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jefequeso: I can't stand DoF. Yeah, obscuring half the game's visuals with a senseless blurring effect is a great idea!
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ET3D: In real life it's a good effect. It lets you focus on a specific depth and get more details from it. If all depths are clear the image will be more confusing. I think that this can be applied well to games, like obscurelyric suggested.
The thing is that in real life, the focus of your eyes decide what should be blurred and what shouldn't. Not so in a game. There the camera focus decides, and it doesn't matter what your eyes focus on.

It gets even worse in stereoscopic 3D. Your eyes are used to changing focus, but when the focus is handled by the camera, no amount of focusing by your eyes will sharpen the blurry background. I think this is one of the major reasons why so many people get headaches and/or "tired eyes" from watching 3D movies.
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Wishbone: The thing is that in real life, the focus of your eyes decide what should be blurred and what shouldn't. Not so in a game. There the camera focus decides, and it doesn't matter what your eyes focus on.
Exactly. When I play, my eyes focus on certain part of the screen, so I don't need separate DoF to "simulate it".

There's nothing more irritating than having to move the mouse and camera to see what's there in the background.
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jefequeso: I can't stand DoF. Yeah, obscuring half the game's visuals with a senseless blurring effect is a great idea!
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ET3D: In real life it's a good effect. It lets you focus on a specific depth and get more details from it. If all depths are clear the image will be more confusing.
Sorry, but a clear image is not confusing by any means. Humans can direct their attention, in fact they do it all the time.

DoF is not a beneficial effect that helps us to focus attention, it's a physiological limitation of the way how the human eye works. It _may_ have a supportive effect for people who have trouble focusing their attention, but then we're really talking about clinical samples, and not whole populations of video game players.
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jefequeso: I can't stand DoF. Yeah, obscuring half the game's visuals with a senseless blurring effect is a great idea!
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ET3D: In real life it's a good effect. It lets you focus on a specific depth and get more details from it. If all depths are clear the image will be more confusing. I think that this can be applied well to games, like obscurelyric suggested.
I have yet to see a case where it's implementation is beneficial. As others have stated, your eye is already doing it. It doesn't need to be simulated. At best, DoF is unnoticeable, and at worst it makes the game look like a blurry mess. Either way, I don't see a reason to have it.

In the case of bloom... well, it does get overused, but I think it can be effective (in Painkiller, for instance, it gives everything a nice soft look, but remains unobtrusive). I think motion blur can look really good, especially in games like Crysis where it's done for everything.
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AdamR: DoF is almost always sucky. One exception for me was STALKER CoP.
I admit, it did work fairly well in CoP (Complete, right? I think it's Complete that adds DoF?). But that's mostly because it was used as an atmospheric effect.
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DieRuhe: I dislike bloom. Never use it. Makes everything unrealistically bright.

And to me, blur is just annoying. Thing is, your eyes actually don't move in one smooth continuous motion when you look around at things. It may "feel" like it because the increments are so small. Blur tries to act as if everything you've looked at is still in the same focus when you look around. And where is blur in real life anyway? You can get your hand to "blur" if you wave it in front of your face really fast, but if you hold your hand still and try to move your head fast enough to get blur, it probably ain't gonna happen.
If you turn your head rapidly back and forth without focusing on any one thing, you do get an effect similar to motion blur.
Post edited November 22, 2012 by jefequeso
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DieRuhe: I dislike bloom. Never use it. Makes everything unrealistically bright.

And to me, blur is just annoying. Thing is, your eyes actually don't move in one smooth continuous motion when you look around at things. It may "feel" like it because the increments are so small. Blur tries to act as if everything you've looked at is still in the same focus when you look around. And where is blur in real life anyway? You can get your hand to "blur" if you wave it in front of your face really fast, but if you hold your hand still and try to move your head fast enough to get blur, it probably ain't gonna happen.
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gooberking: Try not looking at your hand. Just stand up and start spinning. If you don't see it you are probably stopping t look at things(counteracting the movement with your eyes/head)
Ok, granted, spinning around in a circle will do that...if you're going fast enough. It just seems blur wants to give you that every time you turn your head, which to me is pushing it a bit. :-)