Sharpening the graphics?

[Ian Skippy]

So I was wondering if anyone with some coding/GFX experience knows the answer: whats up with modern games being so fuzzy? Whether its ED, Fallout 4, PES 2016, the first thing I need to to do is sharpen using gemFX or some such, and the quality just improves instantly. Its not just me; my monitor (24", 1920x1080) is calibrated well, and most popular reshade/gemfx presets for modern games include sharpening. In ED it makes the cockpit textures more detailed, the planetary surfaces have more depth, it even reveals loads of stars in the background that are invisible without it. Obviously you have to be careful not to introduce odd artifacts, but mild levels of sharpening simply improve everything without any apparant drawbacks, either visually or via reduced FPS.

So, why are games fuzzy? And why dont games have a 'sharpness' slider in-game? Any expert care to comment? :S

No sharpening:

Spoiler

With sharpening:

Spoiler

 

[clouddancer]

Try EDFX

 

[Ian Skippy]

Try EDFX

Ha, thanks. I know what options exist and how to use them, but I just dont get WHY we have to do that. If everyone and their dog needs to sharpen their image, why doesnt any game company include that option? Why do devs think 'fuzzy;' is appealing?

 

[fruitbat]

Devs do weird things with games. Motion blur being my pet hate, first thing I always do with a new game is turn that crud off. Don't understand why anyone would want that on.

 

[Jon flint]

I'm no expert, but id guess that the increasing use of deferred rendering (like in e:d) has meant that "proper" antialiasing (MSAA) just doesn't work anymore. Hence we now have to resort to post process antialiasing (like fxaa/smaa) which apply a blur filter across the finished image with its strength based on various algorithms to detect edges etc. You could try using SSAA (supersampling) and turn off the fxaa/smaa antialiasing and see if that is more to your preference.

 

[Ripbudd]

Devs do weird things with games. Motion blur being my pet hate, first thing I always do with a new game is turn that crud off. Don't understand why anyone would want that on.

I play on LCD monitor, motion blur is love, motion blur is life. Also i can't turn it off and i'm not going back to CRT. Game settings don't help.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

but I just dont get WHY we have to do that.

Aesthetic choice by the Devs I guess.

 

[sp0q]

I can't use AA in any game cause I feel like something is wrong with my sight : P Motion blur is evil. Bloom is, if I recall right, responsible for blurring the image with distance.

To be honest it's a pretty safe bet to assume every option on the settings screen you don't know screws up the image : P

 

[Zelos1983]

E is quite sharp. Of course, the models could use more polys and the textures could be more detailed.
Have you disabled motion blur?

A huge problem of the industry is that the game developers outright refuse to make use of the VRAM and provide good textures and models. Skyrim is a prime example, where the community was able to refactor many assets, supplying a much better quality than the game developers were able to achieve.

Also, if you have an Nvidia card, make sure the nvidia display settings allow the monitor to use full dynamic range. Per default (and after updates), the dynamic range is reduced, making the image look really bad (especially blacks become grey).

 

[Ian Skippy]

I'm no expert, but id guess that the increasing use of deferred rendering (like in e:d) has meant that "proper" antialiasing (MSAA) just doesn't work anymore. Hence we now have to resort to post process antialiasing (like fxaa/smaa) which apply a blur filter across the finished image with its strength based on various algorithms to detect edges etc. You could try using SSAA (supersampling) and turn off the fxaa/smaa antialiasing and see if that is more to your preference.

I am not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds like a reason. I indeed much prefer supersampling, unfortunately it turns ED into an, admittedly beautiful, slideshow.

E is quite sharp. Of course, the models could use more polys and the textures could be more detailed.
Have you disabled motion blur?

Well, its not the models/textures, its detail that isnt shown unless you sharpen it. I'll add these to the OP, its pretty obvious which one is better IMHO:

 

[Insomnia]

Bloom makes bright spots (threshold based) bleed into their surroundings.
Motion blur is great if it's depth based and doesn't blur anything else but very close objects.
Depth of field helps the illusion of making distant objects larger and it also masks the poor LOD resolutions.
Chromatic aberration sort of masks jagged edges.

I think many of the graphical effects is implemented because devs just had an opinion that effect X looks good. Some like it sharp, others like it soft.
I always wonder why games has such a low contrast. Sharpening is understandable why devs aren't using it because it can make textures shimmer or flicker. Not very pleasant for the eyes. I do like it when we are given options though.
The Witcher 3 is a great example of devs actually listening to the fans. They reimplemented a 2 step Sharpening effect. I would love to be presented with more graphical options and fidelity in ED. I like that we have HBAO now. What I want now is TAA. The kind UE4 has. Makes edges a lot more blurry unfortunately, but it removes almost all aliasing.

Oh btw... Instead of super sampling, use DSR as DSR isn't as resource heavy.

Edit 2:
OP The pic you attached is very sharp but I'm guessing that it will add loads of aliasing, like ED already has a lot of.

 

[Insomnia]

A huge problem of the industry is that the game developers outright refuse to make use of the VRAM and provide good textures and models. Skyrim is a prime example, where the community was able to refactor many assets, supplying a much better quality than the game developers were able to achieve.

I think the biggest problem in the industry is platform parity: A product MUST have the same visual quality on all platforms and not let one of the version look better, even if the PC is far superior to all platforms.
Yes, Skyrim is a prime example of a community, with Boris Vorontsov leading the way with his ENB Series, making Skyrim look next-gen even by today's standard.

Spoiler

Without ENBSeries and custom made content, these pics wouldn't be possible....

 

[dannysquid]

Doesn't sharpening just increase the contrast in areas of already high contrast, adding light or dark edges where the edges already exist? It's not really better, just an aesthetic choice. And when you're already adding bloom and blurring colours and vignetting things, it's just another layer that takes away from the "purity" of what you're seeing. And it will exasperate anti-aliasing problems, won't it? Personally, as a keen photographer and somebody who works in TV post production, I regard it as a sin against nature! But I'm sure they could add it as a button if they get the chance. It does sort of suit ELITE's high tech detail.

 

[MVP_Bluntman]

The type of AA also matters, for example. FO4 has TAA which makes everything sharper except whatever your looking at makes it look like Vaseline was rubbed all over. (what insomnia said in a nutshell) TAA just happens to be one of the best types of AA that currently exists. This doesn't explain however why FO4's texture quality looks like      still at a HD reso.

Personally the problem with graphics, is that they come with a mindset from the dev, that they want the player to experience "this, this and this." Where as they could also be considering the optional extra's to add some extra pizzazz. The problem I have is that every person is different for example, this game has a horrible orange saturation. Why cant we get multiple filters from FDev that would add what ever colors we want, instead of having to rely on a third party post processing application, that would end up in even more resource usage than having the base game do it themselves.

However as we have seen in the past, that games often get hung out to dry graphically due to budgeting, targeted marketing, lack of developer will.

 

[Soliluna]

I think it's the post processing ,we have way more than we used to - all those effects are like film effects you put over the top and they distort the clarity of textures.

I find if you turn a lot of the post process settings off in games you get a much clearer image, I think its particularly noticeable in Unreal Engine games which is very post process heavy.

 

[Mephane]

Oh yes the horrible antialiasing. Especially in a game with so make sharp-edged shapes, it's flickering lines and oscillating pixels all over.

Another issue which I have seen in ED first but since then realized other games have it too: color banding. Look at the distinct brightness steps in the shadow of the planet, and the halo of the green star. These are not artifacts of the screenshots, I've directly converted them from raw BMP to lossless PNG.

 

[Insomnia]

Yes color banding in ED is tremendously bad. Built in demand effect or better sprite textures would be great to have.

 

[Mephane]

Yes color banding in ED is tremendously bad. Built in demand effect or better sprite textures would be great to have.

You should see the color banding in Black Desert Online. It's screaming in your face right there in the character creation, and in some ingame location it gets so bad that stuff can get hard to see depending on the angle of the light source. Picture is not mine, but just look at that background: http://ongab.ru/media/game/gallery/black-desert-online-screenshot-20131118-1641x1324-897944912.jpg.

 

[Shadowdancer]

So, why are games fuzzy? And why dont games have a 'sharpness' slider in-game? Any expert care to comment? :S

They often aren't, except for effects like motion blur (seriously, stop that crap, but I guess it's useful to mask low framerates and aliasing during movement…). What you are observing is related to (but not quite the same as) low local contrast, where nearby parts of an image have similar hue and brightness and end up seemingly "washed out". Increasing contrast (and that's mostly what you're doing in your screenshots) makes things appear "sharper", but really there's no change in detail, just some brightness shift. It's just the same reason why TVs in retail stores always run at totally stupid brightness and contrast settings (and why all Apple devices run at such settings out of the box): it subjectively "looks better" at the cost of throwing away detail and screwing with colour rendition.

Video games, being a visual medium except for some remarkable exceptions, naturally have their own aesthetic; that can go from blurred browns all over the place (every "realistic" shooter for the past 10 years) to really crisp and colourful graphics; older games often went for the latter, in part I guess because you try to run a bloom shader or fancy texture filtering while your Pentium 4 is already busy rendering a 3D environment.

In the end, there is no sharpness slider because the game is looking like its designers want it to. You can opt to smear your own layer of postprocessing on top of it, but that's purely your decision and it's not a game designer's or developer's job to provide the tools to change their design to each your preferences.

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Another issue which I have seen in ED first but since then realized other games have it too: color banding. Look at the distinct brightness steps in the shadow of the planet, and the halo of the green star. These are not artifacts of the screenshots, I've directly converted them from raw BMP to lossless PNG.

That may partly be an artifact of your screen being a bit… overenthusiastic in rendering dark shades. My office monitor is really crap at that and the shots look just fine (And after calibration I'm seeing much less of it at home too.) I guess it's not really avoidable until we're all on 10+bit colour pipelines

 

[Mephane]

That may partly be an artifact of your screen being a bit… overenthusiastic in rendering dark shades. My office monitor is really crap at that and the shots look just fine (And after calibration I'm seeing much less of it at home too.) I guess it's not really avoidable until we're all on 10+bit colour pipelines

I also suspected something like that at first, but I have seen it on 2 different PCs and 3 different screens so far. And not all games have such stark color banding, I never noticed before ED and BDO; I think it has more to do with how the engines are implemented (see also how ED has such bad antialiasing).

Edit: I also checked some sites that give advice on this and have test images. The test images designed to look smooth indeed look smooth there for me.