Let's talk about focal blur.

mscowboy · April 2014

So there's this graphical feature that causes objects outside of the main area of focus to be pixelated. I know it's been in the game a while, but it wasn't hurting anyone. It was just kind of slipped in, and it wasn't causing any problems because no one did anything stupid like making it a default setting and reseting everyone in the game to default.

I just want to ask, why is this even a thing? The only game I know of that ever tried this was Sword of the Stars 2, and I had hoped it would have been obscure enough and enough of a complete failure that no one would catch on to their stupid ideas.

Focal blur is an effect most commonly associated (by normal people) with macro photography, IE close-up pictures of really small things. So who exactly thought it was a good idea to take that and apply it to a game about giant space ships? Do you WANT the game to feel like playing around with little miniatures? Because that's what this effect does. On top of just looking pixelated and awful in general, I mean. It's a bad effect in practice, and it's a bad effect in theory to begin with. So why?

ascendantflame · April 2014

If you mean the depth of field blur, yeah I really dislike that effect. Good thing there is an option to turn it off:

Options -> Graphics -> Screen -> Cinematic focus (depth of field)

maxvitor · April 2014

Cinematic focus is only supposed to work during cinematics, cutscenes, com windows etc., to make things in the background of a scene appear out of focus, but for some reason it sometimes works in game as well. I don't like the effect so I turn it off along with lens flare. I also reduce bloom intensity to about 30%, I want to see the game not glare.

Let's talk about focal blur.

Comments