Why are flashlights in games such crap?

[Deleted member 48434]

If you are in a dark enclosed area in real life, turning on a flash light will illuminate the entire room. Once the beam hits the wall it reflects onto the rest of the room, giving you vision outside the cone.
But in a lot of games, it stops dead at the end of the cone. Maybe thats slightly more realistic in wide outside areas where it doesn't have anything to reflect and disperse off, but even then, the cones from the protagonists flashlight is often so crap your vision is reduced to like a tiny fraction of your normal vision.
Is it a rule that protagonists must have shit flashlights?
Modern LED flashlights are really good. Games still are on those bulky crap old flashlights.

 

[rare]

because lighting in games, other than open world games that is, is typically baked. even games that have dynamic lighting can't really do bounce lighting like that because it's a complicated thing, one that ray tracing fixes.

 

[Caeda]

I actually never really noticed that... Time to have flashlight upgrades as a thing you can get in games.

 

[Deleted member 48434]

because lighting in games, other than open world games that is, is typically baked. even games that have dynamic lighting can't really do bounce lighting like that because it's a complicated thing, one that ray tracing fixes.

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I don't expect ray tracing, but they could at least change the ambient lighting when a flashlight is on.

 

[Jakisthe]

Lighting is hard.

Really hard. I mean, that's really what'll come to separate "graphics" this upcoming gen. Assets take time, animations take time, high resolution takes data, but lighting, I believe, is the real technical challenge.
(Obviously all of those are a lot of work regardless)

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Because of how games render light. It's a giant trick currently. There are two types of objects in most games, static objects, and dynamic objects. Static objects have baked lighting to reduce calculations. This generally means their lighting cannot change but in extremely basic ways. Dynamic objects have more complex lighting, but it's also a series of illusions.

What you are asking for is what raytracing does, it physically simulates light. As in, it simulates photons bouncing off of objects in the room. These kinds of calculations are incredibly processor intensive, and used to be way to slow to do in real time, hence why raytracing cores are so exciting. They finally are dedicated hardware to do this as fast as possible, letting it happen in real time.

I don't expect ray tracing, but they could at least change the ambient lighting when a flashlight is on.

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These kinds of interactions require things like shader uniforms, which are variables to allow interactions between draw calls. Dealing with lots of uniforms is very time consuming, as they are concerned with the most latent part of the entire render process -- the transfer of data from the CPU to VRAM. Every time you change a shader uniform, the CPU must send that information through pointers to the buffer that holds the value for the shader in VRAM. Communication between CPU and VRAM is the slowest part of the entire pipeline, that's why the trick is to keep as much information in VRAM as possible.

Again, with raytracing, you don't need these kinds of uniforms to pass data like that. It's physically simulated, it's "automatic" to a degree.

 

[Ploppee]

I think it's just one of those things that you have to accept is for atmosphere reasons. If you're using a flashlight its almost always to build tension and if you just flicked the lights on it breaks that. I put it in the same category as you regaining the remaining bullets in your mag when you reload as the game would be less fun without it.

 

[TheUnseenTheUnheard]

Lighting is hard.

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No you just go to the toolbox and add light beams.

 

[Jakisthe]

No you just go to the toolbox and add light beams.

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Gotta check the "real life lighting" box.

 

[Deleted member 48434]

Because of how games render light. It's a giant trick currently. There are two types of objects in most games, static objects, and dynamic objects. Static objects have baked lighting to reduce calculations. This generally means their lighting cannot change but in extremely basic ways. Dynamic objects have more complex lighting, but it's also a series of illusions.

What you are asking for is what raytracing does, it physically simulates light. As in, it simulates photons bouncing off of objects in the room. These kinds of calculations are incredibly processor intensive, and used to be way to slow to do in real time, hence why raytracing cores are so exciting. They finally are dedicated hardware to do this as fast as possible, letting it happen in real time.



These kinds of interactions require things like shader uniforms, which are variables to allow interactions between draw calls. Dealing with lots of uniforms is very time consuming, as they are concerned with the most latent part of the entire render process -- the transfer of data from the CPU to VRAM. Every time you change a shader uniform, the CPU must send that information through pointers to the buffer that holds the value for the shader in VRAM. Communication between CPU and VRAM is the slowest part of the entire pipeline, that's why the trick is to keep as much information in VRAM as possible.

Again, with raytracing, you don't need these kinds of uniforms to pass data like that. It's physically simulated, it's "automatic" to a degree.

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I see. So it's not as simple as I thought it was.
STILL, they could widen the cone a tad.
Imagine a modern raytraced game with flashlight upgrades.
Amazing.

 

[skeezx]

technical limitations aside flashlights generally serve as laser pointers in most games. not particularly supposed to "see" outside the cone anyway

 

[lucebuce]

I see. So it's not as simple as I thought it was.
STILL, they could widen the cone a tad.
Imagine a modern raytraced game with flashlight upgrades.
Amazing.

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so, something like this?

Click to shrink...

 

[EllipsisBreak]

Outside of the technical reasons, it would be kind of lame gameplay-wise if your flashlight would illuminate the whole area. Then the player would never actually have to deal with darkness. That whole scenario practically disappears.

 

[Deleted member 48434]

so, something like this?

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Yes! Yes like this!
Sooo good.
That's how a flashlight is supposed to work.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Yes! Yes like this!
Sooo good.
That's how a flashlight is supposed to work.

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and that's precisely why Raytracing is such a big deal. Not only does it look way more realistic, it's less work to do that, too, than even compare to the previous limited lighting. Better lighting, that is vastly easier to achieve than current lighting, that is also much more dynamic.

A caveat, though: early raytracing is currently super limited. We're in the SuperFX chip era of raytracing, the way I'm describing raytracing is when the Dreamcast hits. That'll be a little while. But baby steps!

 

[supernormal]

The Last of Us made it a specific priority to actually simulate this bounce lighting (although at much lower res, because of how demanding it was).

Edit: I actually remember there being a thread in the old site about "low-res" shadows in the game (in some specific locations) that people thought were a glitch. It was later clarified that in those cases it was a secondary bounce coming from the flashlight which had to render shadows at half res because of how computationally expensive it was.

In-Game and Cinematic Lighting of The Last of Us

From creating the visually believable environments in a post-apocalyptic world to supporting the complex story narrative, lighting plays a huge role in The Last of Us. This talk is designed to give you a deep look into Naughty Dogs lighting...

www.gdcvault.com

Starting at around 17mins they talk about the flash light bounce.

Other than that it's basically ray-tracing or something equally expensive. It's the same reason you don't have mirrors in games, it's computationally expensive and you have to have a dev determined to find a work-around for their intended purpose.

 

[tatwo]

Flashlight in Black Mes is pretty bad and inconsistent how it lights stuff.

 

[Jawmuncher]

Nothing beats those old school flashlights where it'd be a a light source that just follows your crosshair. Shit wouldn't even make sense lol.
To explain better, it's like your flashlight is a spotlight where said light source even follows on the floor.

 

[Maxina]

Outside of the technical reasons, it would be kind of lame gameplay-wise if your flashlight would illuminate the whole area. Then the player would never actually have to deal with darkness. That whole scenario practically disappears.

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I can see a horror game where you're only source of illumination is the lighter in your pocket.

 

[ThreepQuest64]

What I find more annoying is when you sometimes see less when you activate a flashlight or use a torch. Especially in third person games, because everything around the light (or outside the cone) gets darker than before which kind of simulates the light adaption of your eyes. Problem is, just because the camera is looking directly into the light (which seems to be reference point for a lot of rendering stuff) it doesn't mean my character does.

 

[ElephantShell]

It isn't realistic but the blackness outside of the flashlight beam in Resident Evil 2 made it much scarier to me.

 

[Juice]

Even with traditional rendering techniques, I suspect flashlight mechanics in games would be a hell of a lot more convincing if HDR displays could actually reach anywhere near the peak nits of 4000 nits (HDR10+) or 10000 nits (Dolby Vision). Most high-end sets today struggle to hit 800

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I can see a horror game where you're only source of illumination is the lighter in your pocket.

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You should play the new half life, lol.

 

[StrappingYoungLance]

Because it's a videogame and simulating real life isn't necessarily the goal when designing a game and its flashlight?

 

[Trisc]

so, something like this?

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I've really got to get a GPU that can ray trace before the year is out, huh?

 

[Bradford]

Ray Tracing is extremely resource intensive, but so, so good. I cannot wait until it is the norm.

 

[Maxina]

You should play the new half life, lol.

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Well now i'm tempted.

 

[BarryFishFinger]

The only thing I expect from flashlights is they cast realtime shadows. One of my favourite effects and if it's missing then I get very disappointed. Not angry, just disappointed.

 

[Rotkehle]

RayTracing will be the answer to lightning as a problem.

 

[Zombine]

I just want to know where they get their batteries from that makes them die after about a minute of walking. I would have returned them to the store prior to getting myself into one of these scenarios.

 

[Black_Stride]

The only thing I expect from flashlights is they cast realtime shadows. One of my favourite effects and if it's missing then I get very disappointed. Not angry, just disappointed.

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I am such a sucker for my dynamic light casting shadows with dynamic objects.

Doom 3 blew my mind and since then any game that doesnt have such lights/shadows im like ohh shame.

Forza Horizon 4 has also made going back to games that dont have headlights that cast shadows almost unplayable.

With nextgen here Im hoping shadows casting dynamic lights are everywhere.
And I expect most if not all games with good lighting to have bounce lighting for my dynamic lights.

 

[Turnabout Sisters]

You're never in really dark enclosed places in games, usually "darkness" in games is still pretty bright. Real flashlights suck in non-complete darkness too

 

[Nooblet]

Because in order to do that you'd need proper indirect bounce lighting, which is taxing. Most games just focus on GI from a global light source like the sun as it's easier since it's a much more static lightsource as compared to a local moving lightsource like a flashlight.

Some games try to fake it by using invisible point lights to light the room and make it look like it's lit indirectly (TLoU did it)

But it doesn't always work as it needs to be manually placed. And as such it wouldn't reflect the accurate colour unless the artist specifically put a coloured point light to simulate it and would instead just have a generic white I direct light which would look fake.

This is something that raytraced GI will fix. Metro Exodus also has it afaik.

 

[eso76]

If you are in a dark enclosed area in real life, turning on a flash light will illuminate the entire room. Once the beam hits the wall it reflects onto the rest of the room, giving you vision outside the cone.

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Path tracing, baby !

But let's be honest, if devs really wanted you could easily make it so that the flashlight also works as a small point light so what is outside the flashlight cone isn't completely dark without going as far as using Raytracing. So i guess it's mostly an artistic choice.

EDIT: and it can be further improved by placing a second point light where the light hits the wall, with an intensity that's inversely proportional to the distance from the flashlight. More: we can pick the average color of the surface hit by the cone of light and apply it to the bounce. There, this would give you a pretty decent flashlight effect that's very easy on the GPU without resorting to RT. Obviously you'd miss shadows cast by the light bounce as seen in the DYING LIGHT 2 shot above

 

[KainXVIII]

I thought that this thread will be about flashlight battery in games (which lasts in 10 seconds and then slowly recharges)

 

[ILikeFeet]

Ray traced lighting is gonna change how horror games are made, I think. They seem to rely a lot on the fact there is no bounced lighting and use that darkness to build suspense. With bounced lighting , you'll be able to see lots of things you couldn't see before.

Interesting game design times ahead

 

[Nemesis Warlock]

Ray traced lighting is gonna change how horror games are made, I think. They seem to rely a lot on the fact there is no bounced lighting and use that darkness to build suspense. With bounced lighting , you'll be able to see lots of things you couldn't see before.

Interesting game design times ahead

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instead of stuff jumping out at you, you barely see things moving around in the darkness. maybe they'll move past.. maybe it's hunting you.

Think Alien Isolation, but you can't see the alien BECAUSE IT'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

 

[HBK]

technical limitations aside flashlights generally serve as laser pointers in most games. not particularly supposed to "see" outside the cone anyway

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Yeah. Technical limitations are obvious, but there's gameplay involved with limited visibility setups.

 

[KKRT]

Because in order to do that you'd need proper indirect bounce lighting, which is taxing. Most games just focus on GI from a global light source like the sun as it's easier since it's a much more static lightsource as compared to a local moving lightsource like a flashlight.

Some games try to fake it by using invisible point lights to light the room and make it look like it's lit indirectly (TLoU did it)

But it doesn't always work as it needs to be manually placed. And as such it wouldn't reflect the accurate colour unless the artist specifically put a coloured point light to simulate it and would instead just have a generic white I direct light which would look fake.

This is something that raytraced GI will fix. Metro Exodus also has it afaik.

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The other method, thats though expensive, but still viable without RT, is to make a lighting bounce in screenspace similar to how Reshade did GI.
Its pretty decent solution, especially in FPP game as light from flashlight is always in screenspace.
CIG did this in Star Citizen for their flashlight.

 

[SanTheSly]

Alan Wake has good flashlights!

[This post sponsored by Energizer]

 

[Militaratus]

Couldn't you just add 2 cones of light to a flashlight instead of 1? The inner cone is narrow but 3x more intense, while the outer cone is very wide but intense enough to just barely see.

 

[Huey]

There's actually a lot of games where I love the flashlight.

- Silent Hill 2
- Half Life 2 in its current state
- Resistance: Fall of Man
- Doom 3 (OG)

Basically any game where the flashlight creates shadows I'm a real sucker for lol

 

[ILikeFeet]

Couldn't you just add 2 cones of light to a flashlight instead of 1? The inner cone is narrow but 3x more intense, while the outer cone is very wide but intense enough to just barely see.

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yes but it still doesn't mimic bounce lighting, just the cones of light in a flashlight

 

[Crossing Eden]

Because it's really expensive to render lighting in the way you're describing. BRING ON RAYTRACING. 👏

 

[Ravelle]

RE2 remake had good ones and the way they hold it while aiming a gun is rad.

 

[Siggy-P]

A realistic flashlight would have made Alan Wake very difficult

 

[Deleted member 47076]

so, something like this?

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Huh...

While I would think that less light would be creepier, the ray-traced image takes the cake because it's more real. That looks awesome.

 

[ReCross]

The flashlights in BF3 were very effective though.

 

[Black_Stride]

A realistic flashlight would have made Alan Wake very difficult

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Now I want Alan Wake 2 in the Northlight engine with Raytraced bounce lighting.

I hope remedys deal with Epic lets them make Alan Wake 2, im sure they are thinking new IP then new IP.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Huh...

While I would think that less light would be creepier, the ray-traced image takes the cake because it's more real. That looks awesome.

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it does mean that some conventions for horror games will have to be rethought (or they could disable bounce lighting). but if you ask me, that'll just make the genre more interesting