Is the quest for higher fidelity in video game graphics leading to visual noise?

[Bansi]

Since the dawn of video games, a large portion of games have chased realism in visuals. Better lighting, more polygons, more expressive characters with lifelike animation, realistic weather systems, day-night cycles, water, physics, you name it. And make no mistake, due to the advances made in all of these areas, modern games look absolutely phenomenal. I am a huge graphics nerd so I've been delighted with the progress in these areas.

But lately, I've been noticing issues with this quest for higher fidelity. Video games aren't real life. In real life, our brain automatically filters out a LOT of surrounding detail so it doesn't overwhelm us. Until we focus on a particular detail, that is. In a video game, your attention is focused on the screen, and all the detail of the game is compressed within the confines of that screen. And video games aren't like movies either. In movies, a director will carefully use the camera and tools available to them to make sure that scenes don't drown in visual noise. But video games are dynamic, the player is in control of the camera, and all kinds of visual effects may appear depending on what's happening in the game. The developer doesn't get to direct the player's eye or frame every scene of the video game the way they wish to.

The extremely high-fidelity detail everywhere in modern games can feel overwhelming and aesthetically displeasing, even when it's technically impressive. Compounding this issue is the fact that video game scenes can be prone to a variety of artifacts - flickering, pop-in, pixel crawling, specular aliasing, smearing, and so on. The more high frequency detail in a scene, the more distracting these become.

And beyond being simply displeasing, they can also impact gameplay negatively, making it harder for you to notice important game-relevant details.

The issues I mention are much more evident in motion compared to stills, but I'm gonna post screenshots cause I'm not Digital Foundry and it will take too much time to isolate segments in videos that buttress my point well.

Here are some screens from a gorgeous upcoming game, Black Myth Wukong -

And here are some from the new Lords of the Fallen game -

And here's some from Alan Wake 2 -

How do you feel about this? Do you have ideas of how these issues could be solved?

 

[nsilvias]

im some games yeah. horizon is a really good example of this. i always say some of these games have more detail than real life lol. alot of games with art styles that have like 1 or 2 promiment colors suffer from this visual noise issue too

 

[OrangeNova]

Absolutely, it's not even a super new phenomena.

Halo 1 and 2 anniversary are so thick with details, that while visually great to look at, I can't tell what I'm looking at while playing half the time.

 

[Magic Mushroom]

Not for me. Give me all these wonderfully detailed and dense environments to get lost in. Alan Wake 2 looks absolutely phenomenal and atmospheric to me.
I remember people saying this about Horizon and it was never an issue for me. I was completely blown away by its graphics.

 

[vixolus]

Not in all cases no, but those pictures used aren't great examples because they aren't actual camera references from the game. Like the second Alan wake pic and the LOTF pics aren't from your player perspective really, which defines the framing of the visual information. So they aren't great examples to support your argument. I don't think any of them are exactly direct captures

 

[345]

it's definitely a thing, and it's interesting (though inevitable) how it's come alongside a push for higher resolutions, which makes them even harder to notice.

like, i'm often blown away by the clarity when i play an OG xbox game or something like RDR1 on the series X in 4K. you can't miss the sharpness when you're looking at fundamentally sparser visuals. but i see almost no difference between 1440p and 4K in more technically advanced, visually busier games, at least not on my 55-inch set

 

[SinnyIndonesian]

I'm not bothered at all by the level of details as seen on those screenshot examples.

I thought this thread was gonna be talking about upscaling tech like FSR or DLSS creating ugly and muddy-looking visuals in motion. I'm really hating how some AAA games are moving towards upscaling and leaving native res behind.

 

[Renna Hazel]

I have issues with this from time to time. The Village in RE4 remake can be more distracting than the one in the original and causes me to not see things like bear traps or enemies in the distance when I'd easily spot those things in the original. I do prefer a cleaner visual style that services the gameplay.

 

[bytesized]

I always wonder if this is an issue because they're flat TV games and therefore we cannot focus our vision on anything by ourselves as we do naturally. I can imagine in VR this issue wouldn't exist. This is something different from how busy visually some games are which only exacerbates the issue. Horizon and the Uncharted games are the ones I've felt this with the most.

 

[Bansi]

I thought this thread was gonna be talking about upscaling tech like FSR or DLSS creating ugly and muddy-looking visuals in motion. I'm really hating how some AAA games are moving towards upscaling and leaving native res behind.

Click to shrink...

For me the artifacts in upscaling tech absolutely add to the problem. I've never played a game with raytracing on cause so far the flickering shimmering in RT reflections is way more distracting than the issues with screen-space reflections.

 

[Deleted member 3924]

No. As long as they have good direction and control over directing the players attention there isn't really a limit to fidelity any more than there is to other, more detailed media like film.

I haven't played any of these 3 unreleased videogames so I can't comment on them.

 

[War95]

100% It already happened to me with TLOU2, I felt lost at times

 

[NANA]

Yep, there's just way too much detail. Nothing can stand out in such environments without glowing/detective vision.

 

[Sho Nuff]

Yes I cannot tell what the fuck is going on in half of these giant AAA games, Horizon being the worst offender.

 

[Garulon]

In some modern games I have a hell of a time switching focus between the HUD and the actual play area simply due to how much clutter there is. Playing games with as much HUD disabled as I can helps this dramatically

 

[Necromanti]

For me, the biggest hits in readability tend to come from things like particle effects. In calmer moments, I might get a bit of visual fatigue, but I can still make things out. If it's during combat and it becomes a smoke and lights show, that's when I lose track of things. (Like in something like Control.)

 

[Adryuu]

My opinion is a bit divided on this issue. I appreciate the realism and detail when there's a lot of visual clutter in a life-like way but there are instances in which games are fatigue inducing to look at. Came to post Horizon, especially Forbidden West, and it was covered in the first post already. It has amazing visuals but often they're not practical for a videogame. It depends on what you're doing though, and I like to play that more as an exploration and sight seeing game rather than a combat focused one.

There are ways to address this issue but I don't find them all that good, like limiting colour usage to catch the players attention (either sacrificing style or making things look the same and very gamey). Adding "game vision" of any kind is gross and should be left in the past as a mechanic in any future game unless it's designed and tuned for accessibility purposes.

I don't think Alan Wake 2 will suffer from this (they did an amazing work on Control imo so they know what they're doing visually) or LotF which looks to limit colour palette depending on area and that results in a muted visual which could be used to precisely avoid this issue making characters items and enemies stand out more.

 

[Jubilant Duck]

Worth pointing out those aren't screenshots per se in the OP but appear to be press stills. The framing is not necessarily true-to-game as they're intended to show off "LOOK AT ALL THESE GRAPHICS" rather than give the focus you would get in-game.

That said, generally I'm fine with most modern games but indeed there are a couple of examples of "busy" images that just make my eyes swim. The latest Horizon was a bad offender for this, as everything seemed to be awash in hyper-detail that was neither true to life or best-for-gameplay. The over-baked hero lighting on Aloy felt like a crutch to manage this issue but instead just made it worse for me.

 

[Magic Mushroom]

No. As long as they have good direction and control over directing the players attention there isn't really a limit to fidelity any more than there is to other, more detailed media like film.

I haven't played any of these 3 unreleased videogames so I can't comment on them.

Click to shrink...

Naughty Dog is especially good at guiding the player using things in the environment, like a certain color or a flock of birds or whatever. Game Maker's Toolkit dedicated an entire episode to it.

 

[Vic20]

yeah, I've had this problem with the last of us part 1 and 2, it's hard to describe it's like my eyes couldn't get used to the image.

 

[Bansi]

Worth pointing out those aren't screenshots per se in the OP but appear to be press stills. The framing is not necessarily true-to-game as they're intended to show off "LOOK AT ALL THESE GRAPHICS" rather than give the focus you would get in-game.

Click to shrink...

True. I just googled and posted the screens I found. But the reason I chose these games is because I noticed this issue in all three of them while watching gameplay videos.

 

[Deleted member 3924]

Naughty Dog is especially good at guiding the player using things in the environment, like a certain color or a flock of birds or whatever. Game Maker's Toolkit dedicated an entire episode to it.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I think they're pushing detail while maintaining clarity and guiding players better than most. I did see the video but its been a while. I also think simple, low detail styles can run into the same problems.

 

[Bishop89]

can't say I've ever had this problem.
Struggling to think of a game where I've struggled with this.

The only thing I can think of was one of the past cods where it was hard to distinguish the player from the background, just bad direction.

Like besides the fire pic in the OP, the rest look pretty clean and clear to me.

 

[NightShift]

Visual noise is great for horror games so I can't agree it's a problem with Alan Wake 2 or even TLoU2. The rest though, yeah, it's an issue. Horizon FW was genuinely hard to look at at times.

 

[Terbinator]

Absolutely but let's work off in-game screenshots /gameplay at least lol.

 

[JoJoBae]

Depends on the game, but yeah there's the possibility for too much stuff on screen these days. The first game to make me feel like that was Horizon Zero Dawn. I feel like I'm acclimating to it more now but that was the first game to give me a headache after playing for a while.

 

[Zinogah]

Yes. Games are inherently abstract in their mechanisms and so leaning away from abstraction in their visual makeup will make them harder to read in long term. There are "cheats" like yellow paint, duct tape, detective vision and so on, but whether that's harmful or not will probably depend on what qualifies as immersive for you. Visual noise and not knowing what's what can also be a benefit for some games, so that's worth keeping in mind too.

 

[Linus815]

Not an issue for me as long as the framerate is at least 60. Modern, ultra detailed graphics at 30 fps or lower tend to have such little motion clarity that it genuinely feels unpleasent to look at during camera movements. As long as there is good motion clarity, I don't mind ultra detail and density.

 

[ultramooz]

Yes, and I've grown to hate visual clutter in games.

I found Monster hunter world highly cluttered areas confusing and difficult to navigate, I loved Rise for its sobriety and more open levels.

Horizon 2 was really an unpleasant visual experience, to the point of stopping me from playing. The weird halo around Aloy is a confession that the developers were aware of the problem, but it's just weird and doesn't solve the issue.

Last of us 2 was less problematic for me because of the way they use light and textures to guide you instinctively. Even if at times I was also lost visually.

Ghost of tsushima was also full of petals and waving herbs but they managed somehow to make it readable. Strong colors and contrast helps. I didn't have much problems playing it.

Same for TOTK : the way they use the atmospheric fog and lighting paired with stylised visuals makes the game a pleasure to navigate.

Because of this constant push to visual clutter, I'm playing more stylised indie games than AAA ultra realistic blockbusters, anyway.

 

[St. Eam the 3rd]

Yep, it hinders the readability therefor my enjoyment of gameplay.
And my eyes are still pretty fast to follow objects:).
Clarity and readability create a better balance between graphic and gameplay.
Don't mind these clutters in some genre(turn based).

 

[SchrodingersDog]

Yes, very much so.

My favourite example is World of Warcraft. If you look at classic zones, they were mostly fairly simplistic and natural. Usually you'd see wide open spaces without too many odd, artificial obstacles in between. If you wanted to get from point A to point B - even for larger distances - generally, you could more or less point your character that way, start walking and you'd often get there.

Spoiler: Screenshot

Modern addons changed this drastically; zones are absolutely _stuffed_ full of things. Their size is unbelievably small, and their "clutter to sqft"-ratio is more dense than your average Manhattan studio. It somewhat looks appealing, but at the cost of feeling real or natural. The sense of scale is entirely lost as well. And what's worse, it affects gameplay adversely as navigating becomes quite hard and annoying, you constantly get stuck on some impenetrable plant, on some verticality or whatever else.

Spoiler: Screenshot

It's not an easy problem to solve; making things look modern and appealing is probably not an easy feat if you go for simplicity. In many cases though, I prefer a more natural approach to leveldesign, even if it's at the expense of perceived visuals

 

[diondiondion]

I struggle with this a lot, and it's the reason I gravitate towards retro games, games with highly abstract graphics, or slower paced ones where it's possible to take your time to take in the environment and "read" it. (Currently I'm really enjoying Chants of Sennaar with its really beautifully clear graphics.)

It's not a new phenomenon (remember Donkey Kong Land on the original Game Boy?), but definitely made worse by modern technology making it easier to produce realistic graphics at the expense of art direction and level design that guides the player's eye.

 

[Nimbat1003]

Different that what I was thinking but yes I do agree that some games are getting hard to parse at times.

On top of that I think games in motion are particularly hard to read now because of all the various post processing, upsampling and visual artifacts.

 

[Samaritan]

Yeah a lot of developers these days have prioritized visual fidelity for image quality, although I feel like this trend started back in the 8th generation, maybe even late 7th generation.

 

[CaptainDreads]

I would definitely say that busier environments does add a lot of noise.

I would say the affect of it depends on what kind of game it is though, a more cinematic experience, a la naughty dog games, don't suffer so much as they offer a more guided experience. However, I feel it does negatively impact games a little more free form, like immersive sims as it can be very difficult to work out what's interactable or not.

 

[Dunfish]

I have not encountered any modern games where the density of the visuals has been overwhelming for me. Recently playing through Phantom Liberty the level of "clutter" lends itself to making Night City a for more believably lived in city and greatly adds to the immersion of the game. The clutter and density makes me want to explore more and in my experience all games worth playing have a map system, pins, visual cues to allow players to better navigate the world, irrespective of the graphical fidelity.

 

[KillLaCam]

In single player games or non competitive ones it's great .

But in like MP FPS games I think it's a bad thing at a certain point . In BFV I felt like I couldn't see shit if I played on any high settings .

 

[CaptainDreads]

In single player games or non competitive ones it's great .

But in like MP FPS games I think it's a bad thing at a certain point . In BFV I felt like I couldn't see shit if I played on any high settings .

Click to shrink...

I think this is at least part of the reason for Battlebit Remastered success

 

[Greywaren]

It's absolutely an issue and that's why games add some more "game-y" indicators to tell you what to do, like painting climbable surfaces.

I'd say most of them do a pretty good job, but some of the games that are criticized for doing that stuff would be miserable to play (for me at least) if they didn't have that.

 

[Dever]

Those Alan Wake shots aren't noisy at all imo. Yes there's tons of photorealistic detail, but the lighting and composition guides the eye. TLOU2 also does this well.

The Horizon games feel like examples where the most technically accomplished and vibrant graphics can still be tough to look at because of the overwhelming detail.

 

[Jawmuncher]

It's definitely leading to too much spilled paint on stuff

 

[Koklusz]

This is mainly an issue with MP games where readability is more important than everything. It can be a problem with SP games, but then it's mainly an issue of level design - this is obviously a simplification, as creating an environment that is detailed and realistic but legible at the same time is no small task. Even the best studios can struggle with it. Plus, it's not like we don't have a bunch of older games with simpler visuals that are confusing to navigate.

So to answer the question in the title: yes, but no.

 

[P A Z]

In GOW Ragnarok I had trouble parsing some of the climbable walls in some environments because the "climb here" paint design blended in to the surrounding area. Same with the Horizon games, actually worse in Horizon because depending on how the world is lit you could even turn on an accessibility setting that places an interface over the game world that shows you climbable surfaces but even that is hard to parse because of how the lighting affects the visibility of the interface.

I don't think it's exclusive to Sony games though but to me they are one of the bigger offenders and when I go back and play older games I don't have the same issues.

Honestly I think Capcom handles readability best these days.

 

[jotun?]

All the way back in Quake 2 people would already tune their graphics settings to be ultra basic to improve readability

 

[DeadlyVenom]

Some games are so visually dense they shoot past realism to like hyper reality.

 

[Roshin]

There is a lot of detail in many modern games that is just wasted on me. I have somewhat reduced vision and tend to focus on my character and his/her immediate surroundings most of the time. Games with more stylized visuals are a lot easier to follow.

 

[Laughing Banana]

Final Fantasy XVI is a huge sinner for this, imo. Those eikon battles look bombastic but my God for me the visual clutter is just wayyyyyy too much.

Especially the final battle like goddamn game.

 

[Gelf]

Absolutely, it's not even a super new phenomena.

Halo 1 and 2 anniversary are so thick with details, that while visually great to look at, I can't tell what I'm looking at while playing half the time.

Click to shrink...

I played these fairy recently and there were absolutely times where I switched to the classic graphics because they were easier to parse.

 

[Dever]

Final Fantasy XVI is a huge sinner for this, imo. Those eikon battles look bombastic but my God for me the visual clutter is just wayyyyyy too much.

Especially the final battle like goddamn game.

Click to shrink...

Watching streams of the final boss was funny, the footage just turns to mush lol.

 

[RPGam3r]

This is also a problem in single player games.

Starfield is a great example of too much visual noise. On one hand it has a lot of clutter and detail and that's cool looking, but in the same instance it's very difficult to tell the difference between detail you can interact with and what you can't.

• Too many things around the environment that can't be picked up that look like they should
• Sometimes items can be picked up at times, while other times that same item is just decoration
• Books can be picked up sometimes, and it's never clear when they can or can't
• "Detective vision" is a shitty solution to this problem
• Too many computers look like you should be able to interact so you end up running up to things to see if you get prompted
• The cargo hold folks struggle to find on their ship (not in the menu) is a prime example of so much noise making the things you can interact with seem hidden