Comment by munificent
1 day ago
Yeah, something the article doesn't mention is that videogames have to overcompensate with things that provide the illusion of depth because the viewer is missing their usual stereoscopic vision. The game is already at a disadvantage, and players need to be able to read scenes quickly to play the game effectively.
I'd also wonder about the average display equipment in use, the environment they're viewing in, and versus what our eyes are capable of.
> videogames have to overcompensate
And yet somehow we can understand videos and photos just fine.
Videogames have to overcompensate when they're missing lots of other important cues, but the closer they get to realism the less they have to overcompensate.
I think you may be underestimating how much photographers and cinematographers also compensate for this by choosing subjects and lighting carefully to re-convey a sense of depth lost by stereoscopic vision.
This is, I think one of the biggest differences between a skilled and amateur photographer. Amateur photo and video work looks flat because they are pointing the camera at a scene that looks fine to them in reality, but the resulting 2D image is flat and they don't know why or what to do about it.
I find a particularly stark example is forests. Walk into a random forest and you will find your sense of being surrounded and in an immersive, evocative, deep space to be very strong. Then fire off a quick photo and the result will be a chaotic uninspiring flat mess.
Great point. I've taken so many grey-blob photos of forests.
Any course on landscape photography will teach that landscapes should (usually) have a foreground, middle ground, and background. It seems kind of too obvious and too restrictive at the same time. But most of the time when I take a landscape photo and feel dissatisfied, it either breaks this rule or has very bad lighting.
Yes, there is so much I don't know about lighting and photos. I can recognize a good photo, I can't take a good photo
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And that’s fine, if you can get close enough to realism at 60 fps or better. If you can’t, fake it, even if it’s technically less realistic.