How much detail is good for you?

[speaker]

Hi,

This topic is about something that has been nagging me for a long time. I tried to discuss it once on the Openarena forums, but got the usual kind replies from leilol and I somehow lost my enthusiasm after that. I hope that people in this forum are a bit more adult.

In a nutshell, I believe that too much detail in an FPS game actually hinders your play. So the current goal of game engine and video card developers, i.e. cramming more and more detail (higher texture resolution, intricate shadows, etc.) on the screen is pointless as far as FPS games are concerned. (Unless display technology is radically changed in the near future and we can have a nice holographic 3D display for next Christmas... )

I base the above conclusion on my experience with modern games (starting with Q4 and UT2003). If I set the screen to high detail I can hardly distinguish my opponents from the background. The more detail I have, the more difficult it becomes. In Q3A I already noticed this problem, and UT2003 was for me unplayable exactly because of this phenomenon. OTOH the older UT99 with standard default settings had a good balance of detail so I hardly had this kind of perception problem there. It is not a matter of low FPS caused by extra CPU/GPU load. I have at present an Athlon XP64 dual core machine with an Nvidia 7300 GT video card. I use it at 1280x1024 resolution. With other settings at default my FPS in Q3A almost never goes below 166. This should be more than sufficient for playing.

I think that the root of the problem is the lack of 3D info in the rendered image. Consider how in real life we perceive different objects in 3D. First there is the shift of the object (relative to the background) in the left and right images that gives a sense of 'depth'. Also, when you look at an object standing at some distance in front of a background, the latter will be somewhat blurred because the point of focus is at the object. Both these 3D cues are missing from the images rendered on a flat 2D screen. For this reason player models kind of 'blend' into the background unless they are very different in color or brightness. And the more the detail, the more difficult it is to see the outlines.

This explains why some of the advanced players use extremely low detail settings. Setting a lower level of background detail provides half of the 3D cues (i.e. the amount of detail in the object and the background behind is now different and approximates what you see in real life). The problem is that only slightly lowering the detail makes you dizzy because your eyes continuously try to focus on the background -- but of course they cannot because the background image is not sharp to begin with. (Try to play for a few minutes using low texture detail setting in a map that has lots of brick textures. You will see what I mean.) So the solution (for Q3A and derivatives) is setting 'r_picmip' to 4 or higher and forcing a nicely visible model (no bright skin needed). The textures look mostly homogeneous (and ugly, but who cares ).

IMO it would be possible to (partially) eliminate the problem by careful selection of simpler textures and/or simplifying geometry when creating maps. However, this goes against the current trend of making maps with as much detail as the engine can handle.

I would like to have your opinion. Do you also have this problem? What other solutions are possible (besides drastically lowering texture details)?

[obsidian]

I think this has to do with art direction and not necessarily the level of graphics fidelity.

UT3 is unplayable because from an art direction, they took everything (colour, bloom, specular, even character models and weapons) and cranked it up to eleven. For a competitive FPS game, it all becomes way too distracting to be able to focus on the objective of the game, which is to frag other players.

The technology push isn't always bad, there's nothing wrong with a great looking map as long as the art direction is faithful and doesn't distract from the primary gameplay goals.

I'm a particularly fond player of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, using the id Tech 4 engine, has lots of pretty specular, bloom and megatexture effects, none of which is over done in such a way that it is distracting. It's there, but muted and only noticeable when you pause from the constant action and actually look at them. The game isn't the same "mouse-flick-kill" as Q3 or UT series of games, so blending into the background is often an integral part of the gameplay experience.

In a pure deathmatch style game, then I agree that subtle visual cues like bright player skins on a carefully chosen colour palette for the map are vital to the experience. I also agree that more isn't always better. But again, I think this has to do more with art direction and not feeling compelled to toss in everything and the kitchen sink as far as graphics go, but nothing wrong with having a really nice detailed texture set with normal and specular maps, and detailed models in corners that are out of the way, as long as it's all really well thought out and not intrusive.

[missbehaving]

I have used things like bloom but even if there is no performance loss.. I prefer a good map with decent detail. I use 800 res.. and after doing some comparisons, there is not much difference with close view detail to a 1024 resolution.

When I upgraded the specs of my pc... I found that my system was no better, basically because the graphics drivers produce better effects, so that kind of reduces the performance equal to the lower end graphics card I had.

I think performance is down to the level of experience of the people who create the maps. I've played on many maps which has lots of detail and can maintain a stable fps, yet other less detailed maps seem to cripple gameplay with fps loss.

Since I worked on the q3 textures I found that many of the textures are specific to the locations where they are used. The actual textures may appear bright, yet in game the shaders and shadows may show the detail much darker, and they blend in well. If increased detail were applied to the textures there is little gain. Especially if used in areas where candles and light sources are used. My opinion is that the atmospheric effects produce more realism than texture resolution. Surely texture resolution is relative to where they are used. A smaller image crammed with detail can be useful for tiling over areas... yet if you feel more detail is worthwhile then you can always increase the texture size, and position it wherever. Then there is still the option to use the smaller image in less visable areas, or in locations where the image is the same height or length.

To be honest, I havent played many of the newer fps games but I found Nexuiz wasn't too bad in lower detail. The weapon effects are nice though. Maybe the weapon and model effects are more important than the actual map detail. After all.. how many players will stop in midgame to appreciate a highly decorated button attached to a wall :/

[axbaby]

if i'm playing a single player game i crank up the detail to as much as my system can handle.
if i'm playing online shading and lighting effects are a handicap.

[redshoepaul]

[Captain a13n]

Preferrably enemy players should also be rendered as the exact size of hit-detectable bounding box as an official option.