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Why do modern games have pixelated, “fuzzy” effects when movement happens?

ScHlAuChi

Member
I literally can't stomach watching this for more than a few minutes... my head hurts trying to understand his English. I had to skip back multiple times within the first few minutes to get what he said
if there's a summary of what he says or a transcript I'll read it...
TLDW: TI is talking mostly BS

then maybe the goal should have been simply perfecting what was done on PS4, maximise performance and image quality, as well as temporal stability.
The mainstream consumer doesnt care about that - they want nicer looking graphics.

it's clearly not feasible to run all the shit that devs want to run on these consoles.
the most pleasing looking games this gen are games that are basically PS4 games with slight enhancements where it works.

Spider-Man 2 for example. as much as I think it's an absolutely awfully designed game. in terms of its presentation it did everything correctly. it uses tech that's basically just enhanced PS4 graphics, and used raytracing to replace the worst aspects of these PS4 graphics, the Screen Space Reflections.
Ratchet & Clank did basically the same. it used the stronger GPU to add more details and replace SSR.
Those games use tech that was completey impossible on previous generations, so it isnt just "enhanced PS4 graphics"
It is the simulation complexity in general that is much higher - more NPCs, more particles, more physics etc.

oh yeah, we have such great dynamic lighting now. GI that fizzles, blobs of light leaking through due to the low quality RT used... blotches of light and dark dancing around walls that can't be cleaned up by the denoisers because there's just not enough information there to create a coherent image.
It might not be perfect yet, but going back to baked lighting is completely impractical.

and all of this often in games that have no or very limited dynamic lights and/or no dynamically changing time of day.
Examples?

I remember walking into the bar in the beginning of SH2 Remake, and literally the entire bar counter was full of disgusting RT artifacts from the red light of the save point...
at that point I instantly turned the game off and looked for mods to fix it as much as possible.
I will never understand how anyone can prefer "more advanced" methods that are completely unstable over older methods that are stable and have dramatically less artifacts... especially when the gains are as small as we see in current gen games.
I´m sorry, but if that is enough for you to stop, then I dont see how you can ever have fun playing ANY game.
Graphics isnt everything!
 

kevboard

Member
TLDW: TI is talking mostly BS

ok then...


The mainstream consumer doesnt care about that - they want nicer looking graphics.

the mainstream consumer plays Fortnite in the performance renderer mode where the game uses Mobile version assets and has no shadows...


Those games use tech that was completey impossible on previous generations, so it isnt just "enhanced PS4 graphics"
It is the simulation complexity in general that is much higher - more NPCs, more particles, more physics etc.

it wasn't impossible to use any given thing in Spider-Man 2 on PS4. they simply increased the complexity of what was already there. the complexity wouldn't be possible, the underlying tech however was still mostly based on what games did on PS4.
this isn't comparable with games adding Lumen or Nanite.

the only thing Insomniac added to their games that wouldn't be feasible even in reduced forms are the RT reflections, and those replaced something that was the most temporally unstable part of their presentation on PS4, the Screen Space Reflections.

so they took what was there, pushed it a bit to use the new hardware, and added performance oriented RT reflections that are a perfect fit for a game where you are constantly around highly reflective buildings. and they were able to while running at above 1440p 60fps most of the time as well.


meanwhile Silent Hill 2 uses Lumen GI in a mostly static game and ridiculously low quality Lumen reflections where literal cubemaps would have been superior in their presentation.
and all that at fucked up low resolutions and unstable performance

a huge difference in approaches to use the current hardware.


It might not be perfect yet, but going back to baked lighting is completely impractical.

then wait until it's better?
also baked lighting isn't the only answer. there was real time dynamic lighting on PS4... fuck on 360 even.

Crytek's SVOGI runs on the fucking Switch even. and looks fine.
indirect light bounces without baking, on the Switch...
do they use a very low precision version on Switch? yeah... but extrapolate what is possible with a voxel based GI solution on a mobile chip, to what would be possible if properly utilised on a 10+ TFLOPS RDNA2 GPU.
SVOGI has no RT boiling, no flickering blotches of shadowed areas... it can have light leakage, but way less unpleasant than Lumen also has for example, where it's a constant shimmer instead of it being a bit too light



Examples?

Silent Hill 2, Jedi Survivor, Immortals of Aveum... I mean, most games that use Lumen tbh.

and yes I know Jedi is using UE4 RT not lumen, but it was still unnecessary... which funnily enough is proven by their own game on PC, where you can turn RT completely off and it still looks totally fine.


I´m sorry, but if that is enough for you to stop, then I dont see how you can ever have fun playing ANY game.
Graphics isnt everything!

if a game looks broken, yes, it's enough for me to stop and maybe fix it.
I mean the game has more issues than that, and it was one aspect I had to manually fix because Bloober team is incapable of making a technically solid product and always was.
 
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FeralEcho

Member
Yeah, it’s caused by the jargonshile. It amazes me that devs are still having issues working with the jargonshile or the flimflamoony.
Good Burger Reading GIF
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Have you checked the 4DLL settings in the hidden debug menu in the system settings? I've found that it drastically reduces the wigglewop per second (wwps) if it's cranked all the way up. I believe that's what OP is talking about. Could be the on board radial isomer tab got unclipped from it's coupling to the motherboard's algorithm center. Help that helps.
You joke, but this turned out to be the problem I was having. Bought a new radial isomer tab and my image quality problems were 100% cured. Didn't even need to install it, just the act of buying it fixed everything.
 
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I’ve noticed this for a couple of years, but it just seems to be getting worse. I’ve never been super into technical performance or how different technologies work. It seems almost like the game is only trying to render specifically what you can see, and that welhen you have movement, the game is trying to compensate in real time? Or maybe it has something to do with upscaling? Or something about streaming textures?

Whatever the case may be, I feel like games look OBJECTIVELY worse. You can get beautiful screenshots, but movement seems to just be this weird pixelated mess. Another example that comes to my was Cloud’s hair in FF7 Remake (haven’t played Rebirth), it had that same weird effect.

Anyone know what that is, or what causes it?
Thread '[Threat Interactive] Dynamic lightning was better nine year ago | A warning about 9th gen neglect.' https://www.neogaf.com/threads/thre...-ago-a-warning-about-9th-gen-neglect.1678011/
 
People still reference Threat Interactive?

My impression is that Threat Interactive is a creepy AI Avatar created by a company from Elon Musk to troll Tim Sweeney for abandoning Unreal Tournament. No way this is a real person the way it talks. Really, no way. It's creepy as hell.
 
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jcorb

Member
Well, it’s admittedly interesting trying to learn little tidbits or info here and there about what some of these terms mean — I rarely understand what all these advanced video options mean in games, I normally just turn everything off I can. I honestly feel like Prince of Persia (the cel-shades one after the Sands of Time trilogy) was kind of the peak for how good a character could look. I still think the original Xbox Ninja Gaiden holds up absurdly well.

AAA devs are gonna do whatever they’re gonna do, and people are clearly happy buying prettier looking games. I’m just starting to think that we’ve not only gone past the point of no return, but some of this stuff just looks *bad*. And this isn’t the result of some poorly built PC, but actual console games.

I mean, it is what it is. I’m just not seeing much of a payoff for these advancements in graphics.
 
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