Bloom is highly annoying for me, especially if it's slapped on top of everything and not selectively applied. It gives this dreamy, soft look that I'm not digging and it's usually the first thing to turn off after first the impression.

I don't mind bloom. Simple old depth of field that only blur far view is good for me. However, I don't like the newer depth of field which automatically blurring whatever not in focus. Not a big fan os motion blur either.

sorta like converting raster graphics to vector graphics in Illustrator ("image trace").

I am perfectly fine with DOF, Bloom and Motion Blur, as long as it's done tastefully.

Chromatic Abberation is the one PP effect that I friggin' can't stand. I believe you're referring to the scourge that is xBRZ.

I can give you one example where this one actually worked well. The game is called "I am alive". This game is set in a city that is covered with dust, so it gave it a more "dusty" look.

However this game also features one of the most extreme uses of depth of field. There are areas where things start to get blurry just 3 meters from the player. Combine film grain and blur and you can't see anything, it is uncomfortable to play. Luckily there is a user made fix which you can use to disable what you want. I'm fine with DOF if it is further in the distance, like 30-50 meters away covering the background, but not when it blurs things right in front of me.

BTW, surprisingly nobody mentioned bloody screens.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot to mention something about the film grain in this game... it is updating at a much lower framerate than the actual game, probably 20-30 fps, so it ends up looking terrible in practice. I had to disable it, then I applied a different film grain using Reshade that updates as fast as the game.

That orange color tint almost every game has nowadays...

everything about that game looked terrible.

Bloom isn't terrible by definition, because it's trying to mimic something that light actually does. Namely, bending around objects. The problem is that bloom should only ever be noticeable from an extremely bright light source, like the sun or stadium lights. When a single candle is causing significant obscuring bloom indoors, you've got a serious problem. Sadly bloom seems to be done poorly far more often than properly.


The one I absolutely despise is depth of field, because it gives me migraines. I also dislike it on principle, because the player should be allowed to look at whatever is onscreen at any time and be able to actually SEE it. If you don't want the player looking at something, don't show it.

Yeah that's another good one. (Gets shot in the foot, sees blood "trickling" down the screen). Unless your in-game character is supposed to be holding up a pane of glass in front of his face, just why?...

^ Agree 100%. I always disable it even in games that are claimed to "do it right". In real life when you look around outside, trees a mere 50m away don't suddenly become massively blurred just because you're talking to someone 2m away. It makes sense in "Bokeh" photography where being forced to focus on something is an art style that works for a passive medium (a static photograph). But in rendered games (an interactive medium) with zero light-capturing devices, the developer doesn't have a clue where you're looking and it looks absurd when what you want to see is blurred out for no reason.

Real life : Stuff you're not looking at isn't even that blurred, it's doubled (due to the nature of stereoscopic vision and the way your brain combines the information from two eyes from two different angles). Example : Go outside, hold up a finger in front of something distinct (eg, a lamp post 30m away). Look at your finger but keep awareness on the lamp post. It isn't blurred, it's doubled. Now focus on the lamp post but keep awareness of your finger. Again, your finger isn't massively blurred, it's doubled. This real life 3D DOF effect is something fixed distance 2D displays can't even begin to accurately portray, and using a lame "wall of blur" effect like an out of focus camera looks far more stupid than not having it there at all. And in real life, you don't even notice the "doubling" effect anyway as it gets seamlessly filtered out by your visual cortex (same way you aren't consciously aware of constantly seeing your nose in the lower half of your vision).

Yeah. I know the Risen sequels have super crap bloom, I even took a picture on Steam of it to rant about it. I'm playing Hitman 2 now and it definitely gets a little carried away with bloom sometimes. Oblivion is an old example of early bloom (called "HDR" lol) done wrong. In general though I do think it adds more than it takes away.

Motion blur:
I especially hate this "blur on turn". For racing games it's okay, if it creates this nice tunnel effect at high speeds. But most of the time it's terribly overdone.

DoF:
Hey, I decide where I want to focus my eyes on to! Go away!

Film grain:
I turn it off most of the time - except the game uses it as some kind of art statement (trying to look like an old movie).

Chromatic Abberation:
Same as film grain - as long as the game does not want tell a story of looking through a camera (like Outlast) - it simply makes no sense.

Bloom:
Actually like it, even in Oblivion :-)

Lens flares:
Ok-ish in space games...

In cutscenes the devs can use all the effects they want - they're often supposed to look like movies, so knock yourselves out. But in actual gameplay I hate when the game tries to decide what should be blurry and what shoudn't be.

It is a very good example of console limitations ruining games. The game is a first party Ubisoft title (after a studio change) and it was first released as a downloadable title for Xbox 360 and PS3 and is only a few GB big even though it is a 2012 game. The texture quality is horrible ! Without any exaggeration, Soldier of Fortune 2 on PC in 2002 had higher resolution textures on enemies and NPCs than in this game and no amount of post processing could hide it.

It really sticks out when you have relatively high quality 3D models, but textures look like they were from early 2000s. Saddest thing is no studio starts with such poor textures, they had to be compressed for consoles, and high quality ones just rot on some disk in the studio, never to be used. PS3/Xbox360 era is full with bad, low effort PC ports.

Bloom is fine when it is subtle. Oblivion in the capital felt like everywhere you looked it was te Nuclear Holocaust going on.

I can live with bloom. Depth of field I usually prefer pretty high, 70% to Max. Possibly less depending on the game, e.g., a horror game could be nice with less depth of field.

Motion Blur = Automatic OFF forever!

MB is not a good idea even on console. "Worse" graphics are better than MB. Plus we need to nip this trend in the bud while it lasts. In 20 years, I'm afraid 90% of indies will have graduated from pixel graphics to "nostalgic" MB.