real world places like Quake / HL environments

[RiskyChris]

Originally Posted by Zuuljin

I think it looks funny because our eyes dont do this. They either focus on the light things, or the dark things. When we look at a normal photograph, we can relate to whatever exposure it was taken in. But when you combine them both, you get an unnatural looking photograph. Sort of like an "ambiant" light source around everything, with a few spots a little brighter then others.

Strangly enough I was thinking about this sort of thing earlier today, without haveing even read this thread. I was just daydreaming while at work and was thinking about when graphics in games will reach photorealism. And I came to the conclusion that they will never be photorealistic because of effects like this. Your eye, in reality, can change how it views the exact same landscape just by focusing on different things.

An easy example of this would be a puddle on the street. You can focus on the reflection of the water, and it looks like a mirror, or you can shift your focus to whats behind the water, and view a blurry street. Another example would be the windsheild of your car. You can look through it to drive, and it looks like it isnt there (assuming its clean), or you can focus on the windsheild itself and see all the little knicks and scratches from crap hitting it. But there is no possible way (without some crazy new monitor) for your eye to do that in a videogame. So the game will try to render both for an unnatural look. Therefore the game will always present you with one way, or a combination of each way to view things, but will never let you shift your focus from one to the other, giving it that realistic look.

Fantastic post. I was thinking about this a week or so ago while playing HL2: Lost Coast. They talk about how they can mimic how your eyes will adjust to different light sources. It looked neat, but felt a little artificial.

I'm sure graphics will fix this some day, but it will require very exquisite hardware to do so.

[Plan9]

Originally Posted by Zuuljin

I think it looks funny because our eyes dont do this. They either focus on the light things, or the dark things. When we look at a normal photograph, we can relate to whatever exposure it was taken in. But when you combine them both, you get an unnatural looking photograph. Sort of like an "ambiant" light source around everything, with a few spots a little brighter then others.

Strangly enough I was thinking about this sort of thing earlier today, without haveing even read this thread. I was just daydreaming while at work and was thinking about when graphics in games will reach photorealism. And I came to the conclusion that they will never be photorealistic because of effects like this. Your eye, in reality, can change how it views the exact same landscape just by focusing on different things.

An easy example of this would be a puddle on the street. You can focus on the reflection of the water, and it looks like a mirror, or you can shift your focus to whats behind the water, and view a blurry street. Another example would be the windsheild of your car. You can look through it to drive, and it looks like it isnt there (assuming its clean), or you can focus on the windsheild itself and see all the little knicks and scratches from crap hitting it. But there is no possible way (without some crazy new monitor) for your eye to do that in a videogame. So the game will try to render both for an unnatural look. Therefore the game will always present you with one way, or a combination of each way to view things, but will never let you shift your focus from one to the other, giving it that realistic look.

I am sure it will get here eventually. There are already some cameras produced by Canon (The Elan series is the one I know of) that have viewfinders which use infrared light to track track eyeball movement and shift camera focus accordingly. I've heard mixed reviews although I've never tried them myself as they are film and I shoot strictly digital.