• DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Has the person who invented the depth of field effect for a video game ever even PLAYED a game before?

    • taiyang@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      I mean, it works in… hmmm… RPGs, maybe?

      When I was a kid there was an effect in FF8 where the background blurred out in Balamb Garden and it made the place feel bigger. A 2D painted background blur, haha.

      Then someone was like, let’s do that in the twenty-first century and ruined everything. When you’ve got draw distance, why blur?

      • DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Yes, it makes sense in a game where the designer already knows where the important action is and controls the camera to focus on it. It however does not work in a game where the action could be anywhere and camera doesn’t necessarily focus on it.

        • taiyang@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          Yup, or if they’re covering up hardware deficiency, like Nintendo sometimes does. And even then, they generally prefer to just make everything a little fuzzy, like BotW.

    • alaphic@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Well, not exactly, but they were described to him once by an elderly man with severe cataracts and that was deemed more than sufficient by corporate.

    • 11111one11111@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      What is the depth of field option? When it’s on what happens vs when it’s off?

      Side question, why the fuck does everything in IT reuse fucking names? Depth of field means how far from character it’ll render the environment, right? So if the above option only has an on or off option then it is affecting something other than the actual depth of field, right? So why the fuck would the name of it be depth of fucking field??? I see this shit all the time as I learn more and more about software related shit.

      • tehmics@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        No.

        Depth of field is when backgroud/foreground objects get blurred depending on where you’re looking, to simulate eyes focusing on something.

        You’re thinking of draw distance, which is where objects far away aren’t rendered. Or possibly level of detail (LoD) where distant objects will be changed to a lower detailed model as they get further away.

      • StitchIsABitch@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        In this context it just refers to a post processing effect that blurs certain objects based on their distance to the camera. Honestly it is one of the less bad ones imo, as it can be well done and is sometimes necessary to pull off a certain look.

      • DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        When it’s on, whatever the playable character looks at will be in focus and everything else that is at different distances will be blurry, as it would be the case in real life if your eyes were the playable character’s eyes. The problem is that the player’s eyes are NOT the playable character’s eyes. Players have the ability to look around elsewhere on the screen and the vast majority of them use it all the time in order to play the game. But with that stupid feature on everything is blurry and the only way to get them in focus is to move the playable character’s view around along with it to get the game to focus on it. It just constantly feels like something is wrong with your eyes and you can’t see shit.

        • Zozano@aussie.zone
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          5 hours ago

          It’s like motion blur. Your eyes already do that, you don’t need it to be simulated…

          • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            No, your eyes can’t do it on a screen. The effect is physically caused by the different distances of two objects, but the screen is always the same distance from you.

            • Zozano@aussie.zone
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              2 hours ago

              Yes, but you still get the blurry effect outside of the spot on the screen you’re focused on.

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            For depth of field, our eyes don’t automatically do that for a rendered image. It’s a 2d image when we look at it and all pixels are the same distance and all are in focus at the same time. It’s the effect you get when you look at something in the distance and put your finger near your eye; it’s blurry (unless you focus on it, in which case the distant objects become blurry).

            Even VR doesn’t get it automatically.

            It can feel unnatural because we normally control it unconsciously (or consciously if we want to and know how to control those eye muscles at will).

          • SitD@lemy.lol
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            3 hours ago

            to be fair you need it for 24fps movies. however, on 144Hz monitors it’s entirely pointless indeed

      • Zozano@aussie.zone
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        6 hours ago

        Depth of field is basically how your characters eyes are unfocused on everything they aren’t directly looking at.

        If there are two boxes, 20 meters apart, one of them will be blurry, while aiming at the other.