Visual design disasters I hope KSP 2 will steer away from

[lajoswinkler]

25 minutes ago, magoigor said:

I wish there are all those effects in the game, but options to toggle for people who does not like them :))

Really? Eyeball grime? Bad HDR? What possible purpose would those things have in KSP other than making the game look ugly?

[magoigor]

2 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

Really? Eyeball grime? Bad HDR? What possible purpose would those things have in KSP other than making the game look ugly?

actually the only effect i would like to see is juuuuust a little bit of chromatic aberration, It looks realistic on some rocket photos and videos, idk, but I want it to be very realistic

[sturmhauke]

6 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Inserting a personal and completely subjective opinion here: I abhor all these 'realism' effects that have nothing to do with how human vision really works.

People get hung up on all kinds of effects that basically only demonstrate our shortcomings in replicating the human eye, and forget that what we've become used to seeing in photos and movies is NOT how we see things in real life. When they do consider it, they then often still forget that our brain has a major correcting impact on how we actually perceive things that goes beyond the purely physical aspect of light pathing and lensing. Our brain cannot do that same kind of correction when those aberrations are forced digitally onto a screen, often amplified 'for effect', which results in what I consider a highly handicapped form of 'vision' which I find neither enjoyable or artful in any way.

TL;DR: I vote these kinds of effects to be wholly optional if implemented at all.

I'm mostly with you on this, although the effects don't bother me as much. But yeah, that's not how your eye works. Lens flare and chromatic aberration in particular are camera lens artifacts. If you see that with your naked eye, you probably have some sort of defect and should go get your eyes checked.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

12 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Seeing as PhysX often uses the GPU to do its calculations, it's not that unlikely that the two can affect each other.

Unity's implementation is on the CPU; not the GPU.

[swjr-swis]

2 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Unity's implementation is on the CPU; not the GPU.

I feel I stand corrected - a bit of further research showed me that it's actually a minority of available games, even to this date, and I just happen to have high number of games that do implement GPU for PhysX (explaining why I had an incorrect impression about its ubiquity).

I seem to remember rather vividly that at introduction of the PhysX library, the whole premise was to offload these calculations to the GPU, because they had such a hefty cost on the CPU. Why this turned out to get ignored by so many game developers baffles me.

But I digress. Please ignore my mumbling and return to the thread at hand.

[Guest]

Since physics isn’t easy to parallelise it can only derive limited benefit from GPU acceleration anyway.

My take? I will be happy if the game looks good. Overusing VFX is worse than not using them at all, but if used tastefully they can greatly enhance it. Also in my opinion it is silly to point out any specific VFX to rage at. They’re like spices in cooking, used wrong they will ruin it, used right they will let it shine, but none of them are inherently good or bad.

[lajoswinkler]

15 hours ago, magoigor said:

actually the only effect i would like to see is juuuuust a little bit of chromatic aberration, It looks realistic on some rocket photos and videos, idk, but I want it to be very realistic

There is nothing realistic about that. To be honest, I don't remember seeing chromatic aberration on any "rocket photos and videos".

Chromatic aberration is a consequence of simplest lenses found in absolutely the cheapest toy cameras, the ones with plastic single element lenses from USSR or China. Technology beyond crap, even in early 20th century.

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

Chromatic aberration is a consequence of simplest lenses found in absolutely the cheapest toy cameras, the ones with plastic single element lenses from USSR or China. Technology beyond crap, even in early 20th century.

All lenses produce chromatic aberration. It's inherent to refraction, and can only be partially corrected by combining elements. The only question is how much and under which conditions it manifests. If you want an optical system that doesn't produce chromatic aberration you need to use mirrors.

Edit: for example, check out this lab test of the Canon 135/2.0L -- a legendarily sharp photographic lens. Not hard to produce L-CA when you look for it -- the blur is magenta in front, green in the back.

https://www.opticallimits.com/canon_eos_ff/430-canon_135_2_5d?start=1

Edited September 19, 2019 by Guest

[runner78]

21 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

There is nothing realistic about that. To be honest, I don't remember seeing chromatic aberration on any "rocket photos and videos".

Chromatic aberration is a consequence of simplest lenses found in absolutely the cheapest toy cameras, the ones with plastic single element lenses from USSR or China. Technology beyond crap, even in early 20th century.

Some ISS Pictures, i see chromatic aberrations.

https://images.app.goo.gl/u7Wjf4Wa6nHsPqyQ9

[lajoswinkler]

You guys are nitpicking (yes, yes, you can't remove it completely but even late 19th century lenses do a damn fine job, and you need special situations to even notice it nowdays) for the sake of defending something rarely anyone thinks is good. It's a horribly annoying thing and there's no need to ruin the vision in the game like that.

[Tw1]

I don't think all of these are inherently bad, but that's not the point. I agree that these don't seem appropriate for KSP.  Personally, I don't mind the shake KSP1 does in high G, but that's togglable. 

[ModZero]

On 9/18/2019 at 4:43 PM, swjr-swis said:

Inserting a personal and completely subjective opinion here: I abhor all these 'realism' effects that have nothing to do with how human vision really works.

Wait, you think they're there because they're realistic? I mean, sure, there's probably some authors who did them for that reason, but no, that's not why they're there. They're there to make the image more interesting and sometimes to mask shortcomings that would be impractical to correct otherwise.

Also, as a glasses-wearer, eyeball grime is totally realistic.

Edited September 19, 2019 by ModZero
what are you doing forums.

[GluttonyReaper]

4 hours ago, ModZero said:

Also, as a glasses-wearer, eyeball grime is totally realistic.

Can confirm, this combined with having 'floaters' means that I prolly haven't seen clearly for a long, long time

The only thing I'm vaguely opposed to is motion blur, if only because it can make me feel a bit queazy sometimes.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

You guys are nitpicking (yes, yes, you can't remove it completely but even late 19th century lenses do a damn fine job, and you need special situations to even notice it nowdays) for the sake of defending something rarely anyone thinks is good. It's a horribly annoying thing and there's no need to ruin the vision in the game like that.

[lajoswinkler]

So we should view the game as a shortsighted, astigmatic wearer of (poorly chosen and 16th century) corrective eyeglasses who doesn't bother to wipe them off dandruff and skin grease? At the expense of computer resources?

Good to know what passes under "reality" nowdays. It's not really surprising that entertainment media pumps out horrid looking stuff - it realized crap is good enough.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, lajoswinkler said:

At the expense of computer resources?

Yes I do think it's worth spending some computer resources on graphics. Unmodded KSP1 looks pretty spartan and I should hope KSP2 looks better than that.

Whether and what kind of VFX that'll involve is a different matter, but it is IMO frankly silly to rage at a specific selection of such VFX. That's like raging about the specific shade of green they're going to make kerbal skin -- it's a creative choice, and therefore to a great extent a matter of taste. You've made your personal preferences clear, but ultimately that's all they are -- like... your opinion, man.

[mcwaffles2003]

On 9/16/2019 at 10:53 AM, lajoswinkler said:

Hah, if this were only true. No, it is not an artifact of shutter speed. We're talking about video, not photography here.

photographs often have drastically more sharpnes since many are shot in sub-milliseconds, where as a 60 hz video is made from individual 16.7 ms photographs  

[swjr-swis]

5 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

That's like raging about the specific shade of green they're going to make kerbal skin

Don't get me started...

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[78stonewobble]

Personally I really dislike "shaky cam" and motion blur in games. .. In recent years its begun to make me dizzy and if at all possible I turn those off. 

Though I can don't mind it in the small IVA feeds. 

Otherwise... The more options for everyone seems to be the way to go. 

PS: colourblind options? 

[Gryphorim]

HDR and bloom are IMHO, essential to representing sunlight in an no-atmo environment. There is no skyshine, so shadows become much deeper in contrast to lit regions, and the sunlight is whiter and more intense. Looking at footage from the ISS and older video from apollo missions demonstrate this. Obviously a balance needs to be reached as to how intense these effects are, but again IMHO, KSP has lighting that is too flat to really give that impression of being in space. Naturally, these effects should be player adjustable.

[Delay]

On 9/16/2019 at 2:48 PM, lajoswinkler said:

Otherwise it's very annoying and we all know that because of J.J. Abrams' smudge on blockbuster cinematography.

Source: NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/586473main_iss028e005671_full.jpg)

On 9/16/2019 at 2:48 PM, lajoswinkler said:

bloom - Who wants the feeling of watching the world through greased, foggy window? This is one of the worst things a computer game can force upon the user

Source: NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_feature/public/thumbnails/image/iss060e014984.jpg)

On 9/16/2019 at 2:48 PM, lajoswinkler said:

overblown HDR - initially, made by overzealous amateur photographers who just discovered HDR and don't understand it's not supposed to look intense and weird

Source: NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_feature/public/thumbnails/image/iss060e013819.jpg)

 

Clearly NASA should turn off their visual effects!

[sturmhauke]

Let's do a side-by-side, then.

Lens Flare - NASA vs. Star Trek: Into Darkness

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-star-trek-has-so-much-lens-flare-2015-11

 

 

Bloom - NASA vs. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

http://gangles.ca/2008/07/18/bloom-disasters/

 

 

HDR - NASA vs. The Hobbit

https://80.lv/articles/games-look-bad-hdr-and-tone-mapping/

 

 

The real photographs look, well, real. Even if the last NASA photo looks a bit off in the color balance and contrast and stuff, it still looks reasonable. Smaug just looks like crap though. As you can see, there is such a thing as too much of anything.

[Delay]

3 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Awfully specific. What about Voyager if we decide to stick with with Star Trek?

Strangely, about that last one in particular: It doesn't actually look that bad to me. It looks exactly like what "HDR" promises - a High Dynamic Range.

And although they're not great games in terms of gameplay, the last two Need for Speed games - 2015 and Payback, managed to restraint themselves with bloom to very realistic values, something you'd actually see with not just a camera, but also the naked eye.

The Oblivion screenshot could be explained by a Sun which is a few orders of magnitude brighter than ours. What (metallic) material wouldn't appear to glow then?

 

So yes, I can agree that these are overkill representations of the effects. But the OP is against having these effects at all, which heavily I disagree with. If the values used to compute the strength of every single one of these post-processing effect are set just right they can greatly enhance the visuals.

[sturmhauke]

6 minutes ago, Delay said:

Awfully specific. What about Voyager if we decide to stick with with Star Trek?

JJ Abrams wasn't involved with Voyager - I was addressing his overuse of lens flare.

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Strangely, about that last one in particular: It doesn't actually look that bad to me. It looks exactly like what "HDR" promises - a High Dynamic Range.

Well this is all subjective anyway, but I don't think if you were standing there wondering if Smaug was going to eat you that you would see all those details equally clearly, or perceive the tonal ranges with quite that much abrupt change. Remember that it's a vast and dim room, mostly lit with some scattered torches and Smaug's own fire breath.

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And although they're not great games in terms of gameplay, the last two Need for Speed games - 2015 and Payback, managed to restraint themselves with bloom to very realistic values, something you'd actually see with not just a camera, but also the naked eye.

Well good for them then. That's what I'm asking for.

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The Oblivion screenshot could be explained by a Sun which is a few orders of magnitude brighter than ours. What (metallic) material wouldn't appear to glow then?

Yeah, maybe. It would also probably be hotter than Earth, but the armor and clothing suggests it isn't. Also, and again this is subjective, I find it distracting when everything is too glowy. It doesn't look right.

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So yes, I can agree that these are overkill representations of the effects. But the OP is against having these effects at all, which heavily I disagree with. If the values used to compute the strength of every single one of these post-processing effect are set just right they can greatly enhance the visuals.

OP is maybe a little more against these effects than most of us, but he's clarified in later comments that he's not in favor of banning them entirely.

[Delay]

8 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

I was addressing his overuse of lens flare

And I was addressing your choice of movie, because I cannot remember that much lens flaring in First Contact. Or TNG. Or DS9. Or any other movie/series in the franchise.

Granted, I also had to look at what images to present, given I wanted to demonstrate that having overexposure/bloom or lens flares is not always bad. I guess we both cherry-picked to some extent.