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I can confirm everything except gamer audience concerns. I don’t game. I have worked in film production camera department, post-production and now CGI. Color gr

by gt_ 9y ago

I can confirm everything except gamer audience concerns. I don’t game. I have worked in film production camera department, post-production and now CGI. Color grading and compositing in particular are not specialties of mine, but I know the systems well, and I can confirm the technical critique in the text. This author does an impressive job of cutting out the bull and getting to the bare issues.

zeta0134 9y ago
As a gamer, I can also confirm that I tend to have a tough time with dark areas in a lot of mainstream games. If I can get the game to realize that I'm trying to look at them (usually by getting the bright sky out of my viewport so it does the "HDR adjust" fake thing) then the darks come out of the contrast floor and I can suddenly make out the detail. The problem with the game doing fake-HDR is that while it looks great in trailers (or... at the very least, looks like the engine is doing something fancy with lighting, "great"-ness notwithstanding) it doesn't match what my real eyes would do in a situation. Unlike film, a video game doesn't have control over where I'm going to point the camera. I do. And sometimes, I need to see over that ridge, but the detail in the shadows is important too, and the game camera can't see what I'm actually looking at (with my eyes) and adjust accordingly. Breath of the Wild is a great counter example, because it doesn't really try to do the HDR adjust thing at all. It doesn't really need to; sure its daylight scenes are a bit washed out, but real daylight is a bit washed out too. My eyes adjust, just like they would outside, and I can actually see what I'm doing. That's important! With games, tempting though it is to control the camera effects just like you would when shooting film, you can't control the player's actions. It's usually better for gameplay to mellow out the effects, so the player can focus on their actions without being distracted by the 'pretty' effects.
- blattimwind 9y ago
  > The problem with the game doing fake-HDR is that while it looks great in trailers (or... at the very least, looks like the engine is doing something fancy with lighting, "great"-ness notwithstanding) it doesn't match what my real eyes would do in a situation. An especially egregious offender in this category is Battlefield 1. When looking out of the driver's hatch of any vehicle, the game will randomly and chaotically fade it's "HDR" simulation between the exterior being discernible and a white rectangle (the hatch) set on a solid black background (the vehicle interior). The fade depends on miniscule adjustments in the PoV of the player, which is fixed relative to the outside world, not the vehicle, so you have to constantly track the view port. Battlefield 1 generally looks best in scenes featuring low (natural) contrast. > Yeah, and we screwed that up too. We don’t have the technical capability to run real film industry LUTs in the correct color space (The reason being that even fairly simple color correction pipelines in a real color grading tool keep a mid-range GPU pretty busy at 1920x1080 and higher resolutions).
- knodi123 9y ago
  > I tend to have a tough time with dark areas in a lot of mainstream games. If I can get the game to realize that I'm trying to look at them (usually by getting the bright sky out of my viewport so it does the "HDR adjust" fake thing) then the darks come out of the contrast floor and I can suddenly make out the detail. Of course, this is also how eyeballs work...
  - zeta0134 9y ago
    This is a valid defense! The real issue though, primarily, is that video game cameras don't emulate this well enough. My eyes don't respond nearly as fast to light changes as a video game camera does, and they're not as sensitive to small variations in the overall light level. They're also quite a bit more sensitive, especially to darkness and shadow, even in bright daylight. I find that most video game lighting exaggerates the shadows way too much. So, adjusting the curves, especially at a slow, steady rate? That might be a good idea, and should actually aid visibility if it's done right. Say, walking all the way into a dark cave should lighten things up a bit, since your real eyes (and most cameras) would do exactly that. On paper, this part of the HDR effect works, and if it's done well it enhances the gameplay rather than distracting from it. Imitating a faster, more jarring camera transition when it fits the mood, especially during cutscenes? That's fine, and the article gives some great examples of this being done well. Scaling up the contrast so that any HDR changes cause you to either lose all the detail in all of the darks, or all the detail in all of the lights? That's the problem. The effect, if it's there at all, needs to be a lot more subtle. This is partly due to limitations with the final RGB space (only 255 color values to work with and weird curves to boot) but mostly due to the fake-HDR effect just being a poor imitation of nature.
ancientworldnow 9y ago
I am a colorist and I also want to add that the technical details check out - minus the Red One being better than film. It was most decidedly worse in every way - but was almost as good which was the important thing. I recently was going back and look at One and MX footage and couldn't believe how terrible it has held up while the Alexa sensor is still great today as are the 16 and 35 scans I work with. That aside, I found the discussion about the misuse of ACES particularly interesting. It's like the completely misunderstood the tool and how it's intended to be used (which isn't uncommon with the tech unfortunately).
- gt_ 9y ago
  Yes, the bit about what the RED One was trying to do was a bit cringy but I thought it skirted around claiming it was better than film. The comparisons between the Alexa and RED One were very good, however. Coincidentally, I was doing work for Oakley as the RED One was being tested. After two test shoots with it, the director declared it B-cam and let a PA operate it, only because we couldn’t get the color right. This was action sports and the frame rate would have been useful. Even now, I am not sure much has changed. I don’t go on sets or handle much live footage these days but my observations have it that much of the production industry who could use it still lacks understanding of ACES. I have not worked with Alexa on any projects where I interacted with both camera and footage but my understanding is ARRI remains the king of blacks.

by gt_ 9y ago

zeta0134 9y ago

As a gamer, I can also confirm that I tend to have a tough time with dark areas in a lot of mainstream games. If I can get the game to realize that I'm trying to look at them (usually by getting the bright sky out of my viewport so it does the "HDR adjust" fake thing) then the darks come out of the contrast floor and I can suddenly make out the detail. The problem with the game doing fake-HDR is that while it looks great in trailers (or... at the very least, looks like the engine is doing something fancy with lighting, "great"-ness notwithstanding) it doesn't match what my real eyes would do in a situation. Unlike film, a video game doesn't have control over where I'm going to point the camera. I do. And sometimes, I need to see over that ridge, but the detail in the shadows is important too, and the game camera can't see what I'm actually looking at (with my eyes) and adjust accordingly. Breath of the Wild is a great counter example, because it doesn't really try to do the HDR adjust thing at all. It doesn't really need to; sure its daylight scenes are a bit washed out, but real daylight is a bit washed out too. My eyes adjust, just like they would outside, and I can actually see what I'm doing. That's important! With games, tempting though it is to control the camera effects just like you would when shooting film, you can't control the player's actions. It's usually better for gameplay to mellow out the effects, so the player can focus on their actions without being distracted by the 'pretty' effects.

blattimwind 9y ago
> The problem with the game doing fake-HDR is that while it looks great in trailers (or... at the very least, looks like the engine is doing something fancy with lighting, "great"-ness notwithstanding) it doesn't match what my real eyes would do in a situation. An especially egregious offender in this category is Battlefield 1. When looking out of the driver's hatch of any vehicle, the game will randomly and chaotically fade it's "HDR" simulation between the exterior being discernible and a white rectangle (the hatch) set on a solid black background (the vehicle interior). The fade depends on miniscule adjustments in the PoV of the player, which is fixed relative to the outside world, not the vehicle, so you have to constantly track the view port. Battlefield 1 generally looks best in scenes featuring low (natural) contrast. > Yeah, and we screwed that up too. We don’t have the technical capability to run real film industry LUTs in the correct color space (The reason being that even fairly simple color correction pipelines in a real color grading tool keep a mid-range GPU pretty busy at 1920x1080 and higher resolutions).
knodi123 9y ago
> I tend to have a tough time with dark areas in a lot of mainstream games. If I can get the game to realize that I'm trying to look at them (usually by getting the bright sky out of my viewport so it does the "HDR adjust" fake thing) then the darks come out of the contrast floor and I can suddenly make out the detail. Of course, this is also how eyeballs work...
- zeta0134 9y ago
  This is a valid defense! The real issue though, primarily, is that video game cameras don't emulate this well enough. My eyes don't respond nearly as fast to light changes as a video game camera does, and they're not as sensitive to small variations in the overall light level. They're also quite a bit more sensitive, especially to darkness and shadow, even in bright daylight. I find that most video game lighting exaggerates the shadows way too much. So, adjusting the curves, especially at a slow, steady rate? That might be a good idea, and should actually aid visibility if it's done right. Say, walking all the way into a dark cave should lighten things up a bit, since your real eyes (and most cameras) would do exactly that. On paper, this part of the HDR effect works, and if it's done well it enhances the gameplay rather than distracting from it. Imitating a faster, more jarring camera transition when it fits the mood, especially during cutscenes? That's fine, and the article gives some great examples of this being done well. Scaling up the contrast so that any HDR changes cause you to either lose all the detail in all of the darks, or all the detail in all of the lights? That's the problem. The effect, if it's there at all, needs to be a lot more subtle. This is partly due to limitations with the final RGB space (only 255 color values to work with and weird curves to boot) but mostly due to the fake-HDR effect just being a poor imitation of nature.

ancientworldnow 9y ago

I am a colorist and I also want to add that the technical details check out - minus the Red One being better than film. It was most decidedly worse in every way - but was almost as good which was the important thing. I recently was going back and look at One and MX footage and couldn't believe how terrible it has held up while the Alexa sensor is still great today as are the 16 and 35 scans I work with. That aside, I found the discussion about the misuse of ACES particularly interesting. It's like the completely misunderstood the tool and how it's intended to be used (which isn't uncommon with the tech unfortunately).

gt_ 9y ago
Yes, the bit about what the RED One was trying to do was a bit cringy but I thought it skirted around claiming it was better than film. The comparisons between the Alexa and RED One were very good, however. Coincidentally, I was doing work for Oakley as the RED One was being tested. After two test shoots with it, the director declared it B-cam and let a PA operate it, only because we couldn’t get the color right. This was action sports and the frame rate would have been useful. Even now, I am not sure much has changed. I don’t go on sets or handle much live footage these days but my observations have it that much of the production industry who could use it still lacks understanding of ACES. I have not worked with Alexa on any projects where I interacted with both camera and footage but my understanding is ARRI remains the king of blacks.