Depth of Field (Blur) seems off

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but to me the stuff in the harbour looks more blurry than the sea past the second boat.

User Specs:
OS: Linux 4.5 Fedora 23 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4) System RAM: 32100
GPU: GeForce GTX 760/PCIe/SSE2 GPU RAM: 1024
SotA.EarlyAccess.Linux.64.432.Date.06.29.16

 

Some other things that look weird, trees and masts have a strange blue glow. See the distant ones to the left on this screenshot:


And the masts here:

 

This element is still being adjusted and tuned. Thank you for your feedback!

 

It seems to only blur the texture but the edges are still sharp, making it look very ugly. Also, there should be an option to turn it off.

 

I hate it. I really hate it. It makes me squint at the screen and seems totally unnatural. If it HAS to stay, please consider making a slider to make it as minimal as possible for people with less crashing issues.

 

I stand up for the rights of the Non-Nearsighted Avatars
The blur needs to be a checkbox at the very least. My PC has the horsepower to render it all... and I want it to.
I get that the blurriness right now is a bug (as in the release thread), but I'd rather just be able to turn it off entirely.

 

Agreed. This would be my preference as well.

 

Adding blur across the viewport acts as though our avatars are near-sighted.. my eyes blur out the other areas naturally, and if I want to focus on something in the distance in the game, I want to be able to do so, with my eyes and the avatar's viewport. Probably should remove the blur.. plus it slows my machine down.. something does since this patch came out... I think it's the blur.

Can we even spot other avatar's in the distance if it's all blurry? I'm not near-sighted.

 

I posted this in the Announcements/Release 31 thread and @DarkStarr suggested that I start a thread in this forum. Since this thread already exists, here's a cut-and-paste:

 

I don't know much about how computers and the server(s) where the game comes from work, but during an in-game conversation someone asked if the Blur Effect that has been added were done to ease the strain on the game's servers?

 

I like the general idea but it needs some tweaking.
Slightly reduce the effect and take care of the ugly effects at the borders.

 

It's not directly related to performance - the performance optimization is the LoD (Load on Demand). The way this works is that only things that are close to you are rendered in full detail, the further away stuff uses less detailed objects which are faster to load and to render. As you move around the scene more detailed versions of the models are loaded as you get closer to them (i.e. on demand). This can massively improve performance in scenes where you can see things a long way off. The problem with this is that the far away stuff can then look ugly, blocky and/or unrealistic, so the depth of field blurring attempts to mask that.

None of this is a problem for the server, which has to keep track of every object in the scene anyway, but doesn't have to do any rendering.

 

Until I understand what the devs are trying to achieve with these depth of field changes, I really don't know how to give feedback. If the goal is to create an artistic blur, there are many many ways to critique and offer constructive criticisms and feedback. If the goal is to create some efficiency in bandwidth, there are numerous other ways to suggest feedback.

The Level of Detail (LOD) is being manipulated for some reason or another - if the devs could throw us a bone here, it would help tremendously.

 

If DoF is going to have a permanent presence in our SotA world, is there any way to make it optional or configurable? Specific to this blur effect, being able to manipulate it with respect to aspect ratio, field of view, f-stop, focal length, etc... would be an amazing advance in player immersion. Right now, the artistic blur is so apparent that it's a distraction.

I don't mind some blurring in the far off distance, but it should be subtle to the point that it's not noticed in whatever is being presented.

 

LOD usually stands for level of detail. Also, since lower qualities are rendered father away, you don't notice since those details are sub-pixel (or close to it). You would only notice if changes to a lower quality happen too close, which is currently happening but that's a different issue (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/lods-degrade-too-soon.53764/).

The DOF blurring is only a visual "enhancement".

 

Thanks, learn something new and all that

 

Since in my opinion it makes things look worse rather than better, I have to assume the blurring is related to performance optimisations.
I assume it is being used to disguise the use of models with a decreasing polygon count at increasing distance. The blurring shouldn't be necessary unless the substitutions are really close and really obvious, and on a powerful PC they don't need to be close.
Can we please have a slider to set the distance at which LoD kicks in? Or failing that an option to disable it.

 

It's a visual enhancement. In some games (like Uncharted 4 or Dragon Age: Inquisition), it's used to bring your attention to something at a specific distance. For this type of game, it's totally inappropriate.

 

~I Can See Better in Real Life~

So why does my fantasy world need to be blurry?
I'm not old enough to be going blind, but my Avatar is...
~Time Lord~

 

I made this post on the R31 thread, reposting it here with added information:

• Sharpness filter: To go with depth of field filter, we now use a sharpness filter on near objects. The result is near objects are more crisp than past releases and distant objects are slightly blurred.

Well, the blurring is annoying. It's like watching a movie and part of the screen is blurred out. My eyes want things *focused*. I don't really hold out any hope that this change will be removed, but I had to put in my 2-cents worth. The game looks like crap with the blur IMO and I feel this is a step backwards in the development process.



Seriously, I just don't get this. Why *fix* what wasn't broken? The game was beautiful and now you've gimped it visually. Makes no sense.



If there's a bug I can deal with that. But then that means the bug was introduced with this change. The fact that there is *any blurring* at all is a thorn in my flesh, specifically my eyeball flesh. The game looked awesome as it was. Adding any blur is amateur hour IMO and completely unnecessary. Old saying - If it ain't broke don't fix it.

With so many things that NEED to be done, adding blur to visuals is pointless. Frankly, I don't want to play a blurry game any more than I want to watch a blurry movie.

I'll wait and see what gets fixed and chalk it up to development. My concern is that it's getting too easy to justify this kind of change to *agile development* and say *oh well we just have to deal with it*. This type of development is what is causing people to leave the game.