M
Misty
Guest
I will list objective reasons HD graphics look off.
1. Jaggies. For some reason, many games in HD have jaggies, instead of the anti-aliasing in low poly games.
For instance, Gamecube games have anti-aliasing inherently on HD tv's. But Wii U games have aliasing and jaggies.
2. Uncanny valley. Seeing the entire world, but on a small screen, feels off and strange. Like you are looking into a magical window to reality.
3. Lack of scientific and artist understanding about materials. Special effects seem mathematics based, rather than science or art based. I will give an example.
In real life, I was looking close up at this thing made of metal. The metal was all the same scientific material.
But some parts of it had diagonal ruffles, other parts were pitted and looked like Halo 1, other parts looked shiny and glossy. It was all the same material, metal, but each part handled light in a different way, due to the finish and way the surface was polished.
Contrast this to modern graphics, which just blindly says "Ah, it's metal. We will handle it as one texture and material." When in reality, it would be handled with several different materials: And a mix of effects: Both bumpmapping and envmapping combined, both specular and gloss mapping combined.
Modern graphics look spectacularly off at times.
4. Repetitive textures. The more low fi a texture is, the harder it is to tell it is repeated. Instead, it looks like a blurry stretched ambiguity. High res textures look more like a repeated image. In order for there to be realism in game graphics, textures either need to be layered to make the repetitiveness unnoticeable, or dynamic proc gen textures.
5. Lack of deep artistic awareness of color theory. Shadows and lights do not display colors rightly. For example, in real life a transparent red cloth will cast a red shadow. But most game engines will make it cast a black shadow. Also, in real life, bright objects will have a blue border on one side, and an orange border on another side. Yet this ability is not in games, especially because the width of the border in real life would be smaller than a pixel even on 1080p.
6. Lack of awareness about the eyes. When solar effects and specular is applied from sunlight, it causes a greenish red effect on the eyes. But in games, the effect is either just white or yellow, so it just feels off and plasticy.
7. Overusage of specular (making it plastic looking) and overusage of ambient occlusion. Ambient occlusion is an improvement from fullbright unshaded. However, it is still cheap and lazy, and only works well in 3d. Ambient occlusion applied to 2d scenes, looks like the photoshop or GM glow filter applied to everything, it looks sporty and cheap. And ambient occlusion is a loose approximation of real life, in real life shadows look more seemingly random and does not apply smooth shadows on every surface.
This is why, goldeneye 64 "felt right" because the shadows seemed random (and some of them seemed off scientifically also) but it didn't make the brain feel weird, because the brain is used to weird and hard to predict shadows. Whereas ambient occlusion is too predictable so it seems off.
Address to fanboyism.
Fanboys will call me a luddite and saying "Get with the times." How dare I criticize hd graphics? Surely I need to get with the times and praise the HD graphics and realism. Surely I should praise the cutting edge.
Here is my argument to them. I am saying that your current cutting edge is the equivalent of a medieval catapult. And that HD graphics are not realistic at all, but actually unrealistic. Therefore, it is not that I am a luddite at all. I am saying the state of graphics isn't realistic or futuristic, and that it is technologically dissatisfying.
1. Jaggies. For some reason, many games in HD have jaggies, instead of the anti-aliasing in low poly games.
For instance, Gamecube games have anti-aliasing inherently on HD tv's. But Wii U games have aliasing and jaggies.
2. Uncanny valley. Seeing the entire world, but on a small screen, feels off and strange. Like you are looking into a magical window to reality.
3. Lack of scientific and artist understanding about materials. Special effects seem mathematics based, rather than science or art based. I will give an example.
In real life, I was looking close up at this thing made of metal. The metal was all the same scientific material.
But some parts of it had diagonal ruffles, other parts were pitted and looked like Halo 1, other parts looked shiny and glossy. It was all the same material, metal, but each part handled light in a different way, due to the finish and way the surface was polished.
Contrast this to modern graphics, which just blindly says "Ah, it's metal. We will handle it as one texture and material." When in reality, it would be handled with several different materials: And a mix of effects: Both bumpmapping and envmapping combined, both specular and gloss mapping combined.
Modern graphics look spectacularly off at times.
4. Repetitive textures. The more low fi a texture is, the harder it is to tell it is repeated. Instead, it looks like a blurry stretched ambiguity. High res textures look more like a repeated image. In order for there to be realism in game graphics, textures either need to be layered to make the repetitiveness unnoticeable, or dynamic proc gen textures.
5. Lack of deep artistic awareness of color theory. Shadows and lights do not display colors rightly. For example, in real life a transparent red cloth will cast a red shadow. But most game engines will make it cast a black shadow. Also, in real life, bright objects will have a blue border on one side, and an orange border on another side. Yet this ability is not in games, especially because the width of the border in real life would be smaller than a pixel even on 1080p.
6. Lack of awareness about the eyes. When solar effects and specular is applied from sunlight, it causes a greenish red effect on the eyes. But in games, the effect is either just white or yellow, so it just feels off and plasticy.
7. Overusage of specular (making it plastic looking) and overusage of ambient occlusion. Ambient occlusion is an improvement from fullbright unshaded. However, it is still cheap and lazy, and only works well in 3d. Ambient occlusion applied to 2d scenes, looks like the photoshop or GM glow filter applied to everything, it looks sporty and cheap. And ambient occlusion is a loose approximation of real life, in real life shadows look more seemingly random and does not apply smooth shadows on every surface.
This is why, goldeneye 64 "felt right" because the shadows seemed random (and some of them seemed off scientifically also) but it didn't make the brain feel weird, because the brain is used to weird and hard to predict shadows. Whereas ambient occlusion is too predictable so it seems off.
Address to fanboyism.
Fanboys will call me a luddite and saying "Get with the times." How dare I criticize hd graphics? Surely I need to get with the times and praise the HD graphics and realism. Surely I should praise the cutting edge.
Here is my argument to them. I am saying that your current cutting edge is the equivalent of a medieval catapult. And that HD graphics are not realistic at all, but actually unrealistic. Therefore, it is not that I am a luddite at all. I am saying the state of graphics isn't realistic or futuristic, and that it is technologically dissatisfying.
