Correct perspective
polycounter lvl 4
Inspired by this reddit thread about correcting OpenGL perspective: Curved perspectives should draw curved lines.
We are at a point where to add extra realism we add minor effects like Chromatic aberration and refraction. Yet we are still using 'outdated' (at least it seems like it is) and not correct perspective in games. Something as fundamental as perspective can make a simple drawing look realistic, correcting it is sure to increase realism by a lot.
The current perspective used in games is full of straight lines and has awful stretching at higher values (90+) instead of becoming 'panorama like' like it would in real life:
There was an example of correct version of FOV in the mentioned Reddit thread:https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53374990/c2%20myriad/pics/02%203Dsprite01.webm
While I am aware it would bring new issues to the table, isn't having correct perspective the price worth paying for better looking games?
We are at a point where to add extra realism we add minor effects like Chromatic aberration and refraction. Yet we are still using 'outdated' (at least it seems like it is) and not correct perspective in games. Something as fundamental as perspective can make a simple drawing look realistic, correcting it is sure to increase realism by a lot.
The current perspective used in games is full of straight lines and has awful stretching at higher values (90+) instead of becoming 'panorama like' like it would in real life:
There was an example of correct version of FOV in the mentioned Reddit thread:https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53374990/c2%20myriad/pics/02%203Dsprite01.webm
While I am aware it would bring new issues to the table, isn't having correct perspective the price worth paying for better looking games?
Replies
Its not MY vision. So if I glance left or right the effect is broken. I feel like for the the curved lines approach to really work I would have to look at the center of my screen only or have a VR headset with eye tracking.
This will remain a issue till we got huge curved screens, or till we all use VR headsets. Back during the old quake days, and with team fortress classic, I used to play with curved perspective and 120FOV to get a bit of a edge while playing. it looked fucked up on the 4:3 screens of that day. I'm sure if I tried it on my 2k 27inch 16:9 screens of today it would still looked fucked up. There is no where near enough horizontal space or enough curve in current day screens to accurately show images how a human sees the world around him.
Also think about what this would do to BSP geo or to geo with large triangles. Unless the vertex shader was tessellating on the go, so it could add this curving.
If this becomes a thing in most games it will likely be once VR comes into being more mainstream. Which will be a while off. Since VR is pretty power hungry even with the best gpus around, since it needs to render twice at a much much higher res to look good and it needs to keep a higher framerate or headtracking fails.
http://strlen.com/gfxengine/fisheyequake/
Also PanQuake.
http://strlen.com/gfxengine/panquake/
Just to play devil's advocate here : While advanced in rendering tech are great, games are still games, and therefore should be designed around gameplay over graphics and not the other way around. Current FPS games tend to work great on both consoles (low FOV) and PC (slightly higher FOV), with both being displayed on a 16/9 screen ; and indeed, that image looks far from the default (= designed) settings, which do not create such odd distortions. And then there is also the fact that straight lines in FPS games help with aiming.
That being said, accurate perspective distortion logically seems paramount to convincing VR, therefore I cannot wait to see what will happen next in that regard. Bottom line : an interesting topic, but like everything it's the practical applications that matter. Time to try out these Quake mods !
On a semi-related note : I wish curvilinear perspective was taught to art students. Most courses cover 2-point and 3-point, but indeed this is very far from the way we actually see the world. Understanding this helped me tremendously, and I certainly wish it hadn't taken me so long to get there.
So perhaps modifying game perspective wouldn't have to be limited to just realism. I myself had a dream about making a game that would intentionally play with perspective (imagine 8 vanishing points!!!!).