HDR in games and real life

[Nedjo]

so much about reality in games

[Decami]

lol...i have nothing to say than that

[nullface]

Its funny cause its true! :P

[Decami]

Its funny cause its true! :P

actually not correct im loling because the top comparisons are incorrect.

Thats actually removing HDR from a photograph, not adding it.
...and none of those photos are rendered. they are all photographs. Its not comparing anything.

This is pointless and I do not understand the meaning.

[Frag Maniac]

Actually that seems an accurate example of how many games show HDR, but I agree that's not a good example of how HDR is added to photos. I disagree that the top ones show HDR being removed though, because it's a misnomer. You can retouch photos to remove glare and hence add contrast, but HDR is a post effect treatment, thus no stock photos have it.

I think the point of all this though, dare we stray from the topic, is that HDR in games is rarely done properly. So often is it just too glowy and bright, vs subtle and natural. Even IW, whom have done marvelous things in rendering realistic graphics at high FPS with their last two titles, seem to have fubared the HDR somewhat on MW2.

MW2's controversial airport level is just annoyingly glowy and over the top with the "God rays" blinding you through the sky lights. I also find the last level in the Zodiac to be over the top with the bright orange reflections of the sun off the water. Sadly whenever a title is primarily made for console and the PC version an afterthought, we often get such poorly done effects.

Cute avatar of the white kitty btw. It looks to be focusing so intently. I think I'll call that pic "Cat on Wire". LOL

[Budwise]

i think games just overdo it tbh.

[ColonelCain]

What I find funny, is that there are only 2 different pictures out of the four, unless my eyes fail me.

[NaeKuh]

Applied properly in a racing game though, it looks FANTASTIC. I think the chief ones to blame are Epic because so many games are licensing UE3 and they all have this effect dialed up too high (Gears of War, anyone?).

i think its biggest controversy was brought up with the release of borderlands.

[Machinus]

i think this is missing the point completely...

videogames naturally produce photorealistic images, but that is not a fun and immersive experience...the point of introducing HDR was to make the games more LIFELIKE so that they look like what your EYE sees, not the camera

[Frag Maniac]

The point is though, many games do NOT apply HDR realistically and that photo-realism you speak of at that point is more real looking than with their crap HDR/Bloom applied. I also feel the same about poorly done AOL (ambient occlusion lighting). It's one thing to have a subtle milky ambient light simulating a haze, but when it amplifies right in front of your face each time you head off a certain direction, it's definitely over the top. Blur is often overdone too.

HDR when it's done well is very nice true, but keep in mind we are talking about effects that AREN'T done well. Crysis has wonderful, subtle HDR with nicely done sunset reflections off water and filtered sunlight through trees. IMO though it's AOL and blur effects are overdone and annoying. I totally agree on Epic failing with post effects too. Ever since GoW their post processing has looked like dark, dull crap that totally desaturates all color content and makes the game dull, drab and dreary. They're yet another dev that overdoes blur too.

It used to be motion blur was for high speeds in racing games like NFS, which of course makes sense. Velocity sports have always been about reading terrain whilst trying to keep your eyes from tearing due to wind and/or blur effects. It's where the expression "Enough to make your eyes bleed" comes from. Now we have it in lots of games in such an over the top way you see heavy blur just when you start off on foot.

Worse yet you have all these players just loving excessive blur, most fairly young, that will no doubt find out when they're older why many of us don't like it. Aside from being unrealistic it causes eyestrain and even headaches. It's funny how most games have the disclaimer of epilepsy warnings in their legal text, yet nothing about the excessive blur even in games where you can't turn it off or even lower it.

[Decami]

Actually that seems an accurate example of how many games show HDR, but I agree that's not a good example of how HDR is added to photos. I disagree that the top ones show HDR being removed though, because it's a misnomer. You can retouch photos to remove glare and hence add contrast, but HDR is a post effect treatment, thus no stock photos have it.

I think the point of all this though, dare we stray from the topic, is that HDR in games is rarely done properly. So often is it just too glowy and bright, vs subtle and natural. Even IW, whom have done marvelous things in rendering realistic graphics at high FPS with their last two titles, seem to have fubared the HDR somewhat on MW2.

MW2's controversial airport level is just annoyingly glowy and over the top with the "God rays" blinding you through the sky lights. I also find the last level in the Zodiac to be over the top with the bright orange reflections of the sun off the water. Sadly whenever a title is primarily made for console and the PC version an afterthought, we often get such poorly done effects.

Cute avatar of the white kitty btw. It looks to be focusing so intently. I think I'll call that pic "Cat on Wire". LOL

indeed I understand how hdr works in photos. I meant removing HDR already applied to the supposed original. Whether threw software or hardware.

[Machinus]

I mentioned lens flare earlier for a reason. It's an occular effect that is ONLY seen through the lens of a camera and NOT life-like because we never experience it in our own eyes (some of us who wear glasses may at time experience something similar, however we're talking about the unaided eye here). This effect doesn't make any sense yet it's hard to find a game that doesn't have lens flare anymore.

It's the same thing with this depth of field, motion blur, and light bloom craze. These are all things that do exist and do happen, but not in the way the videogame would have us believe. They're features a checklist that management puts together to make it look impressive and the marketing spins it as a good thing and sells it. This stuff isn't in there for our benefit, it's in there because someone with deep pockets who funded this decided that it was cool for everything to be blurry...

well it's not so mindless...in addition to making games 'lifelike' by giving them physical attributes like the eye would experience, there is also another trend which gamers enjoy very much which is MOVIE-LIKE effects. gamers sometimes want to feel like they are watching a movie, and as we all know movies are filmed with cameras and have these artifacts. so it's really some kind of combination of both eye and camera-effects, and it just depends on what the gamer thinks is fun.

[Decami]

well it's not so mindless...in addition to making games 'lifelike' by giving them physical attributes like the eye would experience, there is also another trend which gamers enjoy very much which is MOVIE-LIKE effects. gamers sometimes want to feel like they are watching a movie, and as we all know movies are filmed with cameras and have these artifacts. so it's really some kind of combination of both eye and camera-effects, and it just depends on what the gamer thinks is fun.

games often gets things completely wrong though cause the method is so horrible.

Like depth of field. this completely fails in games, depth of field means objects in focus at certain depths in your field of view, this is how realize distance of objects in a direct path of our field of view, or depth. blurring parts of the screen is a downright ridiculous, and completely useless way to create this. It just doesnt work if not done right, CODMW1 absolutely pointless depth of field blurring. thats more of a focus blur than anything and our eyes do that already in FPSs naturally to the screen in our view. Crysis had this down slightly better but still needed work. with Crysis DOV you could actually judge objects distance from one another in a direct path easier but it still had over used and useless blur in places it shouldnt be.

[Jimmer411]

Cameras have a lower dynamic range than the human eye, its going to be hard to mimic it like we see it. Anyone with SLR or DSLR experience has seen what happens when you stand outside and take a picture of someone inside a shaded area or vice versa. Situations where we can see someone just fine the camera will render as a silhouette.


Half life 2 had a good example of HDR thats is similar to how the eyes react, in the lost coast demo walking in and out of the tunnel (dark to light) you will see things very bright and then it will adjust, similar to waking up at 2am and turning on the lights.

Doesnt seem like many games use HDR to the extent that they use bloom, or they use too much bloom and people just assume its HDR.

[Mescalamba]

HDR in photos is actually same as game without HDR..

When you look from dark room to bright out.. you´ll be probably able to see both quite ok (unless its extreme light and extreme darkness). What HDR photo does is, that you can see equaly both - light and dark places. But none of them has correct "light" in them.. dark places are usually too light, and light places just bit darker, than in real life. Its just way to put details from light/dark to one pic.. usually done by taking pics of light + normal + dark and putting that together, after bit of PS work, it will create somewhat watchable result.

HDR photos are never accurate, cause sensors can´t capture everything that human eye can at one shot .. and putting it together from few shots needs some afterprocessing, which is never accurate and even if it was, you can´t display it. Cause it has bit more information, than you can display on conventional display.. cause even displays has limited dynamic range. Eg. until we get HDR cam sensors and HDR displays.. we are left with semi-accurate HDR pics at best.. usually HDR pics are used more as art, than reproduction of real world.

HDR in games, actually doesn´t have anything with high dynamic range at all, cause.. in normal game, you simply see everything.. so in some way, you have unrealistic high dynamic range. HDR in games, actually lowers your dynamic range, so you when you go out from dark cave, you see at first dark cave.. and just light outside, when go out, you get blinded by light and then you see everything around normal and totaly dark cave.. which, if its implemented right, its somewhat near real world.. but usually this effect is overshoted so hard, that it has nothing to do with real life, and its way slower than in real life.. I guess that term "Reduced dynamic range" wouldn´t sound that good, so they call it HDR.. even if its in fact opposite.

Tough, both are trying to be closer to real world. Games by reducing dynamic range and photos by adding it (cause cam sensors can´t capture that much as human eye at one shot). It has lot to do with reality in both cases, but less to do with real HDR in game case.

[Machinus]

games often gets things completely wrong though cause the method is so horrible.

Like depth of field. this completely fails in games, depth of field means objects in focus at certain depths in your field of view, this is how realize distance of objects in a direct path of our field of view, or depth. blurring parts of the screen is a downright ridiculous, and completely useless way to create this. It just doesnt work if not done right, CODMW1 absolutely pointless depth of field blurring. thats more of a focus blur than anything and our eyes do that already in FPSs naturally to the screen in our view. Crysis had this down slightly better but still needed work. with Crysis DOV you could actually judge objects distance from one another in a direct path easier but it still had over used and useless blur in places it shouldnt be.

projecting a three-dimensional experience onto a 2D screen is going to have a lot of limitations no matter how you do it. there is no "right" way to do it anyway because game designers have a lot of different goals for how they want users to experience the game. a lot of the way that images are presented is going to come down to artistic preference or just technical choices. for example, depth of field, which you are talking about, is compensated for by the brain despite being a limitation of the lens of the eye. the question of what we are really "seeing," i.e. the brain's image or the eye's image, is complicated enough that game designers can get away with not really picking a side and following through on all the details. people started to deal with these issues when we first built cameras and videocameras - even today photos and films can be done in extremely "artistic" ways, but even the most scientific application of camera technology comes with limitations in displaying information. no matter what, you have to make choices about how you want to present the images because a 2D screen can never replicate the 3D experience that the eye and the brain create.

[Decami]

projecting a three-dimensional experience onto a 2D screen is going to have a lot of limitations no matter how you do it. there is no "right" way to do it anyway because game designers have a lot of different goals for how they want users to experience the game. a lot of the way that images are presented is going to come down to artistic preference or just technical choices. for example, depth of field, which you are talking about, is compensated for by the brain despite being a limitation of the lens of the eye. the question of what we are really "seeing," i.e. the brain's image or the eye's image, is complicated enough that game designers can get away with not really picking a side and following through on all the details. people started to deal with these issues when we first built cameras and videocameras - even today photos and films can be done in extremely "artistic" ways, but even the most scientific application of camera technology comes with limitations in displaying information. no matter what, you have to make choices about how you want to present the images because a 2D screen can never replicate the 3D experience that the eye and the brain create.

Im not talking photo realistic here, some games butcher this effect, and other effects as well, has nothing to do with creating what i see in real life, if that ever even happens its light years away. I pretty much understand your entire post, no need for the drawn out explanation. I am simply saying developers add and create effects in games, and it seems that the effect they are adding they completely dont understand. Like they did no studying or gathering information of what they are actually trying to create.

what im talking about has nothing to do with limitations or technical reasons. Its just pure mistake.

[Decami]

HDR in photos is actually same as game without HDR..

When you look from dark room to bright out.. you´ll be probably able to see both quite ok (unless its extreme light and extreme darkness). What HDR photo does is, that you can see equaly both - light and dark places. But none of them has correct "light" in them.. dark places are usually too light, and light places just bit darker, than in real life. Its just way to put details from light/dark to one pic.. usually done by taking pics of light + normal + dark and putting that together, after bit of PS work, it will create somewhat watchable result.

HDR photos are never accurate, cause sensors can´t capture everything that human eye can at one shot .. and putting it together from few shots needs some afterprocessing, which is never accurate and even if it was, you can´t display it. Cause it has bit more information, than you can display on conventional display.. cause even displays has limited dynamic range. Eg. until we get HDR cam sensors and HDR displays.. we are left with semi-accurate HDR pics at best.. usually HDR pics are used more as art, than reproduction of real world.

HDR in games, actually doesn´t have anything with high dynamic range at all, cause.. in normal game, you simply see everything.. so in some way, you have unrealistic high dynamic range. HDR in games, actually lowers your dynamic range, so you when you go out from dark cave, you see at first dark cave.. and just light outside, when go out, you get blinded by light and then you see everything around normal and totaly dark cave.. which, if its implemented right, its somewhat near real world.. but usually this effect is overshoted so hard, that it has nothing to do with real life, and its way slower than in real life.. I guess that term "Reduced dynamic range" wouldn´t sound that good, so they call it HDR.. even if its in fact opposite.

Tough, both are trying to be closer to real world. Games by reducing dynamic range and photos by adding it (cause cam sensors can´t capture that much as human eye at one shot). It has lot to do with reality in both cases, but less to do with real HDR in game case.

I really didnt read alot of your post, but the first sentence you will understand is incorrect if you have done alot of photo editing. Adding HDR to a photo is exactly like adding it in games. the adding part, games are not very good at it. But its basically the same thing.

What you have to understand is how its working in games and how it works in photos.

High Dynamic range can increase darkness in light and lightness in dark, either way. and you can use this in photos.
Games only seem to use it one way, some games actually with decent HDR do use it both ways, but it seems that games always only go the lightness in dark method, basically cause it seems more impressive.

So its not that games do it to the opposite effect, cause they dont, they just only use it in one way.

[DarthElvis]

i think this is missing the point completely...

videogames naturally produce photorealistic images, but that is not a fun and immersive experience...the point of introducing HDR was to make the games more LIFELIKE so that they look like what your EYE sees, not the camera

If my eyes saw what 90% of these games look like, I'd go get fitted for glasses. Way to overdone in most games. Not realistic at all. Thet should have sliders to tone down the effect.