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What's with Linus' hate for Motion Blur?

Now before you spam replies with motion blur hate, please watch this video: Tech Focus - Motion Blur: Is It Good For Gaming Graphics?

On multiple occasions Linus, when maxing out game settings, will go out of his way to turn off motion blur. This especially angered me when he did it for the game Crysis, as the developers put a lot of effort into making sure the motion blur looked as good as possible. Slides (skip to slide 41 for info about crytek's motion blur) They dedicated 20/78 slides to motion blur, so obviously it wasn't some dumb effect that made it look worse if they put THAT much effort into making it look good.

 

Like obviously this isn't an important issue my any means, but I always felt like Linus gave motion blur way more hate than it deserved. And there are probably people who hate motion blur because they see Linus turn it off all the time. But the thing is, Motion Blur can really help with image continuity between frames, especially at low FPSs. Even at higher FPSs, it can add that little bit more of continuity to make the game feel that much smoother.

IDK, whats your opinion.

Edit: y'all clearly didn't read the first sentence and decided, you know what, let me ignore these points and just spam the classic "motion blur bad."

Edit 2: Ok so this post was featured in an LTT video, which all my friends pointed out to me immediately. My point is, Motion Blur isn't for everyone, but it isn't objectively bad either. I feel like for benchmarks, its important to use all the features to be objective.

Edited by Sampajama
update 2
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9 hours ago, Sampajama said:

This especially angered me when he did it for the game Crysis, as the developers put a lot of effort into making sure the motion blur looked as good as possible.

This doesn't mean that we have to keep it on.

This can fall under personal preference. He's definitely not the only one who does this.

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yes there are technical benefits if it implemented correctly and if your on a low fps to help, but for me i dont care how good it is implemented, the first thing i do is disable motion blur, depth of field, any other lens blur nonsense. if it helps you good for you, enjoy it. i hate it. 

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3 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

Because its trash for some people, just because a dev worked hard on it doesnt mean its good or beneficial to the end user experience. Theres options for a reason

but I feel like the people who call it trash never really gave it a shot. I think if you turned on motion blur in a game that implemented it correctly, you wouldn't notice anything distracting.

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Just now, Sampajama said:

but I feel like the people who call it trash never really gave it a shot. I think if you turned on motion blur in a game that implemented it correctly, you wouldn't notice anything distracting.

Ive given it plenty of shots, Its trash in most games and instances i have tried. Its not helpful nor does it make anything look better. In most cases it gets annoying.

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1 minute ago, Sampajama said:

but I feel like the people who call it trash never really gave it a shot. I think if you turned on motion blur in a game that implemented it correctly, you wouldn't notice anything distracting.

110% wrong. even if it is implemented well, it makes the game look disgusting.

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Just now, HelpfulTechWizard said:

110% wrong. even if it is implemented well, it makes the game look disgusting.

did you even watch the digital foundry video?

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Just now, Sampajama said:

did you even watch the digital foundry video?

Oh no! My opinions were so changed by some technical video. Motion blur makes the game look.... well......... blurry. IMo, might as well just get a cheep 240hz monitor, one of the ones with a pannel only rated to 60hz.

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1 minute ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Oh no! My opinions were so changed by some technical video. Motion blur makes the game look.... well......... blurry. IMo, might as well just get a cheep 240hz monitor, one of the ones with a pannel only rated to 60hz.

What your referring is frame buffer accumulation motion blur, which is similar to buying a panel not rated to the refresh rate it runs at. But modern games use things like per-object motion blur, which use motion vectors to bridge the gap from one frame to the next and nothing more.

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Just now, Sampajama said:

What your referring is frame buffer accumulation motion blur, which is similar to buying a panel not rated to the refresh rate it runs at. But modern games use things like per-object motion blur, which use motion vectors to bridge the gap from one frame to the next and nothing more.

see

9 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

110% wrong. even if it is implemented well, it makes the game look disgusting.

and

3 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Motion blur makes the game look.... well......... blurry.

 

I could use some help with this!

please, pm me if you would like to contribute to my gpu bios database (includes overclocking bios, stock bios, and upgrades to gpus via modding)

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My beautiful, but not that powerful, main PC:

prior build:

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3 minutes ago, Sampajama said:

What your referring is frame buffer accumulation motion blur, which is similar to buying a panel not rated to the refresh rate it runs at. But modern games use things like per-object motion blur, which use motion vectors to bridge the gap from one frame to the next and nothing more.

I get that it can be done well. And look realistic etc. But I don't want it or like it. Done well or not. It's a matter of preference. It makes things look blurry, and my eyes don't like it.

 

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I generally disable motion blur because it costs performance and I generally cannot tell that it's on while I'm playing the game.

I'd rather have the extra performance headroom to turn up other settings that I do notice while playing.

YMMV. If you can notice motion blur in the middle of a firefight, then props; I guess your task saturation point is much higher than mine is.

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1 hour ago, Sampajama said:

Now before you spam replies with motion blur hate, please watch this video: Tech Focus - Motion Blur: Is It Good For Gaming Graphics?

On multiple occasions Linus, when maxing out game settings, will go out of his way to turn off motion blur. This especially angered me when he did it for the game Crysis, as the developers put a lot of effort into making sure the motion blur looked as good as possible. Slides (skip to slide 41 for info about crytek's motion blur) They dedicated 20/78 slides to motion blur, so obviously it wasn't some dumb effect that made it look worse if they put THAT much effort into making it look good.

 

Like obviously this isn't an important issue my any means, but I always felt like Linus gave motion blur way more hate than it deserved. And there are probably people who hate motion blur because they see Linus turn it off all the time. But the thing is, Motion Blur can really help with image continuity between frames, especially at low FPSs. Even at higher FPSs, it can add that little bit more of continuity to make the game feel that much smoother.

IDK, whats your opinion.

Motion blur is even more pointless than anti aliasing because rather than just smoothing the image by filling in details additively, it fills them in destructively. Motion blur makes it more difficult to see things, and turns everything into a smear a la fxaa. If he tested games with motion blur on, I guarantee you there would be 100 people complaining about it being on for every 1 person that complains about it being off now.

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2 hours ago, Sampajama said:

But the thing is, Motion Blur can really help with image continuity between frames, especially at low FPSs. Even at higher FPSs, it can add that little bit more of continuity to make the game feel that much smoother.

I have yet to see a single game where motion blur made the game feel or seem smoother. Not one single game.

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13 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

I have yet to see a single game where motion blur made the game feel or seem smoother. Not one single game.

Halo: Reach tried to do it. But its implementation wasn't very good, and they were using a super early form of TAA which when combined with the motion blur just led to a really unpleasantly blurry image in motion. Thankfully it's gone in the Master Chief Collection, both for the Xbox and PC.

 

Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal have what I'd say is a perfect example of how to use it right. They have a fantastic implementation of per-object motion blur, and use it for example to give weapon animations a better appearance of motion. 

 

I feel that motion blur gets a bad rep just because a lot of people (incorrectly) assume that it's the same as it used to be, where it would just blur the entire screen and make everything in motion look terrible. But it's much more advanced than that these days, and most good devs and games use it in beneficial and even subtle ways.

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Even if motion blur is well done, at lower framerates it turns the screen into a smear and makes objects hard to follow. At higher frame rates like 144 you'll get a natural motion blur (or slight ghosting) but you'll still be able to pick any object on screen and still follow it.

 

Think of a ceiling fan, if you stare at the center or the ceiling the blades are blurred and you have little definition. If you actively follow the blade, it's suddenly the inverse. Motion blur in games doesn't work like that, it's just all in relation to camera movement.

A good example I have is Driver Parallel lines, which has text that's obviously tied to framerate and not intended to go over 30, much less 144. It whips by so fast it's literally a blur unless you track it with your eyes.

 

45 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

I have yet to see a single game where motion blur made the game feel or seem smoother. Not one single game.

The older Forza Horizon games used blur at 30fps to a great extent, and it worked great. About the best use case for it and the newest title seems to have overdone the amount of blur and I hate it.

 

16 minutes ago, Whiskers said:

Halo: Reach tried to do it. But its implementation wasn't very good, and they were using a super early form of TAA which when combined with the motion blur just led to a really unpleasantly blurry image in motion. Thankfully it's gone in the Master Chief Collection, both for the Xbox and PC.

Not entirely. In motion there's stuff that still looks awful.

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59 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

Motion blur is a stupid feature designed to emulate the look of 24fps movies. It has no place in video games just like lens flare or chromatic aberration. Depth of field in cutscenes in OK.

It’s designed to emulate your eyeballs, not film.

 

24 FPS film worked because the motion blur played with your brain, emulating how moving objects were perceived in real life.

 

Motion blur in games exists for the same reason. Since our brains can perceive differences well beyond even 144 FPS, adding GOOD motion blur should reduce the uncanny valley effect of a game if it’s aiming for realism.

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2 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Motion blur in games doesn't work like that, it's just all in relation to camera movement.

That’s not true though. Per object motion blur has been a thing in games for a significant amount of time.

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Just now, JZStudios said:

Not entirely. In motion there's stuff that still looks awful.

That's not the result of motion blur. So far as I'm aware, the motion blur implementation was completely removed / disabled in MCC.

 

Reach has various other issues which can cause issues in motion, though. The game's broken at any framerate above 60 as various aspects of the game (critically, camera movement) are locked to 60. This was fixed in the other titles in the game though thankfully, and 343 have said they're hoping to fix the issues in Reach at some point later too.

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2 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

It’s designed to emulate your eyeballs, not film.

 

24 FPS film worked because the motion blur played with your brain, emulating how moving objects were perceived in real life.

 

Motion blur in games exist for the same reason. Since our brains can perceive differences well beyond even 144 FPS, adding GOOD motion blur should reduce the uncanny valley effect of a game if it’s aiming for realism.

Not necessarily. A bunch of games specifically try to emulate cameras. And most games have a slider for motion blur value, whether it's shown to you or not.

 

Motion blur in film is more just a byproduct of shutter speed and required amount of light capture. Although yes, it also helps blend together frames. It isn't strictly necessary now with digital cameras.

 

Mmm... yes, but if the framerate is high enough there's a natural motion blur and adding motion blur on top of that might make it more "cinematic" but not "realistic."

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4 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

That’s not true though. Per object motion blur has been a thing in games for a significant amount of time.

Per object motion blur is still in relation to the camera. If the camera is static, a moving object blurs. If it tracks the object the environment is blurred. It's an improvement over the old method which only blurred based on camera movement, but it's still relative to camera motion.

 

3 minutes ago, Whiskers said:

That's not the result of motion blur. So far as I'm aware, the motion blur implementation was completely removed / disabled in MCC.

I think it was the TAA then. There was some spooky ghosty trees n stuff.

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