I never understood the whole deal about "bloom". I have always thought it was annoying, but kept my mouth shut because the game community hive mind always ranted and raved about how awesome it was, and just assumed I was weird.


Then, last month I was talking to an old college buddy of mine, who was a film major, and now makes independent films. We got to talking about graphics, and I mentioned bloom. He told me that in photography and filming, bloom is viewed as a nasty camera artifact that should be eliminated at all costs. He said he can't understand why anyone would possibly want to waste graphics power to emulate a camera artifact.


I agree, and likened this stupid bloom obsession with the "lens flare" obsession of 7 years ago. It will eventually go away, and our games will become less annoying again.


Also, that commercial was hopelessly unfunny.

You raise a valid point and I did say I was unsure about using Bloom at first as a lot of games tend to seriously overdo it. I don't really agree about it being a waste of graphics power though as the process itself is really very cheap (In my case it is near free as I was already CPU bound).

I regard myself as a programmer and everything I display is just programmer art, so I am in no real place to argue with a film dude like your buddy, but I do find graphics development to be one of the most entertaining aspects of game development. For that reason I get a lot of enjoyment from implementing all the various cool techniques other games make use of. Then, if/when, I am working with somebody in the future who does have an eye for art or film, they won't be limited by the feature-set I have made available [smile]

For further comparison (if you are interested), here are two identical shots; one with bloom and one without.

• With Bloom
• Without Bloom

As for the Westwood College commercial, you REALLY need to rediscover your sense of humour [wink]
That is classic comedy right there, it is even better than the Oozinator [lol]

To Do List #1: Add a lens-flare ;)

Quote:Original post by ViLiO
For further comparison (if you are interested), here are two identical shots; one with bloom and one without.

• With Bloom
• Without Bloom

That is a great comparison, it shows how much nicer it is with the subtle bloom :)

I really like that bloom/no bloom comparison. I always knew bloom adds a certain feel to a scene, but I've never seen it made this obvious how much it helps.

I don't think there's anyone who'd look at those two, and then say that bloom "doesn't add anything".

More importantly, though, why is your sun not circular? :-/

Thanks guys [smile]

Quote:Original post by sirob
More importantly, though, why is your sun not circular? :-/

I use a 70 degree FOV most of the time (mainly because a slight fish-eye view is what I have become accustomed to from playing FPS games like Q3A). With a 45 degree FOV the sun looks perfectly circular (except when it nears the horizon and bloom is enabled) [smile]

Regards,
ViLiO