Chromatic Aberration is a pet peeve of mine in video games, so it didn’t take me long to spot it in the new HUD screenshots published in the blog “Your Team is Your Weapon”. It’s when objects have a blue/red tint outline, making it almost like what you see when you take off your 3D glasses when watching a movie. I think it’s a pointless effect and adds nothing of value.
Here is the Halo 5 radar with/without it:
Here it is in Payday 2:
I’m really hoping it doesn’t make it into the full game. The beta was fine without it and as far as I know, nobody asked for this. In the blog post there are some images without the effect, so there is still hope it was just from an earlier version of the game. Still, it’s a small detail that won’t impact my enjoyment of the game and what I’ve seen of Halo 5 so far looks amazing.
Well in some screenshots it’s there, and others it’s not…so while it doesn’t bother me either way, I would wait until we get more finished in-game footage before assuming this is an effect that will actually be there.
There is nothing, and I do mean nothing, which is improved by chromatic aberration. It was originally a result of crappy lenses used in the cameras for low budget films. Why would we seek to replicate that which only exists due to limited resources? It looks like -Yoink- and it’s undesirable in the one form of media in which it occurs naturally without going out of your way to code (which ironically means that CA is now COSTING money to implement), so why are we going out of our way to replicate it?
Of course it’s better not to have it at all, but it’s often very minimal and you’d have to be looking for it to see it. That photo of Payday 2 shows just how minimal it really is.
I don’t know why Payday has it, but from the H5 shots it looks like it’s circumstantial, when light is on your visor or something. I’m guessing it was implemented as a minor immersion factor. Personally, I never would have noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out.
I’d say limit it to moments when you’re using the artimus (or however you spell it) tracker, or when there are some kind of electronic “surges” like distort the HUD. If you HAVE to have it, limit it to just the HUD, not the environment. This kind of effect should be limited, just like motion blur, lens flare, and bloom.
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> There is nothing, and I do mean nothing, which is improved by chromatic aberration. It was originally a result of crappy lenses used in the cameras for low budget films. Why would we seek to replicate that which only exists due to limited resources? It looks like -Yoink- and it’s undesirable in the one form of media in which it occurs naturally without going out of your way to code (which ironically means that CA is now COSTING money to implement), so why are we going out of our way to replicate it?
This is exactly how I feel about it. An artifact from bad camera lenses is not a desirable effect. (In my opinion)
To make the game look like the game was filmed with a camera that has a low-quality lens. For some reason, game developers are really into making their games look more film-like by using any optical artifacts that real world camera manufacturers are trying their best to get rid of. With things like this, I can’t avoid thinking that some game developers are just insecure about their own medium, and instead of embracing its unique qualities, they’re just trying to copy the closest medium.
