darkSpyro

Reposting this from Reddit because I think it deserves discussion, especially for anyone who has eye problems, motion sickness issues, etc.

I hate to be That Guy(tm) but...is anyone else really hurting from how bright the new visuals are?

Don't get me wrong, they look great! They're just so bright and a few levels (I'm thinking specifically of Night Hollow) have really painful color contrasts (bright yellow against darker blues/greens). I know this isn't a problem for everyone, but at least for me, it really hurts! And trying to find items against the very saturated background made me kinda queasy. I'm having Dawn of the Dragon flashbacks (Valley of Avalar gave me a migraine) only this time it's the whole game, and that sucks.

I'm really hoping a future patch will allow for some brightness/motion blur control. Anyone else?

Edit: In watching the current AGDQ speedrun, it looks like the brightness, at least, isn't a problem in every level. It's just in the ones that are in a more daylight kind of setting. Still a pretty big issue, but not the whole game, or at least not the first one. If I remember right, there's a lot more bright levels in the next two games.

It's likely the global illumination that escalates this issue, with quirks such as the light blooming into focus when going from an inside area to an outside one. It's becoming standard for more games to use global illumination.

Most games these days have a gamma slider which should help, but I don't know if this game does. If not, the only solution is to mess around with your TV or monitor settings.

If you're really stuck, I could attempt to livestream playing the game, but I could use OBS's filters to adjust things like the gamma, brightness, and colour correction. Or I could upload videos of levels with those filters used in the recording if you wanted.

That'd be interesting to see, if nothing else! Thanks for the offer, sonicbrawler. :)

I'm one of the "lucky" ones who has to wait for a Switch/PC launch and I'm hoping that they'll figure out a gamma slider or something of the sort since this is not an uncommon issue. I'm glad to see someone who knows about how this works! I definitely noticed the sudden bloom when going from dark to light (that was an out loud "Ouch!" kind of moment). Other situations would just be a single item (orbs, illuminated platforms in a darker area, etc) that had me scrunching my face up in pain until the player looked away. That sort of reaction seems like something you want to avoid in your players, heh.

Nope. I love bright colors!

Have yet to try the game since it has yet to be shipped, but I’d rather have very bright, vivid and contrasted colors with certain exaggerated moments (even though I wish they could give more options to tone them down) than duller ones.

None of the footage I’ve seen, nor the other cartoony and bright 3D platformers with motion blur I’ve played so far such as Yooka-Laylee or the Ratchet & Clank remake, have given me problems while watching or playing so I guess it depends on how sensible one is to those effects.

Colors are a big part of what makes Spyro itself, and that was made particularly clear after the first “realistic” clips we saw of the early build of the game: might look less pleasing to some but at least its identity is mantained, for the most.

Oh, well that's just freaking great! I suffer from horrible motion sickness and eye strain! No joke, when I was little, a simple car ride would make me violently ill, and recently I got violently ill and a horrible headache from reading too much! I hope this game doesn't harm me even more because of what you're saying. Though, I played the demo for an hour last week and I was completely fine, so I might be alright.

I hope things get better for you. Yeah, try messing with your TV's brightness settings, that might help.

Valley of Avalar seriously gave you a migraine? I'm on 4 tablets a day to try stop me from having migraines and had no issues.

You could try adjusting your ttv's picture settings, as annoying as that is.

Guys, it sounds like what Razz is describing is some kind of sensitive eye condition such as photophobia (don't know if it's that the specific one but I'm using it as an example), which is what causes the eye strain and migraines and what not. Most of us likely perceive the colours and lighting differently or can handle the intensity better, so there's no point chiming in saying "the colours and lighting look fine". I don't think Razz is necessarily criticising the art direction of the game, this is more of an accessibility issue.

That being said, there is no real solution built into the current versions of the game it seems. Your best bet would be to wait on a potential PC or Switch port. PC games usually have various settings that can be adjusted for things like lighting, gamma, FOV (overly high FOV is another migraine cause for many people, I hear), and motion blur. Crash N. Sane Trilogy's PC version has these kinds of settings, including completely turning off motion blur, so no doubt Spyro will have these two if it arrives on PC.

As for the Switch version, it's likely that lighting will be simplified and certain post-processing effects like motion blur could be disabled in order to make the game run at a smooth frame rate on the Switch's weaker hardware. But that could also end up making the game easier to look at for you, too.

Otherwise, the only way to mitigate these issues is to adjust your TV/monitor settings to make the picture a bit less vibrant. As for motion blur, you could try playing the game at a steady pace to minimise it but that won't help cutscenes and it might hinder your progress in certain sections that require moving fast.

My copy apparently only shipped today so I don't even know if I'll have it tomorrow, but once I do get the game and have played around with it a bit, I will try using OBS to apply a filter that makes the colours easier on the eyes and then record some footage with that filter, and upload that sample footage and see if it's any easier to watch for you. From there, if you have any particular levels in the game you'd like to see, just let me know.

Thanks sonicbrawler! That's exactly my physical issue and I've seen several other people are having similar problems, either from the brightness, the motion blur, or the combination of both. I absolutely love the art direction and color palettes, it's just painfully bright in spots and I had my very first instance of game-induced motion sickness watching an LP of the Artisans levels.

I'm very glad these aren't issues that affect everyone, but y'all gotta remember that, just because it doesn't happen to you, doesn't mean it isn't happening. This is an issue big enough that I think we'll be seeing a patch for it in the future, or at least I hope we will.

Haha, no need to adjust everything for my sake, sonicbrawler, though I appreciate it! I want to see everything from every game since there's still no word on if it's going to come out for the Switch anytime soon and time is ticking on how long I get to have working eyesight as it is. I'm just going to suffer through the eye strain and nausea so I can see this game now, just in case the option isn't there in the future.

Acessibility options should still be a thing in a AAA game though. Apparently the cutscenes don't even have subtitles, which is a really stupid remnant from Skylanders that either had none or really poorly done ones.

Agreed Bifrost! There's no reason whatsoever to not include subtitles.

Update on the original post: now that the game's out, a lot of posts are springing up mentioning motion sickness, including several people vomiting from playing the game. TfB has got a couple first priority patches to make, it looks like.

Yeah I've been seeing posts about the motion blur all over my Twitter feed, even from YouTube personalities. If it's not motion sickness they're feeling, they're saying it's ugly and distracting and feels too much. I can't give an opinion myself since most people on YouTube don't go for high quality encoding methods so videos will look blurry anyway, but if it is this big of an issue, they need to do something about it. The ideal would be an option to turn it off and to also tone down the intensity of the motion blur when it's switched on.

There are rumours circulating that the devs wanted another 4-6 months to work on the game to fix a bunch of bugs and other issues, so perhaps this was one of those things that they really wanted to iron out. Regardless, I hope they do something about it.

Quote: Razz

Agreed Bifrost! There's no reason whatsoever to not include subtitles.

Update on the original post: now that the game's out, a lot of posts are springing up mentioning motion sickness, including several people vomiting from playing the game. TfB has got a couple first priority patches to make, it looks like.

Yeah... I'm willing to bet that falls squarely on the motion blur. I said it when Ratchet & Clank 2016 used it and I'll say it again, if you're sticking to 30 FPS to save development time/energy/costs, then own up to it. Don't liberally employ motion blur to trick the players into thinking the game runs better than it does.

Quote: HIR

Quote: Razz

Agreed Bifrost! There's no reason whatsoever to not include subtitles.

Update on the original post: now that the game's out, a lot of posts are springing up mentioning motion sickness, including several people vomiting from playing the game. TfB has got a couple first priority patches to make, it looks like.

Yeah... I'm willing to bet that falls squarely on the motion blur. I said it when Ratchet & Clank 2016 used it and I'll say it again, if you're sticking to 30 FPS to save development time/energy/costs, then own up to it. Don't liberally employ motion blur to trick the players into thinking the game runs better than it does.

I would argue that the effect actually looks really nice when done right. I thought R&C and Crash both utilised motion blur really well to make the games look smoother.

This is why options are always ideal. Some people like it, some people don't, and others literally can't experience the effect without it making them sick. So just throw a toggle in so everyone can play how they like.

It baffles me that more games on console don't have an option to turn it off. It's the easiest thing in the world for them to do. While refining your motion blur effects takes time to get them right, including a toggle to turn it off does not. Motion blur is literally just a post-processing effect and turning it off shouldn't cause any other problems for your game.

I'll be honest, I don't understand what visual difference there is between 60fps and 30fps. I'm pretty sure I physically can't tell, but I know a lot of other people maybe can? If I recall right, 24fps used to be the norm for tv/film and that always looked fine. Why is framerate such a big deal in gaming now?

Huh! I didn't even notice the motion blur in Crash! Either it got sorted out before it came to Switch or it's much less of an issue when your levels are more linear platforming types OR it was just a lot more subtle in that game. Probably the last two.

Hard to notice motion blur when the camera almost never rotates; Crash’s usually follows him either horizontally or vertically and only does a 360° movement in the hubs of the second and third game or during certain boss battles.

With Spyro you are always moving it, for one reason or another.

I have to admit the motion blur bothered me as well... For the first 10 seconds.
After that I stopped noticing it entirely even when I focused more on the level itself rather than Spyro (also have to admit that I wasn’t expecting the free camera to feel so natural, but it totally did).

Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue for a lot of people and I sure hope they’ll give you the option to remove it in a future patch.

Quote: Razz

I'll be honest, I don't understand what visual difference there is between 60fps and 30fps. I'm pretty sure I physically can't tell, but I know a lot of other people maybe can? If I recall right, 24fps used to be the norm for tv/film and that always looked fine. Why is framerate such a big deal in gaming now?

Huh! I didn't even notice the motion blur in Crash! Either it got sorted out before it came to Switch or it's much less of an issue when your levels are more linear platforming types OR it was just a lot more subtle in that game. Probably the last two.

Aside from making animations look smoother (I personally think 60 FPS looks especially good on games with bouncy, cartoony animations, so Reignited Trilogy is definitely in that camp), games can only detect your controller inputs during an "active frame" (i.e. a frame where a new image is being rendered), so the higher the frame rate, the more responsive the controls are. Of course it isn't the only factor in control responsiveness, but it's a major one. If a game starts dropping from 60 FPS to 15 FPS during gameplay, not only will it look incredibly jarring to most people, but it will cause the game to drop inputs, leading to unfair pitfalls in a platformer, or unfair hits in a fighting game or action game. It's one of the major culprits of "I SWEAR I PRESSED THE BUTTON IN TIME" moments players might experience. 60 FPS is considered the gold standard for any fast-paced video games requiring quick reaction times and the like. Mario games, Sonic games, and any fighting game are good examples of games that generally
should target 60 FPS.

There are also other benefits to higher frame rates in any visual media. Effects like motion blur are actually more effective at higher frame rates because there are more frames to reference to create that blur effect. Slow motion effects also work better if you have more frames to work with. IIRC, most films are actually captured in something like 240 FPS as it makes things like slow motion effects much easier to refine for the final product which runs at 24 FPS. If you recorded footage natively at 24 FPS, then a slow motion effect would end up looking super jittery and not smooth at all.

Personally, I do notice the difference in frame rates pretty easily, and I generally prefer a stable 60 FPS if possible. However, it's something I don't expect from most AAA console games that aren't fighting games, and that's part of why I mostly play on PC now. I even emulate as far as Wii U and PS3 games on my PC just to play them at 4K 60 FPS. However, when it comes to console gaming, 30 FPS is fine to me if it's consistent and stable. If it's frequently dropping from 30 FPS to 10 FPS though, that actually compromises my enjoyment of the game.

Wow, that's pretty cool! I never knew the frame rate had anything to do with input. Thanks for the detailed answer, sonicbrawler!

Okay, I think even I would notice a sudden drop to 10fps. :D That sounds like lag city, yuck.

Not having subtitles is ridiculous!

It is! And I'm pretty sure it's in violation of a couple federal laws regarding accessibility. :/ Even if it weren't, a large portion of the audience has audio processing or hearing difficulties or just plain prefers subtitles. Huge, really terrible oversight right here. :/

Activision did give a statement on the lack of subtitles. Seems like there might be a patch for them coming in.

http://www.gamepitt.co.uk/ther...ted-collection/

Yeah, from what I can tell, the Deaf community got involved almost immediately and that's a pretty big culture on its own. Good for them, getting Activision to do the job they should've done to begin with!

The fact Acti is so lazy they call subtitles a waste of resources(with pretty PR words) of a script they already have is insane. How scummy do you have to be to call accessibility options not interesting to put in a game? I'd understand a bit if they had to make new systems to actually have said subs but it's built into UE4.

I feel bad for TFB and Sanzaru when they have to hear wonderful tales like these and can do nothing about it because the higher ups are too buried in shareholder talk.

I think what bothers me is that they frame it as "we didn't do it because purist Spyro fans would be unhappy if we added it when it wasn't in the original game".

Except that makes no sense because they were fine with making changes to dialogue, character designs, the context of certain cutscenes, etc. It's PR fluff at its finest. Gotta make addressing an issue sound like a sales pitch in some way noal matter what.

The only game that ever gave me a headache was Mario + Rabbids, but I turned down the brightness and it was fine, so I'd reccomend the same.

It's been well documented at this point that it's the motion blur. A lot of people are having the same problems and, next to subtitles, I think fixing this is the biggest thing fans have been asking for in a patch. Even Caddicarus and The Completionist commented on this issue in their reviews.

It’s not a proper solution by any means, an option to toggle it off would be much better, but I noticed the blur to be less annoying when using the dorsal buttons to move the camera with the classic controls’ configuration.

I did had very sporadic episodes of dizziness when moving it freely with the right stick during my first playthrough of the trilogy, but have yet to experience any such problem after using the dorsal buttons and I’ve already 100% completed the first game.

Still, they shouldn’t force players to use those buttons with that specific configuration instead of providing a proper option to disable the blur and let them play however they prefer.