Plead: no depth of field please!

[SiC-Disaster]

One thing in recent games that ticks me off is the Depth of Field effect, which basically blurs out anything except the thing a developer wants the player to focus on... For example, a soldier walking along a road with the entire countryside blurred out.
It's doable in cutscenes, but they usually implement it in the gameplay as well, for example when you are looking through your ironsights, which means that if you want to see what's around your ironsights you have to put your weapon down, because you cant look around.

This is unrealistic in my opinion, since if i look through ironsights in real life, i can focus on the ironsights by squinting one eye, but if i want a better picture of the surrounding while remaining at 'fire-ready' stance, i open both eyes to look over my weapon.
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway had this as well, and it was absolutely horrible when for example i wanted to look through some foliage.
The game decided that i wanted to see the foliage instead of the enemy soldiers behind it, thus showing me the leaves in great detail but rendering my enemies a blurry mess.

Besides, if i look at something in a game, my eyes naturally blur out everything i am not looking at.
If i look at the ironsights in RO, i see everything around the ironsights in a slight blur. If you put blur in to the game as well when you are in ironsights, you basically add blur to something that is already blurred.
= Double blur, and the feeling i'm not wearing my glasses.
(bit off-topic perhaps, most Source-games have blurred menu's when they are still loading. Those are so blurred that they make me feel nauseous and make me want to throw up, no joke).

I always turn depth of field off in games when i get the option, but in my personal opinion it is a completely useless technique.
Most Unreal Engine 3 based games implement it though, but i hate how every game so far decides for you what you should focus at. If i want to look at something else, it's a blurry mess and it's just turning me off.
Now, i've seen the preview in PC Gamer and the screenshots didnt indicate any Depth of Field so far, so that makes me happy, but here's a pre-emptive thread!

 

[RedDemon]

I agree also, depth of field is the stupidest thing to put in a game, your eyes naturally do it you don't need to add it in the game.

 

[Tiger2]

Very interesting points, but I choose to reserve my opinion for the time.

 

[Kirq]

I always thought about blur as a very cool and realistic effet but I must admit You have some very strong points there Mate.

 

[Nimsky]

Agreed, blurring sucks big time in games. It's annoying, hurts the eyes, and makes the game look worse. Even in RO, which has relatively subtle bloom / HDR, it makes things that are far away look blurry. These effects also result in over-exposure of textures. So I always turn them off. It's one of the first things I do when I install a game. The worst kind of blurring is the "forced focus" one as you said.

The only blur I can live with, is rear sight blurring. But I like the RO sights as they are.

 

[Fedorov]

I agree, I'm completely against DoF blur, crap

 

[barakas]

Actually depth of field is actually more realistic than not.

Whether you think it happens or not, your eyes DONT blur what you're not focused on when looking at a screen.

Depth of field effects more realistically depict a 3D environment because when you stare at a screen, everything is the same distance, even if in the game you are meant to be looking miles away.

You may not be aware of it as much, but if you're looking at a screen and your in the game you are looking down a chasm or looking at the tip of your gun, your eyes cant tell the difference, all you can focus on is the screen in front of you, your eyes can't tell the difference unless the graphics blur it for you, thats the whole point of the effect, to do with the game graphics what should happen in real life.

Now if depth of field justs blurs everything round the edges, thats not realistic, but closer things should be clearer than things further away, and if possible, the game should calculate what you're likely to be focussing on and put that in focus.

I agree that the effect of blurring the edges during iron sights is crappy, but thats not all depth of field is.

The same goes for motion blur.

YouTube - Infinity Tech Demo: Asteroids, Physics & Motion Blur Ordinarily if you turn your head round really fast everything blurs because your eyes cant adjust to the rapid changes. When your playing a computer game, your eyes are locked in one spot, so if motion blur isn't in effect, turning really fast gives a really crappy effect, where the image starts to cut into itself because your brain can't make the moving images blur (because your vision isn't actually moving).

 

[monster]

monster is guessing that teh thread is pwnt

 

[RedDemon]

Whether you think it happens or not, your eyes DONT blur what you're not focused on when looking at a screen.

Actually yeah they do, for example look at the Top left of your screen and see if the bottom right is blurry or not, in which case it will be.

Depth of field in games does not add to the immersion at all, unless they somehow invent a way to track the movement of your eyeballs because I'm not always look where the crosshairs/is are pointing.

 

[Flogger23m]

I agree also, depth of field is the stupidest thing to put in a game, your eyes naturally do it you don't need to add it in the game.

Indeed. Waste of time to implement the feature, waste of frame rates, and it is not realistic.

 

[Futuristic_WarMachine]

I agree with you Depth of Field is really gimmicky is never implemented right.

For Example look at Brothers In Arms Hells Highway the DOF is horribly implemented in the game makes me not want to aim my weapon in Iron Sights but instead use the crosshairs.

 

[Futuristic_WarMachine]

I agree. Unrealistic feature.

 

[[TW]schneidzekk]

Regarding your sig: UE 3 is UE 3.5 is UE 3

 

[Lucan946]

I agree with the OP.

 

[Fedorov]

Will it be possible to disable it?

I REALLY don't like it.

Spoiler!

Nice job with the Maxim model btw... a pity is all blurred and can't be appreciated. =P

 

[Panzer Jager '43]

I want the blur on the rear sight etc... of the weapon when aimed, but NOT on the world.

 

[Zetsumei]

Actually depth of field is actually more realistic than not.

Whether you think it happens or not, your eyes DONT blur what you're not focused on when looking at a screen.
.

The issue is that games do not have information on what you are actually focussing. Because of this the focus point with depth of field is usually the center of your screen, even when looking at something else.

If I look at the gun my game character is holding in his hands then that should be in focus, and the outside world should be out of focus. But as games do not know what I'm looking at it will likely always show the gun blurred and the background sharp.

I want to decide for myself what I am looking at, rather than have the game deciding that I should look at objects at the same distance the centre of my screen is pointing at. I'd personally only want something like depth of field enabled if the game adds eye tracking, so it automatically (and very quickly!) changes what the vocal point is.

Eyes are very quick in being able to focus at different objects at varying distances. If you're reading a book your focus point is actually only a few words big, with your eyes able to quickly move around to get a feeling of the full picture.

In games with depth of field I often end up simply looking at blurred parts of my screen, because the game decided that I should be looking at the centre of my screen instead, and should use my mouse actually to look around. This feels highly unnatural as it somewhat stops allowing you to use your very fast eye muscles to look around and forces you to use your mouse instead. A computer monitor already only shows a fraction of the things you can see in real life, by adding depth of field you effectively lower the amount of stuff you can see on a tiny monitor even more.

 

[Bluehawk]

I hate when you're using your iron sights and lower your view so you can see over them, but then what you're looking at gets blurred because you're not aiming at it. Stalker: Call of Pripyat did that and I eventually turned it off.

 

[Flogger23m]

I want to decide for myself what I am looking at, rather than have the game deciding that I should look at objects at the same distance the centre of my screen is pointing at.

This. Your eyes already do this. Stare at the center of this text box if you bother writing a reply. You'll notice the edges of your monitor are blurred.

I can shoulder a rifle but I can move my eyes and look to the left of me to check my surroundings... and guess what? It is not blurred when I look to the left. This is just how it should be in game.

Also, that is an awesome screen shot.

 

[lyosha]

offtopic: The way the maxim trigger is being held is very odd IMO. My experience of firing a maxim is you have to hold down the safety with one thumb and fire with the other. Only if you were in a state of constant firing would you be able to put both on the trigger.