HDRI Glow is a waste

I forget who said it, but someone has said, "HDR is the new lens flare" and damn he couldn't be more correct. I think for the next year or so we'll see HDR blooms go off the charts, but after that it'll cool down, esp. after hearing reactions from people about it.

Remember the lens flare? Remember how it showed up in everything?

Yeah, it's kinda like that.

But I wouldn't go so far as to call it a waste. It may be overused, but when used right, it really can look very nice.

Just because some people overdo it doesn't make it a total waste.

EDIT: Heh...Cypher made the lens flare comment first. Curse you and your quick fingers!

The HDR in Day of Defeat: Source I though was pretty cool. It gets annoying though, 'cause it seems like its constantly changing the brightness level of my monitor or something. It also isn't worth the amount that is slows the game down, so I disable it.

Prince of Persia did it and now anything without HDR bloom is shite. The funny thing is, just like lens flare, bloom DOESN'T HAPPEN in real life. It's something that happens to certain cameras, not to human eyes.

Well in terms of entertainment, its more accurate to use camera effects rather than eye effects. What the end user sees on the screen is more likely to be associated to what a camera will pick up rather than real life. Plus it could help suspend disbelief, but not when it becomes distracting. Its just annoying to see tech demos where they blatantly glare at the HDRI glow effect to show off that they have it in their engine. Its so tacky and stupid. I guess it is like the lens flare. I remember seeing tech demos where they'd intentionally look at the sky so you could see the lens flare. ugh...

I hate you.

I think it looks good when used subtley, say half the intensity of mittens' screenshots. Especially on terrain.

Not even half. I think mittens' HDR looks great.

I agree, most games nowadays have a rediculously high HDR exposure setting...

When overused, it's annoying, but a couple of games have used it to great effect, Prince of Persia SOT, Halo 2, and Fable.

It seems like a good idea; it's based on the sensitivity of the human eye. When games make everything look like they're made of metal and coated in gloss with a spotlight shining on them, though, it gets to be too much.

Oddly enough, Age of Empires 3 has a RIDICULOUSLY HIGH bloom effect (I don't believe it's HDR, though I could be wrong). Seriously, it's way, way overkill.

Yet, somehow, I think it looks fantastic for the game. This makes my braincells hurt.

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Original post by Sneftel Prince of Persia did it and now anything without HDR bloom is shite. The funny thing is, just like lens flare, bloom DOESN'T HAPPEN in real life. It's something that happens to certain cameras, not to human eyes.

Are you sure that blooming doesn't happen in real life? For me, bright lights don't seem to have defined edges. If I look at the sun, or at a street light, or into a flashlight, it seems to have a glow around it. Is that something different? Perhaps it's just the light reflecting off the particles in the air aurrounding the light source, but it doesn't seem that that can account for all of it, because usually (especially with street lights) I see distinct "glow rays" that are very 2-dimensional in that no matter what angle I look at the light from, the rays appear the same as though they are some sort of 2D texture on a plane that always faces me.

Could that possibly have to do with anisotropy? I wear glasses, but I THINK I still see these rays when my glasses are off. Maybe it is caused by my eye lens?

I know that, when I'm in my car, there is usually an additional ray of light that seems much longer than the others, that radiates from the light source and seems to "touch" my windsheild. As I drive my car down the road, this ray seems to move along with me (with one end of the ray at the light source and the other at the same spot on my windsheild) until the light is out of view. I'm pretty sure this particular ray has to do with the anisotropic properties of the windsheild glass.

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Original post by CpMan When overused, it's annoying, but a couple of games have used it to great effect, Prince of Persia SOT, Halo 2, and Fable.

Metroid Prime 2!!!



That's probably just a flare, huh?

Def Jam: Fight for NY used it on the characters. I thought it was well done and adds a nice look to the scene. But it looked best when the lights were white. Some of the clubs / fight locations had red or pink lights, and it detracted from the graphics having pink blurs being blended over everything.

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Original post by uncle_rico Quote: Original post by Sneftel Prince of Persia did it and now anything without HDR bloom is shite. The funny thing is, just like lens flare, bloom DOESN'T HAPPEN in real life. It's something that happens to certain cameras, not to human eyes. Are you sure that blooming doesn't happen in real life? For me, bright lights don't seem to have defined edges. If I look at the sun, or at a street light, or into a flashlight, it seems to have a glow around it. Is that something different? Perhaps it's just the light reflecting off the particles in the air aurrounding the light source, but it doesn't seem that that can account for all of it, because usually (especially with street lights) I see distinct "glow rays" that are very 2-dimensional in that no matter what angle I look at the light from, the rays appear the same as though they are some sort of 2D texture on a plane that always faces me. Could that possibly have to do with anisotropy? I wear glasses, but I THINK I still see these rays when my glasses are off. Maybe it is caused by my eye lens? I know that, when I'm in my car, there is usually an additional ray of light that seems much longer than the others, that radiates from the light source and seems to "touch" my windsheild. As I drive my car down the road, this ray seems to move along with me (with one end of the ray at the light source and the other at the same spot on my windsheild) until the light is out of view. I'm pretty sure this particular ray has to do with the anisotropic properties of the windsheild glass.

Yeah, this illusion is what you could call "Relative Lighting", similar to relative motions. When you move you have a velocity, the only thing you feel is acceleration. Similar with light, when you move, it seems to move with you. In case of street light's rays following you, it's actually a sphere of radiance, but you're occupying one point, so all you see is a ray from you to the light source. At a distance, it looks 2D because in the middle it's more dense, and looks like it fades out. This is actually density of light per measurement, and you add it up. Eye illusions are cool in my opinion. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say

Part of the problem is a marketing thing - some people who really shouldn't be in positions of power think that if they don't use the effect it will harm public perception of the game (because people would think the team isn't competent enough to implement it or something).

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Original post by uncle_rico Are you sure that blooming doesn't happen in real life? For me, bright lights don't seem to have defined edges. If I look at the sun, or at a street light, or into a flashlight, it seems to have a glow around it. Is that something different? Perhaps it's just the light reflecting off the particles in the air aurrounding the light source, but it doesn't seem that that can account for all of it, because usually (especially with street lights) I see distinct "glow rays" that are very 2-dimensional in that no matter what angle I look at the light from, the rays appear the same as though they are some sort of 2D texture on a plane that always faces me.

Atmospheric effects. If it were indeed your eye causing bloom, the bloom radius (that is, the angle of your vision subtended by the bloom) would be the same regardless of the streetlight's distance from you, causing distant streetlights to appear to have relatively large blooms and nearby streetlights to have relatively small ones. I suppose it's possible that some eyeglass coatings could cause bloom effects, but it seems unlikely.

There is one form of "bloom" that you can see, and that is one which is most visible when you see out-of-focus small bright lights in a dark scene (a good example is very distant streetlights at night when you are focusing on an object a foot in front of you). The out-of-focus rays from the light refract off different portions of your cornea, and imperfections in the cornea appear as bright and dark lines and spots in the otherwise circular lighted spot which the streetlight produces. This isn't really bloom, though, so much as depth of field combined with an imperfect lens.

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I know that, when I'm in my car, there is usually an additional ray of light that seems much longer than the others, that radiates from the light source and seems to "touch" my windsheild. As I drive my car down the road, this ray seems to move along with me (with one end of the ray at the light source and the other at the same spot on my windsheild) until the light is out of view. I'm pretty sure this particular ray has to do with the anisotropic properties of the windsheild glass.

This is caused by minute scratches in the windshield. It's a cool effect. [grin]

Thanks guys. Those explanations are wonderful.

There is another thing I just _have_ to ask about. When I was a kid, I used to swim in my grandparents pool, sometimes for 8 hours at a time. I would wear no goggles and I would keep my eyes open underwater. After a while, this made my eyes very bloodshot and dry, probably because of the chemicals in the water and perhaps there is also some loss of water in the eye due to osmosis.

After a while of this, my vision would actually get cloudy. It was not so much blurry as it was cloudy, in that the image was relatively sharp however it seemed to have decreased contrast.

One thing I always noticed is that lights would have a sort of "glow disc" that actually looked like a bazillion tiny rays of light, all of equal length, radiating uniformly from the light source, and there would be this rainbow halo around it.

Do you know what that was?

If you're not sure what i'm describing, I can try and draw a picture when I get home.