34 replies to this topic

[AndyHill]

I personally detest film grain, for me it's just a really bad decision from an artist, since it only makes graphics look muddier and uglier. Its purpose is apparently to make it look like you were watching a poor quality movie.

1) It doesn't really make me feel like I'm watching a movie...
2) ...which is a good thing, since I really don't want to feel like that.

However, I understand this is a personal opinion, although probably shared by many. This is why I believe it should be optional, since that's really really simple to do. Please post your opinions - or a working fix if you have one.

See picture below if you don't know what film grain is.

Left side NO GRAIN right side GRAIN (Please click on image to see better)


Here is a smaller version for those who may have trouble getting the above image to work properly:

Edited by AndyHill, 18 September 2013 - 08:46 AM.

[9H3X6]

Optional setting would be nice. The film grain looks so much worse if your using enhanced sharpness setting on TV along with sweetfx sharpness. Add those in and the game is just static. Love the sharpness...brings out the colors. Maybe unrelated but FPS dropped with Sept 3rd patch and at the same time film grain returned. Or rather, workaround removal not functioning. Related? Dunno. Sure take some extra FPS over static.

[Corvus Antaka]

yeah film grain looks like {Scrap}, and serves 0 purpose.

I've never seen any company FORCE Depth of Field on their player base, hopefully soon we can get rid of it and the film grain again.

[Firewuff]

no problem with film grain, DOF already drops if you drop the detail settings. I like the DOF and it makes a lot of sense

[Modo44]

I believe the reason to have film grain forced is the bad graphics performance which means a low amount of details/cover objects. It is a workaround required because of the lack of DX11. So, we can petition all we want, it will not change at least until DX11 is in, and maps get more stuff to hide behind.

Edited by Modo44, 16 September 2013 - 09:17 PM.

[AndyHill]

Film grain isn't useful for hiding features really, since it's for example not zoom dependent. It's just a filter that makes the whole thing look muddier, but it doesn't really hide objects or lack of them. Fog for example works much better in that regard.

[kuangmk11]

Modo44, on 16 September 2013 - 09:16 PM, said:

I believe the reason to have film grain forced is the bad graphics performance which means a low amount of details/cover objects. It is a workaround required because of the lack of DX11. So, we can petition all we want, it will not change at least until DX11 is in, and maps get more stuff to hide behind.

Many of us have been happily playing without it for the last year. They patched out the workaround.

[Krivvan]

I honestly am unable to notice the film grain in those screenshots, even zoomed in. The right side just seems slightly darker than the left to me.

Edited by Krivvan, 17 September 2013 - 10:58 PM.

[Blue Footed Booby]

Perlin Noise was originally developed for the movie Tron to add some noise to otherwise too-smooth CG surfaces, making them more believable. I see film grain effects in games serving the same purpose, in addition to sometimes being used specifically to make a game look like a movie.

Thing is it's one of those effects where when it's done right you don't consciously notice it unless you're specifically looking for it, like with vignetting and bloom. It can be frustrating to talk about because lots of people don't realize how common it is, thinking the games that do it wrong are the only ones using it. This is the same reason you sometimes see people complain about HDR lighting and talk about how it should go away completely, not realizing it's used in literally every recent reasonably graphically sophisticated game. Really, there needs to be a slider to adjust the amount of grain, and it needs to default at a fairly low setting.

It wouldn't surprise me if DOF were used to conceal the lack of detail in the most extreme distant LOD levels, or possibly the transition from 3D model to billboard.

As an aside, I wonder what monitors some of the people who find MWO's grain really obnoxious are using, and how many are using sharpness adjustments (which will make any high-frequency detail look awful)

[orcrist86]

The film grain in MWO pales in comparison to the film grain in Mass Effect. Film grain is a relic from an era when movies were shot on film, and the grains of silver on a given piece of film could be detected by the naked eye. The grain became more apparent as a film was shot in low light because of the required exposure times. Grain could still be detected in high lighting conditions if a slower speed of film was used. For this reason film grain has been used to create a "Cinematic" experience in games for some time now. The use of artificial sharpening settings or dramatically altering contrast may make things "look" better, but in fact alter the original image away from the designers intent. In this day and age where film is dying the look provided by grain may no longer be needed, but other tricks will still be used to create the "cinematic effect." Motion blur, simulates the effect of a 24FPS film reel, etc... the film grain in MWO isn't terrible, and is intended to give everything a more gritty tangible feel, its removal would reinforce the artificiality of the game world. I'm not advocating a slippery slope argument or anything, but this looks to be an artistic decision, not a gameplay one, and I'd like to play in their pond, not one where everything is fullbright locked and all the tricks are removed to make things look "clean."
Just my 2 cents, agree or don't.

[Lord Perversor]

Blue Footed Booby, on 18 September 2013 - 07:08 AM, said:

Perlin Noise was originally developed for the movie Tron to add some noise to otherwise too-smooth CG surfaces, making them more believable. I see film grain effects in games serving the same purpose, in addition to sometimes being used specifically to make a game look like a movie.

Thing is it's one of those effects where when it's done right you don't consciously notice it unless you're specifically looking for it, like with vignetting and bloom. It can be frustrating to talk about because lots of people don't realize how common it is, thinking the games that do it wrong are the only ones using it. This is the same reason you sometimes see people complain about HDR lighting and talk about how it should go away completely, not realizing it's used in literally every recent reasonably graphically sophisticated game. Really, there needs to be a slider to adjust the amount of grain, and it needs to default at a fairly low setting.

It wouldn't surprise me if DOF were used to conceal the lack of detail in the most extreme distant LOD levels, or possibly the transition from 3D model to billboard.

As an aside, I wonder what monitors some of the people who find MWO's grain really obnoxious are using, and how many are using sharpness adjustments (which will make any high-frequency detail look awful)

I for one run a 2560x1080 monitor and it's just annoying ( mostly i dislike it) since i like high defined surfa es and a clear view ( example it annoys me notice it in forest colony but on the other side the snowstorm in fozen city it's ok)

If with DX11 we get the option to remove it i'll be happy but it's not something who bothers me much.

Personally the only game where i liked the film grain effect was Call of Cthutlhu: Dark corners of Earth

[AndyHill]

On a cheap 42" TV screen the effect is massively pronounced, especially live when the game is in motion. On a cheap touchscreen covered with fingercrab it's just darker. More importantly, I noticed that on my laptop the image didn't show properly even if you clicked on it, although it does on this computer. I will test a very small image here to see if it works better without zooming. Note that these are jpeg images and thus tend to be a bit smoother than the real thing.

Edited by AndyHill, 18 September 2013 - 08:44 AM.

[AndyHill]

As far as the utility of film grain goes, I can fully understand how someone would want to use it in certain circumstances as a neat visual feature. However, in reality there is no film grain and I really don't want to see it in games that don't simulate being shot on a film camera. It's also a bit controversial, especially when overdone horribly (like in MWO), so I think an option to take it off would be great. Why should I waste computational power on a feature that makes the game look worse for me?

Are there any detail levels I can drop to get rid of the grain? If I understood correctly, I can get rid of DoF by setting certain features low.

[Blue Footed Booby]

Lord Perversor, on 18 September 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

I for one run a 2560x1080 monitor and it's just annoying ( mostly i dislike it) since i like high defined surfa es and a clear view ( example it annoys me notice it in forest colony but on the other side the snowstorm in fozen city it's ok)

...

That's not what I meant. Some monitors have different degrees of color accuracy, better or worse contrast, more linear brightness, etc. For example, at home I have a Dell Ultrasharp with an IPS display. It has really accurate colors, and the grain doesn't really bother me, whereas the grain in Mass Effect bugged the hell out of me on my old monitor. At work I have two cheapo, ancient LCDs. One has weird, blown out contrast that makes some bright colors indistinguishable. The other has terrible contrast, to the point where I couldn't tell that some of the icons in an app I work on had broken transparency and ugly white backgrounds. I haven't tried playing MWO at work, but it wouldn't surprise me if film grain would be invisible on the second monitor, but SUPER annoying on the first. One of the magical parts of game development is that users are extremely unlikely to have the exact same hardware as devs, which is precisely why games have had gamma correction sliders since forever.

So basically I agree that the game badly needs some additional sliders. It drives me nuts when I can't individually disable post process effects because so many games look fantastic except for one effect that's just stupid, like the odd posterization in shadows in Far Cry 3.

There are little tools for some games that can inject various shader...stuff into the render pipeline through voodoo I don't pretend to understand. Usually it's used for adding godawful tonemapping to Skyrim. Can't remember what the tool is called. Anyone know what I'm talking about and if it can somehow be used to mess with the film grain somehow?

AndyHill, on 18 September 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

On a cheap 42" TV screen the effect is massively pronounced, especially live when the game is in motion. On a cheap touchscreen covered with fingercrab it's just darker. More importantly, I noticed that on my laptop the image didn't show properly even if you clicked on it, although it does on this computer. I will test a very small image here to see if it works better without zooming. Note that these are jpeg images and thus tend to be a bit smoother than the real thing.

Can't recall what format MWO generates screenshots in. You might try using regular old printscreen and save as a png instead of a jpg so the artifacts don't make the grain look any worse.

Edited by Blue Footed Booby, 18 September 2013 - 10:55 AM.

[Koniving]

I'd prefer a dynamic depth of field over film grain any day.

It's got a terrible habit of ruining screenshots.

[Inkarnus]

film grain isnt much of an issue in 1080p but everything below like 720p is goo and a hinderance

[UwasaWaya]

Well, one thing about film grain, it makes it far harder for the colorblind to pick out enemy mechs from the background. I'd appreciate it being optional. No need to completely remove it, some people like it.

[Gray 46rus]

The game looks UGLY with these film grain.
Video settings - very high:

Looks at those trees in 50 meters! Is it a 2013-th year game??? It's disgusting.

Edited by Gray 46rus, 02 November 2013 - 09:05 AM.

[Enzane]

The No Grain mod still works. Just re-install it every patch.

[kuangmk11]

Enzane, on 02 November 2013 - 07:05 PM, said:

The No Grain mod still works. Just re-install it every patch.

Doesn't work for me.