiplayer – turned off (those effects just turn you blind, on modern warfare i even turned off the music)
report
singleplayer – turned on
multiplayer – turned off (those effects just blind you, on modern warfare i even turned off the music)
report
I can see a point in DOF if it’s implemented nicely. You can guide the player’s eyes to a specific subject, etc. The thing is though that *it’s never implemented nicely. I always turn DOF off and get the added benefit of increased performance.
I’ve mostly liked motion blur though. It was essential in Crysis because it made low framerates appear more acceptable. Valve’s motion blur system makes everything seem much smoother and isn’t distracting at all. One game messed it up completely though – ARMA II. Excessive, ugly, distracting, pointless. And it wasn’t toggleable unless you set the effects settings to low. Awful.
report
Depth of field: Leave on. It looks pretty and doesn’t bother me enough to get in the way.
Motion blur: Gone instantly. Hate it. Particularly in driving games – yes, it makes it look like you’re going like the clappers, but it doesn’t half stop you from seeing what’s going on. I left it on in Burnout and it was pretty much unplayable for me.
report
Motion blur is always off. I can’t stand it, and it drops frame rates way too much for very little visible difference to me.
DoF…well, there’s never usually a toggle for it. But again, like motion blur, it doesn’t improve the visuals for me enough.
report
The problem with DOF is that it applies where the game designers *think* you are looking. In the case of STALKER, they assume the character (and you) are looking at the reloading gun for longer than just a few moments to ensure you’ve got the clip lined up (I understand people familiar with guns can not only reload by touch, but also DISMANTLE AND REASSEMBLE THEM with a blindfold on)… it’s a fallacy on their part, which could be remedied with a little bit of gaze-tracking hardware… and the blurring of the gun while you’re looking at the sights is probably fairly pleasant…
But, yes… mostly useless on a lot of things because of failures of designers’ assumptions.
report
motion blur is useful. without it you get strobing
depth of field can be used as a way for the developer to focus your attention on a certain object… like they do in movies
report
Remember when HDR first came out? Games that utilized it went way overboard when it came to HDR. Oblivion with HDR enabled became a fugly mess. Developers must have had cataracts and have a strange view of the world with how much bloom was being vomited all over us.
HDR has been toned down now, and they use it to make games look nice instead of shoving it in our faces.
Enter Motion Blur and Depth of Field. Right now developers are really excited about it and are using it everywhere they possibly can, making our games fugly. Valve’s implementation of motion blur is how other companies should do it.
So give it time, when they realize that they can use it as a subtle enhancement rather than a huge feature, it’ll become better.
report
I keep them both on, though I’ll happily turn DoF off in a multiplayer game if I end up looking at the silhouette of mountainous terrain too much…
report
Visual effects peaked with lens flare
report
A bit of motion blur is fine, but too much is just a no no. I though pretty much hate depth of field in any form.
report
I always shut off Depth of Field. In games like Crysis I’ll leave motion blur on (Left 4 Dead as well) since it’s minor enough that it adds ambiance without detracting from the experience.
report
I think the takeaway here is that since everyone has a different opinion on these, it’s important that developers leave in a switch to turn these features on and off independently of other features (they shouldn’t be lumped into some overall “Shader Quality” level). This also goes for film grain, the effect that bothers me the most, particularly in games that have no plausible rationale for including it, like Mass Effect (where it actively detracts).
Anyway, my preference is generally Motion Blur off, DoF on. Motion blur tends to make games look sluggish and laggy to my eye, although to be honest I never noticed TF2 even had motion blur (although I did notice it in L4D for some reason). I like the DoF in clear sky because it looks cool, and I usually duck behind cover for the reload anyway.
report
Counterpoint: I’m still (and again) playing Mass Effect and disabling the Film Grain makes it look like any other shiny bland UE3 game – just in blue this time. It’s essential to my enjoyment of the game that I turn it on. Also well done is the Depth of Field. BioWare know how to use it well in their dialogue and cutscenes without overdoing it during the actual game. Same with Dragon Age: Origins. Also quite well done is The Witcher.
Motion Blur is mostly a case-by-case thing with me. Source Engine and UE3 are usually pretty good at it. I’m not an FPS guy so I don’t have many examples, but some games… horrible implementation. I think GTA IV?
report
I just rub vaseline on my monitor. Its just the same as depth of field and i achieve motion blur my drinking heavily before i play.
report
‘Depth of Field’ was ok when it actually achieved that, but nowadays it just seems to mean “Blur everything that’s far away”. Take Borderlands for example, if I turn Depth of Field on and aim my scope at something far away, it still remains blurred – that isn’t correct use of ‘Depth of Field’; wherever my character is looking should be in focus, regardless of distance.
I’m guessing it’s actually less demanding to render a low-res texture in the distance and blur it, than it is to render everything on screen in hi-res. This is probably why console games in particular have taken to using such effects, rather than purely for aesthetic reasons.
Oh, and if you’re playing Borderlands on an ATI card, it’s well worth forcing AA through the CCC (you also need to rename the the borderlands exe to UT3.exe apparently) – it makes a massive difference to how good the game looks.
report
crysis warhead had the loveliest motion blur i’ve ever seen.
i usually turn DoF off for all the reasons already mentioned, and yet in borderlands, there are some very nice colour filters / shaders thrown in with the DoF filter.
i’ve learned to live with the awful “petroleum jelly on my camera lens” ironsights aiming in the game because i really like the colour filters.
report
I do think it can be very pretty (the DoF in BL is +drool) but as has been mentioned it just doesn’t work well for non-cutscenes – you’re supposed to be in control but you can’t even see what you want to. Ugh. Utterly annoying. But… it is pretty.
report
Just realised I didn’t answer the question:
DoF: I do give it a chance with each new game that uses it, but there have been none so far that have made me want to keep it on.
Motion Blur: Depends what it’s like. Usually off too. It can be slightly annoying, but FPS loss/gain is also considered here. L4D has great motion blur around the edges of the screen when going fast as a hunter, but it’s so well done that it’s barely noticeable as motion blur, and you just think my god I’m going FAST.
report
I love those effects and they look pretty.
report
Turn both off
report
I hate Depth of field, always turn it off. If they dont want you to see anything they might as well turn off the monitor. Motion bur depends on the game, sometimes off, sometimes on.
report
It depends entirely on whether it’s done well or not. As others have pointed out, Valve’s motion blur is so subtle you can barely notice it, but it makes an almost subconscious difference to the feel of the game, such that when you play the original HL2 without it everything feels a bit staccato.
I’ve seen games in which motion blur is used very effectively – Flower on the PS3, for example. And obviously in cutscenes (Witcher, Mass Effect, Dragon Age etc etc) it can work really nicely. Even in those cases, though, it’s still used primarily for prettiness – and notably in most of those examples it’s only used during cutscenes.
In fact, a better example instead of Flower might be Flow, partially because it’s also available on PC, but mainly because it uses depth of field as a key gameplay function. ie, the next and previous levels are visible on the periphery, indistinct due to the narrow depth of field. It teases you, or scares you, about what’s coming up next, without ever interfering with the core gameplay of the current level, which remains in crisp focus.
I also wonder whether depth of field works better/worse depending on the viewpoint. Does it work better in 3rd person games, for example, in which the viewpoint is very much ‘a camera’, rather than in 1st person games in which the viewpoint is supposed to be ‘your eyes’. Much like the way in the 90s FPS developers insisted on putting tons of lens flares into games, somehow not realising that human eyes pick up very, very little lens flare.
report
It depends on the game, every one is different. It’s a nice extra layer of prettiness, but its never essential. If I want a frame rate boost, motion blur, depth of field and AA are the first things I sacrifice (usually in that order).
There are occasions when i will turn off something like depth of field because it gets in the way, but in most cases it doesn’t. The most recent example I can think are the depth of field effects in Empire:Total War. It may have been nice (though barely noticable) during the real time battles, but the same blur also carried onto the campaign map; rendering the edges of the map pointlessly and confusingly blurred.
Have those effects ever added to the gameplay experience ? Not really, but then neither does AA or any other graphical polish.
report
Motion blur could be useful for noticing fast-moving objects that otherwise appear too briefly to be seen. It’s realistic, so even if it’s making it harder to see things at least it’s because they’re realisitcally hard to see.
Depth-of-field, however… not so great. Even if it’s implemented “properly” so that anything under the crosshair is focused, it can still cause blindness because there are many situations where one would want to aim somewhere and look somewhere else. It’s not realistic but in real life I can easily choose what to focus on (and where to aim) I’d say it’s only acceptable in cutscenes when the game takes control of the player’s view.
That being said, I think that a very interesting game design would be an FPS with a myopic player.
report
I love it. I never turn it off.
report
Both work well when they are properly implemented, as opposed to some developer finding a pair of sliders in the toolkit and winding them to maximum. So far as DoF goes, I sometimes turn in off if it doesn’t work properly. When my character looks at something, it’s expected to be in focus!
DoF in cutscenes and screenshots is lovely, but it often doesn’t work too well in actual gameplay.
Another example of developers turning the dial to 11: Grain filter in Mass Effect. I really liked the ‘filmic’ effect, actually, but it could’ve done with being only half as much instead of just LOOK GRAAAAIN HERE. I had to turn it off a lot of the time, particularly in darker areas.
Gently does it, developers! The goal is to subtly enhance the experience, not “well we said we’d put this stuff in it, so we’d better make it really bloody obvious”.
report
I think with motion blur and depth of field devs just need to apply it in a less copius manner. It’s not disimilar to the massive overuse of bloom in some games, where certain devs get the idea that more bloom = better graphics.
Valve’s motion blur is brilliant, for instance. And Depth of Field can play a role in open world games – provided it’s not really fierce it’s a great way to disguise the less detailed distant landscape and the transition between the two.
report
I love and adore both DoF and motion blur, mostly because I find that it more fully integrates me with whatever game I happen to be playing. In some games, DoF can be distracting, shifting focus away from where I’d normally place it, but in others it mirrors my normal reactions and directs attention to exactly where the game wants it to be. Motion blur, I think, just looks cool and again more fully ties me into the experience.
As with most features, I will gladly sacrifice optimal levels of playing performance to be more fully immersed – I treasure immersiveness above most other game qualities, and find the inclusion of these two effects to be my favorite part of having a reasonably powerful machine.
report
DOF depends entirely on the game’s implementation. Most are terrible. Case in recent point is Risen: the DOF is passable while running around the world but absolutely asinine in dialogue scenes, when the camera will shift 2 feet in one direction and throw everything out of focus except someone’s hat. I quite like the DOF in Dragon Age cutscenes/dialogue, however. It’s an effect best used in moderation and particularly in dramatic situations, like dialogues, rather than in run-of-the-mill gameplay.
Motion blur is fine as long as I never, ever notice it.
report
As long as they don’t interfere with the gameplay, and assuming my computer can run the game with them enabled, I like them. Eye candy is nice, and they’re a hell of a lot more interesting than lens flare or bloom.
If they get annoying, I disable them, but in general, I say bring on the motion blur! As long as it’s done properly and doesn’t get in my way.
report
I turn it off for performance reasons. That and my eyesight is bad enough without the computer simulating it being worse.
report
DOF:Off. My computer is old and decrepit, in addition to the effect being plain ol’ distracting
Motion Blur:Depends. Some games do it well, and then there’s ArmA 2…
report
I wondered why it was extremely distracting to play, and it could well be the motion blur. I’m going to investigate nobbling that.
report
I don’t really notice it to be honest, so I guess I leave it on. But I’m one of those people who thinks that 20fps is the minimum to play an fps at, not 60/100fps.
report
A lot of games can’t seem to get the balance of motion blur right. When used successfully (IE subtly) it can make a dramatic change into making things look extremely realistic – driving games benefit hugely from it, for example.
But when it’s piled on too thickly, so that even the slightest movement causes mass blur, it’s nothing more than the devs ticking a ‘NEW SHINIES INCLUDED’ box.
report
It also makes you want to vom!
report
In competitive m-player I definitely turn it off (cod4 for ex.) but in Borderlands I left it on because I like the effect. The effect to me is fun and cool…. but in a competitive setting I think it hinders you.
report
oh contraire, i whack them up, there’s nothing prettier than varible amount of bluriness, depth of fields the new lens flare!
report
I usually stick to whatever is default.
A reduced depth of field when using iron sights is a good way to indicate your attention is on the sights and to restrict your peripheral vision. I can see that as a gameplay decision.
I can see a reason for doing that in Stalker when he reloads as perhaps they wanted a character who has to apply his full attention to reloading these new weapons he finds, and add extra tension to reloading. But equally I can see why people may want to turn that off.
In terms of just plain distance blur, I think it should be used to indicate haze or atmospheric affects at a distance, but to indicate the player not focussing at a distance it is annoying. How can the game possibly determine that you are looking at the foreground and not staring into the distance? Without a 3D display, you have no choice but to leave everything in focus.
Once displays go 3D, distance blurring becomes redundant.
report
Always on in singleplayer, love it! When I’m playing multiplayer, though, I’m one of the guys who turns everything to low. Borderlands is an exception, because the multiplayer is (1) Really not difficult, even through playthrough 2, and (2) Co-op, so it’s less important to maximize shots, and more about the experience.
report
I disable it, since It feel to me too untrusive. On borderlands is still on,mostly because lazyness, and the style of the game. On other news… It seems the DX9 version of DOF is really poor compared to the DX10 version. I found games better with DOF off.
report
I almost never turn off either. In fact, I’ll go out of my way to turn them on if they’re off by default!
Well, most of the time. Sometimes, depth of field makes things a tad hard to see.
report
Motion blur usually gets the axe. And I customized the weird blurry/dirty/nasty shaders in Rainbow SIx Vegas so I could frickin’ see.
I tried turning off Depth of Field in Borderlands on about my fourth playthrough, and it seemed totally wrong, so it went back on.
report
Oh god, I remember having to edit that ini file too.. made the game look much less ugly as well.
report
If it’s an option I enable them. The games should be played “the way it’s meant to be played”, so to speak. And the highest possible graphic settings with all those extra effects usual add a little extra to the gameplay and enjoyment.
report
I only turn off DoF, and only then if it’s distracting. Motion blur can make gameplay seem smoother and makes eye movement feel more natural. Unless it kills my framerate, I leave it on.
report
I haven’t played very many that used either but Clear Sky is the only one whose depth of field I didn’t notice because it’s so good. Mostly it’s screamingly obvious and terribly ugly as well (this is true of Crysis, for instance)
Motion blur is a bit trickier. Mostly it hurts the framerate and makes the game feel squishier so that’s not good. Also motion blur in the movies still isn’t that great, so the standard of games’ is a few steps down anyway. It’s generally easier to do without it.
report
Before I got a wide screen monitor, I played Assassin’s Creed with a hack that adjusted the game to fit a 4:3 monitor. It worked great except it didn’t affect the DoF, so whenever there was one of those mini cut-scenes (like whenever you eavesdropped on someone), instead of seeing the main character in focus and everything else blurred, it looked like you were watching the scene through a sheet of Vaseline with a hole cut out of it in the shape of the main character but not the same size as nor centered on him.
report
I turn off DOF most of the time. It’s nice on gunsights, but the rest of the time it’s just odd. I don’t actually mind the Stalker reloading thing too much as it makes sense that you’d be looking at your weapon, however what I HATE is when the background, hills and such like, are all blurry!!!
I mean WTF, do I need glasses or something?!? It’s just like when bloom was first introduced, 90% of the time it was waayyy over the top, like having heavy Vaseline smeared all over the screen.
When used correctly bloom, motion blur and depth of field are great effects. DOF seems to be the most abused recently.
report
Depth of Field is my single most valued graphics innovation of the last few years. I went so far as to install a fake version via mod in Oblivion a few months back. To me, more than anything else, it really makes the game feel real. But then, I have very poor eyesight at range, so severe distance blur makes things look like they do normally to me. I guess it could be more that 20/20 vision is unrealistic for me; I dunno.
Motion blur depends entirely on how its handled. Usually I find it, if not annoying, not really necessary or helpful to the experience.
report
Interesting that you say that man. That’s exactly why I find it so odd, it’s like I need glasses in the game!!
report
Depends on the game I think. Motion blur in Team Fortress 2 is good, while in Borderlands the motion blur makes my eyes hurt and I turned it off after about 20 seconds. So it can be done well and it can be done gut churningly bad.
Depth of Field I have trouble turning off. It always seems vaguely like cheating.
report
In cinematic scenes or games DOF can work better. If any of you play the latest Tales Monkey Island adventures you could see how they used it cleverly to point the view of the player in what they want you to focus your attention.
Motion Blur can be OK if used with moderation, just like HDR.
report
I hate motion blur as much as Transformers movies… stupid, stupid, stupid…
But DOF is the best effect in games ever. (Maybe not in racing games) Only thing that irritates me is that cross hair defines the distance of perfect view… It should be maked over in a different way…
report
The first time I really noticed dof effects was in the Witcher. Some of you out there may recall: the original release was bugged with ATI drivers, so the depth of field looked like absolute shit (and broke AA). Yeah, that got turned off pretty quickly. And ME’s grain filter. Damn, that was hideous.
I wouldn’t say it’s quite as bad as lens flares back in the ’00-’02 days, though why most games would ever want lens flares and motion blurs and depth of field in the first place is a damn good question, since these things are artifacts of cameras and not eyes. Well, maybe if you’re playing first person something with a character who sees through cameras/lenses that don’t function the way eyes do…
Depth of field is okay in cutscenes, ’cause cutscenes are movies and by this point we’re so used to seeing it in movies that it’s okay. Thing is, it’s not distracting because we’re looking where someone thinks we should be. In free gameplay, you can look at anything, anywhere, so non-adjusting blurs are ridiculously immersion-breaking and non-helpful, and even if they do adjust it’s freakin hard to tell what a player might be ‘looking’ at at any given instant, when you can spin the in-game camera any which way and be focusing on any part of the monitor/screen to boot.
report
One thing I didn’t mention was that some blur does help hide pixellation, distortion, corruption, and all those nasty things that show up when games try to render distant objects. So that much is okay, I guess.
report
I thought ME’s grain filter made it look more organic than the sharp, non-processed standard images.
report
No thanks and no thanks
report
Excellent point regarding depth of field there MWoody.
I always turn it off as I find it looks unrealistic to me, co-incidentally I’m fortunate enough to have very good eyesight and what irks me about depth of field is that I can perceive everything in my field of vision in focus. Thank you for suggesting an explanation for my dislike of it which I doubt I would have come up with by myself.
As to motion blur:
Used properly it enhances the realism of fast moving (traversing a significant portion of your FOV in the time it takes to perceive) or spinning things such as wheel of vehicles in motion, propellers, some projectiles (without wanting to get into matrix style bullet time bullet path silliness), etc.
I think it also has use as a visual cue relating to the speed that you are travelling at in a game. The example I have of this is the blurring of your peripheral vision in Mirror’s Edge as you approach top speed which is important for timing your interactions with obstacles in your path.
report
I like both if they are done well. I keep them both on in Borderlands and Crysis and turned them off in Stalker CS because they were done badly.
Implementation is everything and I would always at least try the game with them on before turning them off :)
Gobion
report
When implemented well I think both are fantastic. I have the exact opposite feelings regarding the STALKER example you give where the environment is blurred as you focus on your reload; surely this is an extra level of realism in an often harshly realistic game. You say it prevents you from lining up your next shot, but in my experience with STALKER if you’re reloading in the line of sight of the enemy you won’t last long anyway.
report
Outcast, a game from 1999, used motion blur. And very good. One of the best I have seen.
report
I hate depth of field. to death. Its not gamey, its idiotic and ugly. Motion blur can work very well (source games) if its doen right.
report
You know what’d be a cool use of depth of field?
A military shooter, like Crysis or Modern Warfare. There’d be a sniper mission where you have to engage enemies at very long range to provide support for an AI-controlled assault team in a simulated co-op situation a’la Call of Duty. So for this mission, you get a sniper rifle with a really, really long range, but its scope has to be adjusted for range.
As long as you’re zoomed in, the cycle weapon controls (usually mouse wheel) are commandeered for clicking your sights up or down, and this will manifest (perhaps not realistically but, I think, elegantly) as depth of field effects: if your sights are set for 500 m and you aim at a target 800 m away, your view will be blurry. You should still be allowed to fire despite the blurry view, but you’d have to manually compensate by placing your crosshairs above your target.
That’s the best use of depth of field I can think of. I generally like the way most shooters use DOF though, to blur everything except what you’re aiming at when you use iron sights or scopes – it creates a pretty good sense of presence, even though it makes little authentic sense (your eyes focus automatically in most situations, and faster than you can notice, so it’s more authentic to just keep everything in focus and let you choose your focus by which part of the monitor you look at).
STALKER’s implementation was terrible though.
report
The way theses effects have been implemented proves that 90 percent of game developers have only seen outside their basement through cheap camcorders.
I turn them off as soon as I notice them. If I don’t notice them, I leave them on.
report
As long as there’s an option to leave it on or turn it off I don’t see the problem at all.
report
Good example of bad use of effects: Just tried the Op. Flashpoint DR demo. It’s bloody sepia! I mean, they just don’t know when to stop. Colour filters can be great, but this is just silly. Pretty poor art direction all round.
Can’t say I’m too fussed though in this case, looks from my 5 mins of play every bit an average console game, giant menu text, tiny FoV. Geezzzz I just don’t get it… if only ArmA didn’t have such mouse lag. A ‘proper’ PC game…
report
I usually keep depth of field but always disable motion blur if possible. If it’s not in the game settings, I try to google for a cfg file or a hack to disable it.
Weird to read so many different opinions, just goes to show things like this should always be in the settings for the player to enable or disable. Which of course is happening less and less on PC because of consoles.
report
I turn all these spangly things off.
They are just a waste of memory and processing power.
report
Unless very badly coded, they use one extra texture and all the processing is done on your GPU.
report
I liked STALKER’s version of depth of field. Try pretending you’re reloading a pistol whilst watching your hands; you’ll notice everything but your hands are out of focus.
report
The problem is that when you’re doing something with your hands, you can easily glance up at what’s going on around you without having to pause what you’re doing – even if you’re performing a fairly complex operation, make your glances brief enough and your basic motor functions will just keep your hands going while you check your surroundings. You will never glance up only to find that your view is blurry and out of focus until you finish what you’re doing with your hands.
report
Jonas: right on the money.
I think thats the major problem with it. Without these filters, objects on screen you aren´t focusing on, are naturally a bit out of focus anyway as your retinas are focussing on something else- so its a bit like double blurring, and blurring objects that you are infact staring directly at- which is no good
report
It’s one of those things like bloom which can add to a game (motion blur moreso than dof) but is more often than not overdone when it is done. You should not ‘notice’ the effect unless you’re looking for it.
DoF i do have more beef with because it’s impossible to simulate correctly because the game doesn’t know where your eyes would be focusing. DoF can be used well in the case of sniper scopes, stun effects, cutscenes and dense fog.
report
I always figured motion blur was something for console toys to compensate for most people’s shit TVs.
People spend quite a few pennies to buy TFT monitors with low response rates, why would you a turn a feature on that in essence emulates ghosting?
report
The problem is that I can’t change the focus myself – when my eyes move, the blurr is still there, MY EYES ARE NOT THE MOUSE is more obvious than ever with motion blur .
report
I’d definitely rate DOF higher than motion blur, but it’s a very subjective thing and depends a lot on the implementation. Motion blur looks great in TF2 but can get downright silly in Red Faction Guerrilla when you stomp around smashing buildings in a walker and you see nothing but orange and steel grey blur.
I was actually amazed at how much better the DOF effects made MW1 look when I was playing it earlier this week, especially the grassy-crawly scenes in Chernobyl.
Jickelsen
report
can be good if used realistically… but about “reloading the gun put everything except the gun out of focus” : I’d refuse to play a stupid guy not capable of reloading his gun without looking at it…
report
i always disable both if i can, they make me squint at the screen rather than seeing what i am doing.
bloody annoying.
report
I like when DOF is used to obscure the detail of distant terrain but beyond that (and outside of cinematics) I don’t think it’s a worthwhile effect. And even in the terrain example it’s really just simulating atmospheric haze.
report
I use depth of field, motion blur, and film grain whenever possible, unless it makes me sick.
report
I usually like DOF so long as it’s done well, which it usually is. It’s one of the first effects I’ll try turning off if I feel like I need more performance, though. Motion blur… depends on how heavy it is. I leave it on in Valve games, it’s pretty minimal and feels a bit more immersive to me. I shut it right off in UE3 games though, as every one I’ve played overdoes the motion blur to a hideous extent.
report
I axed the DoF, but largely for gameplay reasons; it seemed like I couldn’t see shit, and this was a huge penalty as a Soldier with very little in the way of scoped weaponry. It’s hard to effectively engage enemies when they’re all fuzzy blobs hiding behind other fuzzy blobs, just because you’re looking around constantly. That’s not to say it’s a bad implementation though, it’s just one I think is probably a bit overdone on the blurriness. Might use it if it was less fuzzy, maybe.
I am actually short-sighted, to the point where I cannot see very far at all without glasses… but with them on, things are very sharp and clear. I guess seeing things as blurry when I’m used to seeing them clearly was a bit odd to me, if we want non-gameplay reasons.
report
Depends on the game. Everyone’s peripheral vision is shit. The problem with most DoF & blur effects that strive for REALISM is they’re too strong and simplistic (i.e. they’re much harsher than what we actually see). If you’re doing extreme effects for stylistic reasons it can work. Cinematic filters and that kinda stuff are useful, too (Day of Defeat’s filters look genuinely good to my eyes). Also, consider that the relatively small screen you’re looking at isn’t simulating an entire field of vision (100 degrees out). It’s not fisheyed; it’s just a flat representation. But again, that’s not how we actually see. It’s just a little tunnel into the world, like you’re holding your hands up to either side of your face, obscuring your peripherals. A full-field VR helmet would address these sorts of issues better.
The biggest problem I have with current implementations is something people already hit on — you can’t adjust the intensity of the effects. If there were a little screen to tinker with, where I could adjust the degree to which certain areas of screen got a bit fuzzy while I was futzing with gear or whatever, I’d be all over that shit. As it is, though, you’re usually forced to choose between HOLY HELL I JUST PUT GRANNY’S READING SPECS ON or no effects at all. Which isn’t much of a choice tbh.
report
Hate both. It looks good in videos and that’s pretty much it.
Depth of field depends. I actually kind of like it in Crysis and a few other games where it’s done well, but I always turn it off for MP. Motion blur is alright I guess but you lose clarity and because I’m a rather twitchy FPS player it’s just way too distracting.
report
I like to have some control over how quickly things get blurred, for Motion blur and Depth of Field effects. Like in Crysis, which had too much motion blur for me, by default, but allowed you to lower it to a level you’re comfortable with.
As long as it does not prevent me from doing what I have to do, they help me immerse in the game.
report
When is depth of field and motion blur ever useful?
When are non-transparent walls ever useful (in non-stealthy games)?
When is having to reload your weapon ever useful?
When is being blinded by looking into the sun ever useful?
Its not there to be useful, its there to be realistic, to make the experience more immersive. Easy as that.
report
I believe that in this context, by “useful” Jim meant “contributes to the gameplay”, rather than just being eye-candy. You can make the case that DOF and motion blur are used deliberately to obfuscate visual information in cases where it makes the game more interesting, but I’m not sure I’d agree with you that this is the case. I think it COULD be used that way, but I can’t think of an example where it has been.
As Starky points out, it’s a pretty odd definition of realism: it makes the game look more like a camera would see things, less like your actual eye would.
report
But its neither realistic or immersive as has been said several times in this thread already. The problem is that the game equates your mouse movements to your eye movements but those are not the same. Anything that your eyes are looking at should be in focus and since the game cannot see where your eyes are looking (without eye tracking) it also can not know what it can blur.
report
Except depth of field is about as realistic as me shooting fireballs across the Atlantic from my arse. And motion blur is used so heavily and badly in most titles that objects don’t look as if they are blurring due to motion but warping through time and space.
It’s a good idea badly implemented 90% of the time and that is the point.
Less is more, subtle is the name of the game.
report
Lens flares and depth of field are both artifacts of film and I strongly believe games shouldn’t be aping film as they find their own place as an art form.
If the game is showing a view through a camera, eg. Afrika, then these effects have a place, and can usefully help the player realise they’re looking through a lens. But in most games these effects are used to provide a cinematic flavour which not only doesn’t quite fit how games work, but hinders the medium’s growth.
Motion blur is different as it’s a real effect you can see with your eyes. But it’s always overdone in games as it lasts for too many frames, I remember playing GTA3 on PC first time and feeling like I was stuck in an 80s pop video. Motion blur used well is a great way to give an impression of speed.
report
I turned it off in Borderlands primarily because the enemies at the fringe of the blur kept popping in and out of focus – very immersion breaking and annoying.
report
I use it, and am grateful for it, in Borderlands, because it helps me make sure I have a non-scoped gun on-target at distance. Of course, you kids with perfect eyesight may not need it, but I love it!
Motion blur, I don’t turn on in order to keep this old rig at a decent FPS.
report
Right on the money there, that’s what I was going to say as well. It does help make sure you’re aiming right. The “popping in and out of DoF” effect is jarring, but again it’s actually helpful when aiming without a scope.
As for everyone saying that it adds realism, uhm, I don’t think it really does. Human eyes cause this DoF effect only at extreme ratios; say focusing on a fly sitting on the tip of your nose and suddenly seeing the Eiffel tower way off in the distance become blurry. If I looked at a Skag 10m away from me, the other Skag 12m away from me wouldn’t suddenly turn into a puddle of blur. But that’s okay! Like I said, the feature is useful.
Motion Blur is just shiny. I’ve never found it annoying and I play TF2 about as well with MB on or off, so I dunno about that one.
report
I usually keep all the effects on unless they start affecting the framerate or are too overdone (Red Faction Guerrilla implemented motion blur terribly).
In Borderlands I felt the DoF and motion blur were far less obtrusive than the stupid pop-up windows that appeared on top of every item and that could easily obscure your entire field of view in the middle of a firefight. Granted said effects occasionally prevent me from having a perfectly clear view of my surroundings, but the same could be said of dynamic shadows and bloom and as far as I’m concerned the eye candy more than makes up for these minor annoyances.
report
Loathe the effects unless subtle.
The motion blur in the Burnout series adds an exceptional touch.
Sadly, like bloody BLOOM and HDR it’s being massively overused these days to the point of idiocy.
report
Depth of Field blurring works well in cinematics or cutscenes, though the DoF in Dragon Age is hideous!
report
I always turn off both; I especially dislike the depth of field… my eyes already blur what I am not looking directly at, why do I want it to blur what my character is not looking directly at? It only hinders my performance.
report
FUEL’s got to be the worst offender I’ve seen for overprocessing the image so hard that you can’t actually play the game while moving. Which is kind of a killer for a racer.
Depth of Field is idiotic because the technology just isn’t deployed to actually sync it to what you’re looking at, and probably never will be if a million failed “just wear these stupid spectacle-mounted gizmos and calibrate your screen first” attempts are to be believed. Besides, that still sucks if people are spectating. And what are data projectors for, if not communal Portal?
report
The depth of field/motion blur is really most noticable for me in Crysis and ARMA II, two games I have played (and am playing) the HELL out of. While it does really just end up looking pretty, it’s still REALLY pretty. It’s practically astonishing just how far Depth of Field and Motion Blur can go towards making a game look seriously photorealistic – ARMA II looks fantastic mainly because of the post-processing effects, and without the DoF/MB, in all honesty it would kind of look like crap.
And so I can say with conviction that I definitely prefer Depth of Field and Motion Blur to the absence of those effects.
report
Thats exactly the problem. Its photorealistic instead of realistic, it is the world as viewed by a static lens and that is not how the mind interprets the data coming from your eyes.
report
Up until about a year or so ago, I was playing TF2 on a totally shite system with a dying, ancient Sony CRT Beast of a monitor.
I then upgraded and happened across an old LCD my dad had laying around to replace the block of dark matter (seriously the thing was so f’n heavy) I was using as a monitor.
I turned all the effects on in TF2 to finally see the game how it’s supposed to look and was like “WHAT THE FRAKKIN HELL HOW CAN ANY1 PLAY WITH ALL THIS MOTION BLUR?!?”
Then I realized that the LCD monitor was 5 years old and was adding it’s own blur to the process, basically multiplying the blur into madness.
So basically, what I’m saying it every1 should use crappy old LCD screens if they want motion blur on in their games and save some processing power :)
report
I think when implemented correctly, DOF can be quite effective at increasing immersion.
Assuming the in game character has ever reloaded a gun before in their life, they would be able to do so without needing to look at the weapon, meaning the weapon would go out of focus rather than the scenery, as the character’s attention would be focused on keeping an eye out for hostiles.
So Clear Sky is an example of DOF implemented incorrectly, as the view focuses on the gun.
report
It’s all down to implementation. Despite what some people say here, depth of field is not a camera artefact because your eyes cannot focus at all distances. Hold your hand in front of your face and tell me the wall in the background is in focus – it’s not. But games are artificial because you can look at the wall despite the cursor being focused on your hands – your eyes don’t work that way. When they invent software to track where you’re looking on the monitor screen, then it will come into its own. But complaining that depth of field isn’t realistic makes as much sense as saying the current situation where everything is in sharp focus is also realistic.
Anyway, like lens flare, depth of field hasn’t come of age yet. You’ll notice most games these days deal with looking at the sun in a far more subtle and realistic manner than they used to. Give depth of field time – developers will get bored of it and make it more subtle over time.
report
DoF is nice if implemented correctly. Motion blur is okay, but I eventually turn it off for a while; it affects my aiming in games like TF2.
report
Personally I’m very against them. Both of them hinder your viewing, and when trying to frag lots of people online, I find it really distracting and annoying. The first thing I do when I get a new game is jump into the options and change the resolution, so DoF normally goes before I’ve even played anything yet. Motion blur I’m not so much against, but I do turn it off normally, if only to save some fps. One of my housemates would disagree with me, saying it’s much more realistic and looks much nicer. Having said that, he doesn’t play many fps games online…
report
Post-processing effects are like stagehands: at their best when you DON’T notice them. They’re supposed to compliment the scene. They should not define the scene, nor should they take over the scene. I strongly dislike motion blur, moreso in FPS games than anywhere else. DOF is great when used well, but it is very rarely ever used well.
The effect that is really starting to get on my nerves (and Borderlands is a great example) is the shift in FOV when running. Last I checked–hang on, I’ll be right back…….yeah, when I run in the real world, my vision does not distort. Whose idea was it to implement this stupid effect? It’s terrible. It looks stupid, it is distracting, it adds nothing of value to the game. I miss the appeal completely. Fortunately some simple .ini editing can work around this in Borderlands.
report
Motion blur is critical for me. Without it games seem jittery, even at 60fps. it can be done badly but i haven’t seen a single game that was ruined by it. DoF on the other hand is fiddly for me, as a photographer I’m sensitive to this kind of stuff. the only good dof effect i’ve seen was in crysis. with cod4 being the worst. developers need to understandthat dof is distance depandant; it doesn’t mean just blur the top and bottom of the screen.
report
Depth of field and motion blur are stupid as hell. Both these effects occur because our eyes have to focus on something but it is our eyes that focus, not the characters in the games eyes.
report
You know what would be awesome? A 2-D sidescroller with depth of field. Either with both sides of the screen falling into blurry obscurity, or just the whole thing being blurry.
report
That’s precisely what I’m working on at the moment. Take a look at the link in my name. Side-scroller with blur effects, double vision, etc. Still in early development, though.
I far prefer to have visual effects blocking out what I see in single-player games if they are used to indicate some effect taking hold on the player character, not because of the prettiness (although that doesn’t hurt), but due to the immersion. It makes the character more real, and their hardship (from a nearby grenade explosion, for example) a bit more real.
However, I always thought it was hilarious back in the day when playing multi-player games that the folks with better graphics cards fared worse at the game because they had extra voluminous fog/smoke/fire in their way, and more recently depth of field and hdr. The cheaper cards (or the smart people who turned off all the effects) had an edge over the others.
Although it’s not quite the same thing, I remember a bunch of us getting smacked down bad in Counterstrike (not the source version) because the guy had a really slow computer/gfx card so everything ran in slow mo on his system, and made it easier to shoot us all (I’d put it down to poor network code save that CS was made for networks, but this was one of the few instances their code failed to cater for).
report
I like the DOF in borderlands as it shifts when your “iron sighing” down a gun, and as in real life when your concetrating everything on one object you dont pay as much attention to the other things.
i think the DOF is too narrow (the distance vales from camera which register in focus are too close together) a subtler use would make the effect sit better. as with all sfx if you notice it, its done badly
report
Can’t wait for eyetracking to control dof THE FUTURE THE FUTURE
report
I love depth of field effects. Absolutely love ‘em, and I lack the patience for the argument that it’s an unnecessary effect. Unlike, say, bloom, which served no practical mechanic unless the game has a “Oh dear the sun’s in my eyes – who’s that waving at me, is that you Simon?” feature, depth of field is a great way to draw attention to elements in the foreground and the background. It also helps to subvert the uncanny feeling that you’re playing a godjaAmmed videogame because your eyes are apparently so perfect that you can focus on everything at once simoultaneously.
Assassin’s Creed did this well, for missions where you’re tailing people. The rest of the world just blurs away and it helps you stay utterly focussed on your objective.
report
Your eyes arent good enough to focus everywhere at once in a videogame either. Its just that your eyes move, giving the impression of focus everywhere.
DOF is not realistic.
report
Instead of being an illustration of cheapness, motion blur is a very valid effect when used adequately. Eyes will perceive fluid motion at 23 frames per second however our eyes can perceive motion quite a little faster than 23 frames per second. Running a movie at 23 frames does just fine as our camera´s do not record perfectly sharp images of motion and have just enough motion blur for us to interpret the image as sharp but still see fluid motion. Computer generated images are by definition perfectly sharp, in order to achieve a more ´natural´ look, motion blur compensates for the far too surperior sharpness.
In essence it is the same with depth of field, our eyes focus automatically, but they are not too fast at this. You could experiment with this by putting an object in front of your window and focus on it, then look outside in the distance. So DoF intends to simulate this, however most gamedesigners and filmmakers resort to improper use and the effect becomes an annoyance. DoF is a bigger problem to do well than motion blur (the latter needs only to be slight and relative to the speed of the object, but this means running the filter for every entity separately and will eat your computer´s guts and chew on it and then burp loudly and you will not like the game because you might´ve compensated for the lack of cinematique but you are now watching a slideshow) because DoF is in fact related to the user watching a still image and the eyes´ scanning pattern which cannot properly be interpreted.
report
I think DOF is good. It provides extra realism to a game. The example you gave when you reload the gun but you wanted to look for the next barrage is exactly what I mean: you see what your character sees, so if he’s focusing on reloading the gun, so should you, the player. You have time to look around and when you feel it’s ok to reload, you do it.
DOF also attenuates the problems of game engines that can’t render details that are far away in the scene. Making them blurry is the best thing to do. Look at GTA IV.
So yes, DOF is definitely good.
report
Have you ever reloaded a gun?
It does not take 100% concentration all the time. Sure you need to spend some time looking at it but you definitely do not need to stare at it the entire duration.
You only really need to look down to ensure that you are lining up the mag to the mag well.
report
@mrmud
I reloaded a gun once. Took me about ten minutes, what with dropping things and trying to put them in the wrong way up. And that was a breech-loading shotgun. It perhaps depends on how used you are at handling a weapon. Thus reloading times: Trained mercenaries = relatively slow. MIT-trained lab physicists fighting off alien invasions = relatively fast.
report
Point being that if you are capable of shooting hundreds of people in the face as is standard in the games we are talking about you are probably comfortable with reloading your weapon.
report
I agree with mmud. The SAS are trained to strip-down guns and re-build them blindfolded. So I don’t imagine it woud take their entire concentration to reload them (especially at the exspence of keeping track of where the incoming bullets are coming from).
report
I keep it on, why not… I like the look.
report
I don’t really know – I certainly tend to turn down motion blue because it can be annoying and isn’t that realistic (if you look around you don’t take in as much, but things don’t actually blur do they?).
As for Depth of Field, can’t say it has bothered me that much.
report
DOF, ambient occlusion both make single player campaigns more immersive.
Borderlands was nuts, there was an awesome juxtaposition between crazy cartoon outlines and super realistic DOF & AO that helped create a real sense of atmosphere in the game. Plus the crazytime delayed AO effect is mega trippy and totally epic
Post processing rules (especially in Shattered Horizon)
report
ker-what? I think you have misunderstood what ambient occlusion is TBH
report
DoF is a lovely thing when done well, the trick the lies in tweaking it so that it’s not too obtrusive IMO. If it’s overdone then it goes straight off, but a nice subtle bit of DoF is great and can actually help you out.
report
Personally I usually cant stand either feature. Both feel completely unrealistic and uneccesary. Depth of field makes more sense from a first person perspective, seeing it used in a strategy game however…. /facepalm
The only motion blur ive liked has been in the source engine. Looks rather nice in TF2 because its quite subtle. although this i turned off also because it made all my screenshots blurry =(
report
In my mind, it’s of course a divide between players who play to win/game the game system, or players who play for a specific experience – not primarily to make a maximization of all dynamics and mechanics. (Traditional Table Top) Role play – for example, is a gaming activity where players cannot play to win, it doesn’t work out, but instead, players play to experience something. The same goes, surprisingly for some hardcore war games, where you play a specific battle with a specific set of forces. Some of those scenarios you simply cannot win, but lose to different degrees. The enjoyment for grognards in these games are sometimes cited to be allowed to put oneself in the specific commander’s situation.
report
The thing I find odd about a lot of these effects is that despite the fact that in a lot of games we are supposedly there or seeing through a characters eyes, we get effects you don’t see with eyes. I’ve never seen lens flare. I do see the starburst effect sometimes though. I’ve seen depth of field effects of course, but that normally needs a much more extreme difference in distances than you get triggering DoF effects in games. Motion blur, again I’ve seen, but only in really low light conditions or when moving much faster than it is normally triggered in games. And film grain is just plain weird in most situations.
That said, sometimes these things can be effective – motion blur can give an additional sense of speed or impact. DoF sometimes makes things pretty, as does Lens Flare. And a lot of the HDR/glow effects you see really do replicate being in a dark room looking out or vice versa.
report
At least in STALKER it turned into something important and part of a game mechanic. Other games just seem to have it for ‘no reason’.
I never turn it off though, as that’s not how the games are supposed to be played. The fact that you can switch it off is purely a performance related choice.
Some games turn motion blur into a serious design flaw, but in many racing games it seems to work great to enhance the experience.
Whether it’s realistic or ‘in the way’ of a good gaming experience is different for each game, most games however don’t abuse the FX.
report
Motion blur is good, and realistically portrayed with current technology.
HDR is not realistic but still helpful from a practical point of view.
Depth of field is bad, because how the fuck does the game know where I am looking? What if I’m looking at that hill in the distance? It shouldn’t be blurred.
Until there is some complicated gizmo that tracks your eye to know at what part of the screen you are looking, then calculate the depth of that part and apply the DOF accordingly, EVERY single frame – until we get there, DOF will be a shite gimmick, just like “bloom” and overly shiny human skins.
report
“Motion blur is good, and realistically portrayed with current technology.
HDR is not realistic but still helpful from a practical point of view.”
why is HDR not realistic? If you make a photo of a couple that has the sun behind, all you will see with your eye, and the camera eye, will be 2 black shadows. Lets say that stuff that aproximate this on a videogame make the games more realistic. Also, making a dark area less dark, is helpfull to the player.
report
a trained soldier doesnt even look at his waepon while reloading
report
I guess it’s pretty simple for me: Good if used to make things look more natural, bad if used as a “special effect”.
Motion blur is just how the world works. Depth of field is usually an effect, used to focus on a particular part of a scene (and thus mostly only useful for controlled, cut-scene style sequences).
report
Borderlands is actually the first game where I really noticed the Depth of Field effects and left them on. I especially like it when I zoom in for a nice crit shot and everything else around the npc goes out of focus. Good implementation of the effect imo.
I always turn off motion blur (wait – there is motion blur in Borderlands?). Most annoying effect ever for me.
report
Motion Blur option is available in willowengine.ini – the same place as you turn on lovley Vsync. It’s off by default however.
report
DOF I’ll sometimes turn off when the option is available if I notice it distracting, although in Borderlands I did so mostly to try and reduce the eye strain I was experiencing in Borderlands when I started playing. Between it and FOV I was struggling – whether that’s related to how the game works on widescreen monitors I’ve no idea.
Motion Blur I’ll almost always turn off. I find most games over do it, I guess thinking that it’s cool and not wanting you to overlook how awesome they are for including it. Personally, it usually causes more eye strain for me than the prettiness factor is worth. I don’t enjoy walking away from a gaming session tired eyes unless I’m tired from staying up and playing far too late.
To my mind if you play a game and specifically notice individual effects, then they’re being overdone. No individual effects should stand out when playing, they should meld together to form a realistic, believable or engaging scene in which you think “wow” without being able to put your finger on any single effect.
report
I DESPISE motion blur. I can’t find a way to turn it off in ArmaII, so I’m just not playing it.
Depth of Field is kind of crap, but it depends on the game/situation it’s used in.
report
Depth of Field is not something humans have in their eyesight. It is a feature of lens based visuals. It might make it ‘cinematic’ but it is unituitive in a first person shooter – if you were reloading, you would be able to focus on distant things.
Depth of ield is ONLY acceptable in FPS games when there is a toggle for scope sights. This is less depth of field per se, but that, in reality, you wouldn;t be able to see anything but through the scope.
Motion blur is ok if two parameters are met:
1: it doesn’t lead to frame skipping and jumpy framerates during fast movement in busy areas (this is the pitfall of most motion blur – it’s not obvious until you get 1/3 of a second pause of blur because it’s stuffing up your framerate)
2: It is so marginal as not to be obvious to concious recognition – it should be something like health bars, which, if done well, never need to be consciously recognised – it’s just there.
I’ve never had a game which matches both those requirements.
report
I agree with that for a scope but not for a red dot or holo sight.
report
I think we need to straighten a few things out here.
Depth of Field isn’t a very good name for this effect anyway as it’s a measurement of something variable. Something like ‘shifting focus’ or ‘shallow focus’ would make more sense.
Secondly, some people seem to be under the impression that it’s an unrealistic effect because their eyes see everything thing in focus. Which, if that’s what they’re saying, is madness. Hold your hand up in front of your face, focus on it and now tell me everything else in view is sharp
report
Of course your eyes doesnt see everything in focus, thats a strawman.
What your eyes does is move the focus and your mind creates a larger area that appears to be in focus.
Also if you are playing a game you already have depth of field by default from the fact that the eye cant focus everywhere at once. You dont need to add additional blur.
However the major problem with Depth of field in games is that they cannot know what you yourself is looking at as opposed to what the camera is pointing towards. That means that if your eyes is focusing on something in the corner of the monitor then that part of the screen should always be in focus.
report
It’s not a straw man, it’s a fact. And some people certainly appear to be saying shallow focus is not a fact of their vision, so that’s not a straw man either.
If you are looking at a screen the screen is in focus. The fact of your retinas having higher acuity in the middle of your view than in the periphery is neither here not there. If what is displayed on that screen is designed to represent 3d space where your eyes wouldn’t be in deep focus, a shallow focus effect can help reinforce the illusion. That’s why they do it (in FPSs anyway). And yes a shortcoming is that ‘eyes’ in an FPS are fixed where your own eyes are not and people look around the screen while playing. I’m not sure what we’re talking about.
report
Depth of field, motion blur, grain filters all get thrown out immediately.
Motion blur being the top of my hatelist.
report
I love motion blur! In particular the fantastic blur I experienced when I played “Manic Miner” on ZX Spectrum on my old CRT b/w television I had….
report
I thought it worked really well in Burnout (I’ve only played the earlier ones on PS2 and GameCube), especially when you hit overdrive, (or boost or what ever it was called) and everything around you seemed to go backwards. I’ve once or twice been driven in a really fast car and occasionally it is just like that.
Of course, it’s less terrifying sat on your sofa…
report
Depth of Field I’m on the fence about, but Motion Blur is absolutely fine. Motion Blur is essentially just anti-aliasing over time instead of space, and it ranks up there with anti-aliasing on “features I’d really like to have if my computer can handle them at a reasonable framerate.”
The DoF in Borderlands is pretty finicky and occasionally hard to focus on exactly what you want it to, and I think the focal range is a lot smaller than it could be. I’m sure I’ve seen it used more subtly elsewhere, though I can’t really produce a name of a game that I’ve noticed it in, but I guess that’s sort of the point.
report
Depth of Field I’m on the fence about, but Motion Blur is absolutely fine. Motion Blur is essentially just anti-aliasing over time instead of space, and it ranks up there with anti-aliasing on “features I’d really like to have if my computer can handle them at a reasonable framerate.”
The DoF in Borderlands is pretty finicky and occasionally hard to focus on exactly what you want it to, and I think the focal range is a lot smaller than it could be. I’m sure I’ve seen it used more subtly elsewhere, though I can’t really produce a name of a game that I’ve noticed it in, but I guess that’s sort of the point.
(Why is it telling me this is a dupe comment?)
report
Halp I suck at computers. =(
report
In FPSs no, because it makes spotting enemies uselessly harder (and yes, 50 ms does make a difference, if it didn’t I’d be playing Mario Party). In other games, it’s a nice effect if it’s not overused. Like someone pointed out, in Assassin’s Creed.
report
I’d say putting the background out of focus while reloading brings the experience into a realm that is more realistic in that, if you were really shooting people, there’d be an amount of time in which you’d have to focus on reloading and not on something far away. After all, reloading actually takes focus, not just pressing “R”, IRL. That being said, whether or not that is the intent of the designers, or if it is implemented well, or if that effect is desired by the player, is a whole other story.
report
Depth of field/focus is a feature of any lens – whether it’s our eyes or a camera lens.
In photography (and therefore cinema), it’s a matter of technique whether you want to emphasise or reduce the effect, but it’s pretty popular among a lot of photographers (me included).
Look at this photo – http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephfarthing/3537603418/
Here the shallow depth of field is used to make the background less noticeable, and stop it distracting from the subject. (Not perfect, but the fastest example I could find.)
In real life, our eyes also have a depth of focus – it’s much more impressive than almost any glass lens, and is mostly unnoticeable to us, but it *is* there.
What game designers have is a choice – they can use DoF cinematically, like a photographer, or subtly like the eye.
Either way, I think it’s a valid technique and often quite a pretty one.
report
DoF is not as realistic as it could be. It has problems, but I re-enabled it in Mass Effect (I might waffle on this) after playing a bit without. It is better, in my estimation, than no DoF, because it serves to mute unnecessary background info, which is damn fine graphic design: highlight focal point by making it sharp. Subdue background (or foreground) by making it less detailed. That’s the rule.
What you hate, and I admit is a problem, is when it is bluring things that you ARE trying to focus on. But this is not a problem with motion blur. This is the single most prevalent problem in gaming today: judging player intention, and reacting to that. Usually, either user testing or user input is required. Critique the details of DoF that you don’t like. Otherwise, the best the developers know to do is to give you control of DoF. On/Off is the obvious way to do this, but wouldn’t it be cool if ctrl-mousewheel adjusted the depth of focus? THAT would be cool, if a bit over-designed to compensate for player taste. Better yet, the developers ought to try to judge what they think the player wants to look at. Then, get a few players to come try it, and see what they think.
report
The question of Motion Blur and Depth of Field are seperate cases. Motion blur is inherently an exageration. Though the Scout from TF springs to mind as a good subtle usage. Where as DoF is intended as a realism effect yet ironicaly gets exagerated more so than motion blur. The most outstanding examples I suppose would be the ones we notice the least? That being said two immediatly come to mind. For DoF Halo 2s Cutscenes and Lost Planet. The latter also having the best motion blur I have ever scene.
It is unfortunate that when new effects become available they come off so clumsy. Largely I would expect they are included in games without a gameplay purpose and simply become part of a checklist or atleast are included because its easy to do so.
I was quite annoyed at what Starbreeze did to the Riddick remake. It was technicaly superior to original, clearly. But the new effects and/or the implementation of them completely changed the look and feel of the game for the worse.
Disclosure: I have only read the first and the last two posts ;P
report
I think I’m the only person that liked Clear Sky’s DoF implementation. As a game that makes a point to beat you down, it only makes sense that reloading makes you lose track of what you’ve been doing.
report
[quote]a trained soldier doesnt even look at his waepon while reloading[/quote]
As an infantryman for four years, this. You’re trying to determine the originating location of incoming fire and, if possible, taking cover behind something. At no point should you be looking at your weapon unless it jams.
report
“Have we reached a point in graphics where there’s too much extra processing?”"
Hell yes. That point was reached years ago when they started using too much bloom in every darn game. And yes, I turn DoF always off because it is not used correctly IMO. In Gothic 3 blur/dof looks nice if it’s applied only to objects that are kilometers away because it takes of some of the jagginess and makes things look a bit more like in fairy tales. Speaking of fairy tales, I believe Trine uses DoF too and that’s a fine-looking game.
Anyway, motion blur and depth of field in first person games is almost always waste of resources.
report
I love motion-blur, because it makes games look smooth on my old computer.
I hate depth-of-field when it does not follow my eyes’ focus point.
report
Depth of field is most annoying in CoD:MW when you’re sniping through grass and the depth shifts to the fuckin’ blades right in front of your eyes instead of the dipshit you’re aiming at a hundred yards off…
report