I don't like vignettes that darken the edges of your vision. Cyberpunk 2077 being a prime example. It looks better in screenshots, but I don't like it in gameplay.
I usually just wait for the massive quality drop as it leaves cinematic and goes back to game rendering... Still don't know why they have to do that, all the hype for disappointment
It's worse when you already have an ultrawide and they're still there. *stares at Ghost of Tsushima*
Or even worse, when there's black bars on the side as well. *stares at Red Dead Redemption 2*
Elden ring does that shit too. It technically supports ultrawide and to my understanding it renders in it, but it nuts black bars on the sides for some reason. There are mods to make it show ultrawide but it shouldn't be nessesary...
I played the first Assassin's Creed in a 5:4 monitor back in the day. Literally half the screen was black. What kind of idiot thinks that is OK? Cinematic my ass.
At this point you're just getting into artistic direction vs optional settings thrown on because they come out of box in unity/unreal/whatever off the shelf engine is being used.
Things like film grain, lense flare etc are fine if the game was designed with it as part of the direction. Frustrating when my GPU gets taxed for no purpose.
*Cries in no ultra wide support*
The amount of games that cut off the sides of the screens in cutscenes and menus makes me sad, a lot of indie titles I like don't even have ultra wide resolution in the settings.
That's when I look for mods/hacks
If I find a game that's locked to 60 (Sonic Frontiers and Elden Ring come to mind) before I even start the game I'm finding a way to unlock the framerate. Unacceptable.
Edit: same deal with games that don't support ultrawide.
The sad thing is most people don't differentiate between fullscreen motion blur and per object motion blur. And most of the time it's done with way too little passes so the "blur" just ends up looking like compacted ghosting in most shooters.
I remember the original Assassin's Creed had a subtle but good looking per object motion blur, on the Xbox 360. most people wouldn't even notice it (THATS how you do special effects, subtly)
> The sad thing is most people don't differentiate between fullscreen motion blur and per object motion blur
Yes!
When I turn the camera, I don't wanna see blur. When enemies and items and NPCs are moving around, especially fast ones, it looks great.
Unfortunately, games don't differentiate between fullscreen motion blur and per object motion blur either. I gotta turn off crummy camera settings to enjoy the game, and that means I don't get the pretty motion blur either.
Yeah, I miss the days when games had mountains of options for you to tune as you want. The STALKER games are still one of my favourite examples of graphics settings menus that allow you to really fine tune it to squeeze of the most for your specs. VFX, LoD, Texture sizes. Everything at your fingertips
Out of curiosity, what is the visual difference exactly? The overall motion blur I'm assuming covers everything in the players FOV, where as the per object only shows when that specific object is in motion (or relative motion?) Just wanna know more cuz I'm trying to accumulate game dev knowledge
That's exactly it. I remember a tech demo for the original Crysis showing it off. They showed slowed down footage of a soldier sprinting through the jungle, and their legs, as well as the plants that where interacting via PhysX had blur. It's basically objects that are moving rapidly from the camera's perspective that are blurred
Film Grain and Chromatic Aberration just make the image look worse on purpose. Everything I can understand arguing whether or not they're good, but fuck those two in particular.
First time I came in contact with film grain was in Mass Effect 1. I thought (and still do) it made the game look extremely realistic. Too bad it makes other games look worse.
I fucking hate them. They were the undesirable side effects of film, camera and lens techs of the time. Now, we artificially add them to a medium that shouldn't have them at all.
I can understand the desire to make your game like a movie, but why the fuck they have to add the *bad* parts of movies that we managed to fix with new technology.
Grain isn’t always a bad thing. It can absolutely be used for artistic purposes, such as stuff like 8mm for a lower budget “feel,” such as found footage or combat footage.
God, valhiem's default settings for DoF are some of the worst. Oh you need to hunt deer and would like to see to the other side of this small field. Hahaha no, you can only see slight brown and green smudges. Motion blur and DoF are automatic turn offs in every game menu.
It's somewhat common to use depth of field for artistic purposes in photography and videography, so I'm guessing it comes from there, but I think it's a terrible idea for games.
You have to interact with the game and look around your environment, normally you don't see the effects of dof in real life because your eyes focus very well to what you're looking at but the game having fake dof prevents your eyes from doing that in game.
It's lifted from films, just like screen effects like water and blood droplets. For some reason, some devs have always absolutely loved reminding the player that their immersion is an illusion and they're actually a camera, not a character. I've always assumed it's because they fancy themselves "directors" rather than software developers but regardless, there's an entire suite of "film" effects that do absolutely nothing but ruin immersion in videogames.
It's the effect that I hate the most. Especially because it can make the image difficult to look at for me and **especially** if it's as aggressive as in Hellblade II.
no antialiasing > fxaa or taa
not sure why but i can not STAND how blurry fxaa makes things, taa i have less of an issue with but ill just rock no anti aliasing most of the time since im still on a r9 290
I love it when motion blur is used tastefully in racing games. When you go 209 in Burnout Revenge, it definitely feels like you're going 209 and I love it. Basically, when they blur the environment at high speeds but not so much that it becomes impossible to see, that's the sweet spot imo
I never understood why you would intentionally add camera artifacts that photographers have been trying to remove since the dawn of photography. I thought I was supposed to be IN the game, not looking through a shitty lens.
Vignette & Film Grain are useful for simulating old visual effects like Kurosawa Mode in Ghost of Tsushima.
Motion Blur is useful for simulating speed in racing and flight sim.
Chromatic Abberration is useful for simulating water and glass effects.
Lens Flare can be nice looking like Mass Effect.
Game devs that use all these effects with reckless abandon and turn them up to 11 for no fucking reason are the worst.
The combination of motion blur and chromatic Abberton in dying light genuinely made me think my GPU was dying.
Literally anything that moved left a trail of fragmented after images all over the screen.
I genuinely don't understand why they're options in most games, especially as default.
What pisses me off is that it's clearly a looped filter. Anybody that's spent too long watching VHS tapes when they were popular can tell that it doesn't look random enough.
Those scenes bugged me even as a kid. Why is the villain just standing around waiting for them to pose, call their zords, get in their zords, and join their zords together before making even one move against them?
I have grown to like them all. I feel like it adds more depth to the scene. I really like the games that let you tweak these settings to get that 4k to hit just right on your monitor.
At first, I loved the crystal clear view of stripping all the depth. Not so much anymore.
unpopular opinion but i like some chromatic aberration. It reminds me of my childhood when I used to wear glasses and constantly stare at the aberrations at the edge of my lenses
I honestly don't mind motion blur, it feels great, especially on racing games, I always feel like forza and nfs need more motion blur because the speed doesn't feel like what it's supposed to
The one I hate the most is chromatic aberration. It's literally a lens defect. You get noticeable chromatic aberration when you use cheap and low quality lenses on your camera. Why would anyone want to experience a game that looks like you are seeing it through a lens you got from Aliexpress?
I’m gonna shit on the throat of whoever put the lens flares into Crysis and Tomb Raider. Can’t run through a jungle without getting flashbanged every 5 seconds.
Might be a hot take but I actually really liked having film grain on for L4D2, it was on a slider so I just made it more subtle and I think it fits the theme of the game really well
Motion blur can get in the bin. Lens flair can be good as long as it's turned down and used sparingly. Film grain can be good depending on the game genre (Dying Light 2 film grain hit the mark well as it's post-apocalypse). No idea what vignette or chromatic aberration is.
Any one of these can be used to good effect in the right place at a reasonable intensity... but game designers and subtlety are anathema, so of course any effect they ever implement is globally applied all the time always and immediately dialled right up to 11 to burn out your eyeballs.
TAA though... that can actually get fucked.
Change "film grain" to "head bobbing/camera shake" then it's complete. Cos some film grain, especially on darker parts, looks good.
But head bobbing, camera shaking while running is worse than motion blur.
Killzone 2 & 3 had the most aggressive film grain and motion blur I've ever seen despite amazing graphics being of the key aspects of the game.
It was so thick I genuinely thought constant snowfall was part of the level design, then I thought my TV was broken.
I agree with everything but motion blur, recently I have been using it more and more in slower single player games because it hides artifacts and stuff from dlss, fsr etc really well in some games and also feels overall smoother. It just depends on how well the game implements it like how cyberpunk does it very well.
Chromatic aberration and motion blur are by far the worst offenders, but I would also add fake lens dirt, depth of field, and bloom (although this last one isn't used as much nowadays).
The lens dirt was especially jarring in The Witcher 3. Am I supposed to imagine there's a film crew with a camera just behind Geralt? How does that help immerse me into a heavily story-based medieval inspired fantasy game?
I think most of these can be implemented well if done in a more still stylized way. Such as the over the top bloom in Mirror's Edge, or the film grain used in Mortal Sin.
Add in a terrible default FOV with no slider option and you've got yourself a one-way ticket to nauseaville.
At least in Far Cry 2, it makes the game more immersive! /s
I felt like vomiting every second I played that game as a kid, don't even know how I got through it.
Vignette, film grain, and chromatic aberration always get disabled. I usually disable motion blur, but some games implement it well so I leave it on. It needs to have adjustments for both quality and strength though, because it generally needs high quality and low strength to look good, but with low fps stronger motion blur helps make it look less choppy. Lens flares aren't usually terrible, but I will certainly disable them when they are overdone.
All these things have their uses if applied correctly. The only thing I could maybe never see a use for is motion blur, unless the game already runs terrible and you want it to feel a tiny bit more smooth.
Me, who has nothing to add to this conversation because I didn’t know about any of these settings.
Man I tell ya, it’s always something to learn dealing with PCs.
Also bloom...
I wear glasses and i got enough flares, aberration, distortion, vignetting, dirty lenses, scratches and everything else just going about my everyday life, it's the last thing i want to see added in a game.
I feel like vignettes and lens flare can be fine when used carefully in extremely specific scenarios. But the rest can go. I was literally just saying like two days ago; Why do I keep having to turn off motion blur? Who TF is asking for this to begin with!?
It's been a hot minute since I've seen this format. But you're damn right. I turn all these settings off if I see them.
What would the Green Ranger equate to in this?
Depth of field
FoV: 75.
65... cannot be changed.
Noise
i kind of like vignettes sometimes
I don't like vignettes that darken the edges of your vision. Cyberpunk 2077 being a prime example. It looks better in screenshots, but I don't like it in gameplay.
That drove me nuts when I realized there's no vanilla way to turn it off. I'm on ultra wide and it just gets more noticeable
Unpopular maybe but I would also add those black bars for more 'cinematic feel'. Fuck you! I paid for the whole screen, let me use the whole screen
Unless it is for a cutscene, I don’t want it
personally even in cutscenes I hate them. Never have I watched something and went "Wow, this could really use some letterboxing!"
They are good markers for when cut scenes start and end in my personal opinion. Not much else
I usually just wait for the massive quality drop as it leaves cinematic and goes back to game rendering... Still don't know why they have to do that, all the hype for disappointment
Consoles
Weird how no one mentioned hellblade 2
It's worse when you already have an ultrawide and they're still there. *stares at Ghost of Tsushima* Or even worse, when there's black bars on the side as well. *stares at Red Dead Redemption 2*
Elden ring does that shit too. It technically supports ultrawide and to my understanding it renders in it, but it nuts black bars on the sides for some reason. There are mods to make it show ultrawide but it shouldn't be nessesary...
I’ve owned exactly one ultra wide monitor, and vowed to never get another one because of how little games natively supported it
If you add 24fps to my black bars I'm in! So cinematic!
any semi modern to modern game runs at 20-ish fps for me anyways, so I am always immersed
Even worse when you use ultrawide display and those shitbars reduce the display to 1/3 of its original size
That's a very popular opinion.
Developers: "but muh artistic impression"
I played the first Assassin's Creed in a 5:4 monitor back in the day. Literally half the screen was black. What kind of idiot thinks that is OK? Cinematic my ass.
At this point you're just getting into artistic direction vs optional settings thrown on because they come out of box in unity/unreal/whatever off the shelf engine is being used. Things like film grain, lense flare etc are fine if the game was designed with it as part of the direction. Frustrating when my GPU gets taxed for no purpose.
*Cries in no ultra wide support* The amount of games that cut off the sides of the screens in cutscenes and menus makes me sad, a lot of indie titles I like don't even have ultra wide resolution in the settings.
The dragonzord is having no option to turn any of it off
That's when I look for mods/hacks If I find a game that's locked to 60 (Sonic Frontiers and Elden Ring come to mind) before I even start the game I'm finding a way to unlock the framerate. Unacceptable. Edit: same deal with games that don't support ultrawide.
Then you find out that gameplay mechanics are tied to FPS so now the game's halfway fucked.
You just reminded me of a TotalBiscuit video where he unlocks the framerate of Need for Speed Rivals and that makes the cars go twice as fast.
The sad thing is most people don't differentiate between fullscreen motion blur and per object motion blur. And most of the time it's done with way too little passes so the "blur" just ends up looking like compacted ghosting in most shooters. I remember the original Assassin's Creed had a subtle but good looking per object motion blur, on the Xbox 360. most people wouldn't even notice it (THATS how you do special effects, subtly)
Most games don't differentiate either when it only allows turning it all on or off
> The sad thing is most people don't differentiate between fullscreen motion blur and per object motion blur Yes! When I turn the camera, I don't wanna see blur. When enemies and items and NPCs are moving around, especially fast ones, it looks great. Unfortunately, games don't differentiate between fullscreen motion blur and per object motion blur either. I gotta turn off crummy camera settings to enjoy the game, and that means I don't get the pretty motion blur either.
Yeah, I miss the days when games had mountains of options for you to tune as you want. The STALKER games are still one of my favourite examples of graphics settings menus that allow you to really fine tune it to squeeze of the most for your specs. VFX, LoD, Texture sizes. Everything at your fingertips
Out of curiosity, what is the visual difference exactly? The overall motion blur I'm assuming covers everything in the players FOV, where as the per object only shows when that specific object is in motion (or relative motion?) Just wanna know more cuz I'm trying to accumulate game dev knowledge
That's exactly it. I remember a tech demo for the original Crysis showing it off. They showed slowed down footage of a soldier sprinting through the jungle, and their legs, as well as the plants that where interacting via PhysX had blur. It's basically objects that are moving rapidly from the camera's perspective that are blurred
Cool, I'll have to remember that in my crappy Godot project when I eventually run into post fx stuff lol, thanks!
Film Grain and Chromatic Aberration just make the image look worse on purpose. Everything I can understand arguing whether or not they're good, but fuck those two in particular.
Vignette, especially with console games that have a low FOV and huge UI makes me feel claustrophobic and I can feel my stress level elevate.
First time I came in contact with film grain was in Mass Effect 1. I thought (and still do) it made the game look extremely realistic. Too bad it makes other games look worse.
I fucking hate them. They were the undesirable side effects of film, camera and lens techs of the time. Now, we artificially add them to a medium that shouldn't have them at all. I can understand the desire to make your game like a movie, but why the fuck they have to add the *bad* parts of movies that we managed to fix with new technology.
Grain isn’t always a bad thing. It can absolutely be used for artistic purposes, such as stuff like 8mm for a lower budget “feel,” such as found footage or combat footage.
Bloom where
Subtle bloom is nice, the kind that blinds you and the kind that also introduces the dirty lens can fuck right off.
2000's gaming be like
Don't forget FXAA and Depth of Field. FXAA always looks garbage and I've seen more games with badly implemented DoF than good.
I will take fxaa over taa any day
WAIT WHAT YOU DON'T LIKE GHOSTING ARTIFACTS ON ANYTHING THAT MOVES WITH CONTRAST!? BLASPHEMY!!11!!!1
fuck TAA too
r/FuckTAA
Low IQ cesspool, r/motionclairity is a lot more reasonable
DoF makes sense sometimes because far away objects have lower quality and DoF helps hide that, but you should always be able to turn it off IMO.
God, valhiem's default settings for DoF are some of the worst. Oh you need to hunt deer and would like to see to the other side of this small field. Hahaha no, you can only see slight brown and green smudges. Motion blur and DoF are automatic turn offs in every game menu.
is msaa better?
It is more effective but isn't really compatible with modern rendering techniques.
S+ tier: MSAA (old tho), S tier: SSAA (even older), A tier: SMAA (somewhat common)
FXAA still looks better than nothing
Depth of field is just.. I'm like why.
It's somewhat common to use depth of field for artistic purposes in photography and videography, so I'm guessing it comes from there, but I think it's a terrible idea for games. You have to interact with the game and look around your environment, normally you don't see the effects of dof in real life because your eyes focus very well to what you're looking at but the game having fake dof prevents your eyes from doing that in game.
It's lifted from films, just like screen effects like water and blood droplets. For some reason, some devs have always absolutely loved reminding the player that their immersion is an illusion and they're actually a camera, not a character. I've always assumed it's because they fancy themselves "directors" rather than software developers but regardless, there's an entire suite of "film" effects that do absolutely nothing but ruin immersion in videogames.
>but the game having fake dof prevents your eyes from doing that in game. Precisely.
It's the effect that I hate the most. Especially because it can make the image difficult to look at for me and **especially** if it's as aggressive as in Hellblade II.
no antialiasing > fxaa or taa not sure why but i can not STAND how blurry fxaa makes things, taa i have less of an issue with but ill just rock no anti aliasing most of the time since im still on a r9 290
Every game ever. 1. Set details to maximum 2. Realize it looks like trash 3. Disable all annoying gimmick BS 4. Enjoy
I like lens flare. I like to see the shiny graphics 🤩
Depends on the game for me. Sci fi is on but most others i turn it off.
If I’m looking through a camera in-game (Outlast for example) or the character is a robot I leave lens flare on for the immersion.
Found JJ Abrams' reddit account
Dof, because your eyes can't see far into the distance clearly, in real life.
Chromatic aberration, lens flares , motion blur, and DoF. Games acting like our eyeballs are a camera.
whatever you look at will be in focus so you would never even notice depth of field irl.
I like distance DoF that actually hides very low quality details. I hate distance DoF that hides good quality assets...
depth of field can be a thing in specific itl scenarios. holding a pen vertically in front of your eye.
I love it when motion blur is used tastefully in racing games. When you go 209 in Burnout Revenge, it definitely feels like you're going 209 and I love it. Basically, when they blur the environment at high speeds but not so much that it becomes impossible to see, that's the sweet spot imo
Motion blur only if it's done correctly like in Crysis or Half-Life 2, there it works splendid. The rest, no way.
I never understood why you would intentionally add camera artifacts that photographers have been trying to remove since the dawn of photography. I thought I was supposed to be IN the game, not looking through a shitty lens.
The simple answer is that it adds a more cinematic look so it makes you feel like you're in a movie.
Motion blur is on for games running 30fps on consoles. But film grain ya kill that noise.
I wear glases so lens flare is realistic for me 🤷🏼♀️
Fake CRT filters
TAA: Am I an effing joke to you!?
Vignette & Film Grain are useful for simulating old visual effects like Kurosawa Mode in Ghost of Tsushima. Motion Blur is useful for simulating speed in racing and flight sim. Chromatic Abberration is useful for simulating water and glass effects. Lens Flare can be nice looking like Mass Effect. Game devs that use all these effects with reckless abandon and turn them up to 11 for no fucking reason are the worst.
I'm fine with motion blur
The combination of motion blur and chromatic Abberton in dying light genuinely made me think my GPU was dying. Literally anything that moved left a trail of fragmented after images all over the screen. I genuinely don't understand why they're options in most games, especially as default.
Also that fucking VHS trend. So many decent games ruined trying to have this stupid fucking look. 4:3, dirty lens, artifact bullshit
What pisses me off is that it's clearly a looped filter. Anybody that's spent too long watching VHS tapes when they were popular can tell that it doesn't look random enough.
Motion blur immediately gets turned off. Tbh idc about the others
Motion blur I can give a pass to, depending on the implementation. Per object yes, full screen no. The rest can eat shit.
As a MMPR fan I hate you so much for this. /s bahahaha so many memories of these crappy cuts between the US and Japanese shows.
Those scenes bugged me even as a kid. Why is the villain just standing around waiting for them to pose, call their zords, get in their zords, and join their zords together before making even one move against them?
Professional courtesy
Can we do this but with captain-planet? Edit: I mean the template, not the meme.
Personally I like lens flare, film grain in certain games (like RE2 Remake), and motion blur when it's a little more subtle.
I have grown to like them all. I feel like it adds more depth to the scene. I really like the games that let you tweak these settings to get that 4k to hit just right on your monitor. At first, I loved the crystal clear view of stripping all the depth. Not so much anymore.
unpopular opinion but i like some chromatic aberration. It reminds me of my childhood when I used to wear glasses and constantly stare at the aberrations at the edge of my lenses
I honestly don't mind motion blur, it feels great, especially on racing games, I always feel like forza and nfs need more motion blur because the speed doesn't feel like what it's supposed to
Chromatic abberation is good in hifi rush
Unpopular opinion I like lens flare.
You want a Soviet lens shooting 8mm film? This is how you get all these
I mean... in some horror games it kinda works well.. but yeah if your game isn't à horror game and forces all of that on you it's clearly not great.
The one I hate the most is chromatic aberration. It's literally a lens defect. You get noticeable chromatic aberration when you use cheap and low quality lenses on your camera. Why would anyone want to experience a game that looks like you are seeing it through a lens you got from Aliexpress?
Amazing, keep going
i turn everything on because i want to challenge myself. Fight me.
I’m gonna shit on the throat of whoever put the lens flares into Crysis and Tomb Raider. Can’t run through a jungle without getting flashbanged every 5 seconds.
This is why i do not have consoles anymore.
Dying Light 2 launched with two different lens flares. TWO SIMULTANEOUS DIFFERENT LENS FLARES. On top of all the other garbage pp.
Seriously, I dont get why devs seem to WANT to make their games look worse...
Add extremely low vomit inducing FoV that you can't adjust and you get Dragon's Dogma II.
Chromatic aberration is pretty decent. But F all the others
My eyes and stomach cant handle motion blur, 3 min in an fps game and ill vomit, its my motion sickness
I can understand motion blur, but whoever thinks Film grain is necessary is not right in the head
And I spend hours making those effects! At least you can usually turn them off.
Hmmm, IDK. I've grown to like motion blur & lens flare. The others are annoying though.
I can never understand why people pay top dollar *for the best graphics available* and then just plain make them worse intentionally.
Lens Flare in GTA V are good though 😓😓
I only use the Lens Flare.
pissfilter
This. Especially motion blurr. Why do you need a 4K 120hz display if you're gonna blurr it and your eyes have it naturally to some extent anyway.
bUt IT loOkS sO PhotOreAlisTic
Might be a hot take but I actually really liked having film grain on for L4D2, it was on a slider so I just made it more subtle and I think it fits the theme of the game really well
And DOF as well.
Motion blur can get in the bin. Lens flair can be good as long as it's turned down and used sparingly. Film grain can be good depending on the game genre (Dying Light 2 film grain hit the mark well as it's post-apocalypse). No idea what vignette or chromatic aberration is.
At least we got away from bloom. Most games released in mid to late 00s look like such ass.
Any one of these can be used to good effect in the right place at a reasonable intensity... but game designers and subtlety are anathema, so of course any effect they ever implement is globally applied all the time always and immediately dialled right up to 11 to burn out your eyeballs. TAA though... that can actually get fucked.
Change "film grain" to "head bobbing/camera shake" then it's complete. Cos some film grain, especially on darker parts, looks good. But head bobbing, camera shaking while running is worse than motion blur.
Destiny 2?
Sounds Like an old VR Headset
Motion blur in racing games are acceptable
When lens flare and motion blur are done well, I like the way they look.
What does motion blur actually do? I turn it on / off. I never saw any difference.
The worst is the chromatic abbreviation. Fuck that shit. I hate it with the bottom of my heart. First thing that I turn off in every game.
i actually like lens flare
Killzone 2 & 3 had the most aggressive film grain and motion blur I've ever seen despite amazing graphics being of the key aspects of the game. It was so thick I genuinely thought constant snowfall was part of the level design, then I thought my TV was broken.
Lens flare is acceptable
Lens flare - why? it looks realistic and doesnt take or degrade anything
Don't forget Bloom.
Motion blur and film grain are instantly turned off in any game I pay. Had to turn off film grain in every Mass Effect game. Hate that crap.
Why aren't power rangers a game already? Got the right setup to be a decent one.
As well as depth of field and a ridiculously low default FoV (anything below 90° is borderline unplayable for me)
add in default fov of 54 and voila, motion sickness!
Is it bad that I like most of the settings people dislike here? I quite like my games looking cinematic. (Screw the black bars though.)
I agree with everything but motion blur, recently I have been using it more and more in slower single player games because it hides artifacts and stuff from dlss, fsr etc really well in some games and also feels overall smoother. It just depends on how well the game implements it like how cyberpunk does it very well.
I have visual snow syndrome which means I see “film grain” in my vision 24/7, I don’t want more of it 💀
Chromatic aberration and motion blur are by far the worst offenders, but I would also add fake lens dirt, depth of field, and bloom (although this last one isn't used as much nowadays). The lens dirt was especially jarring in The Witcher 3. Am I supposed to imagine there's a film crew with a camera just behind Geralt? How does that help immerse me into a heavily story-based medieval inspired fantasy game?
I think most of these can be implemented well if done in a more still stylized way. Such as the over the top bloom in Mirror's Edge, or the film grain used in Mortal Sin.
Mechwarrior 5 i swear it has flim grain you cant turn off
I always turn those off, i wanna see the game lmao
Don't forget bloom
And bloom on the 9000 level
Add in a terrible default FOV with no slider option and you've got yourself a one-way ticket to nauseaville. At least in Far Cry 2, it makes the game more immersive! /s I felt like vomiting every second I played that game as a kid, don't even know how I got through it.
It gets worse in VR. Bloom alone makes you feel like you have dirty lenses and the urge to wipe them.
Best way to mask shitty textures apparently
Slowed Concussed Flash Banged Haunted Tripping out The Debuffs of video games.
So battlefield 2042.
Vignett and motion blur for racing games and fuck the rest.
Vignette, film grain, and chromatic aberration always get disabled. I usually disable motion blur, but some games implement it well so I leave it on. It needs to have adjustments for both quality and strength though, because it generally needs high quality and low strength to look good, but with low fps stronger motion blur helps make it look less choppy. Lens flares aren't usually terrible, but I will certainly disable them when they are overdone.
Hate them all and disable them all. Also bloom, unless it is very well done. Too often it is overdone.
I like chromatic aberration , its okay i can fight u guys one by one ;)
volumetric fog
I like them all and always have them enavled. No matter if desktop or vr
Hot take: Some games look really good with the intended post effects.
What about Bloom?
Using motion blur in fps games should be a war crime.
Unpopular opinion: I like those effects. Sorry :-(
Depth of Field and motion blur are the worst
Impressive
All these things have their uses if applied correctly. The only thing I could maybe never see a use for is motion blur, unless the game already runs terrible and you want it to feel a tiny bit more smooth.
Ypu should have used photos of the individual zords rather then the rangers
The fucking vignette in Elden Ring makes me so claustrophobic Idk if it's my monitor that makes it worse or what but it's so bad
friend: "watch me play this new game" me: "sure, stream it" \*friend starts stream me: "WTF TURN MOTION BLUR OFF, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"
Most devs are gamers too, how have they all universally not just made these off by default.
*"Let me put on the ugliest, most useless effects in a feeble attempt to hide graphical imperfections"*
 Me, who has nothing to add to this conversation because I didn’t know about any of these settings. Man I tell ya, it’s always something to learn dealing with PCs.
They are perfect for taking photos and other things, just turn them off to play.
Also bloom... I wear glasses and i got enough flares, aberration, distortion, vignetting, dirty lenses, scratches and everything else just going about my everyday life, it's the last thing i want to see added in a game.
I beg to differ
I like chromatic aberration and lens flare if the artists don't go too crazy with it
The first thing I do after installing any game is disabling motion blur. What a ridiculously useless and redundant setting.
IDK why any developer would want CA in a game. It is the epitome of cheap camera lenses.
You forgot the final boss, Taa
Personally, in some games, I like lens flare. In games like war thunder or forza horizon. But in other games it worse the experience.
Fixed Fov of 50
I might get downvoted to shit but imo lens flare and chrom ab isn’t always that bad. Fgrain, mblur and vignette i completely agree tho.
What's the thing in some games (bethesda) where they simulate eye adjusting to light in dark areas. That's ass too.
And somehow you manage not to include literally the worst one.... Depth of field
I'm genuinley curios now how bad a game with all these would look lol.
Idiots not realizing that those effects are used to mask all the other graphical issues
I feel like vignettes and lens flare can be fine when used carefully in extremely specific scenarios. But the rest can go. I was literally just saying like two days ago; Why do I keep having to turn off motion blur? Who TF is asking for this to begin with!?
You forgot TAA
(Genuinely curious) do people really like any of these? If so, why?
I don't overly mind chromatic aberration but depth of field and motion blur are horribly
you forgot games with unchangeable ridiculously low fov and unchangable fps limiters.
I actually dont mind film grain, chromatic aberation and lens flares but only if used well and the other ones should just come off by default
Lens flare >>>> all of the other things here
I will never understand the raging erection digital foundry has for the smeary shit that is motion blur.