What's the point of film grain in games?

[The Last One]

Playing Last of Us 2 at this moment and this filter or whatever just annoys me. RE 2 also had it but at least we could turn it off, which isn't the case with TLoU 2.

What's the purpose of this effect anyway? Do you always turn it off too when it's possible?

 

[Atom Heart Mother]

it doesnt make sense in those games either because nobody is holding the camera behind you. it's some floating thing that lets you see the world/character. in Super Mario 64 the camera is held up by a character, same thing with Kane & Lynch. But in those games.. I guess its to look more gritty. For me, it just takes me out of the experience.

 

[Ser_Kafka]

I'm playing Alien: Isolation atm and it has the option to adjust this filter. Not seeing much of a difference when I crank it up.

 

[Memento]

Atmosphere

 

[Neuromancer]

I think it looks cool. I don't think the idea is that you are literally watching a film; it's purely stylistic. But options are always good so I would support it being toggleable.

 

[civet]

It looked great in Silent Hill 2 for what I can remember.

 

[Lant_War]

It's a tool to achieve a cinematic art-style properly, same with motion blur.

 

[The Last One]

Imo this effect only removes the image cleanliness. TLoU 2 still looks amazing of course.

 

[____]

I think it's just an artistic choice. I think it looks good. Hides that "gamey" look a bit

 

[Vulcano's Assistant]

In cinematic games it is to convey a film, in horror games it is to give it atmosphere, in general in helps with color banding.

 

[Temtastic Muns]

I just posted about it in the Digital Foundry Tech Review thread. TLOU2's is something I've slowly gotten used to, but every time I turn to Photo Mode, I realize how much more more I prefer the clean, crisp image quality without it. Was there a technical reason that Naughty Dog utilized so much grain, or was it strictly an artistic choice?

How realistic would be it for them to patch an option to adjust the grain, or to turn it on and off? Just seems like with all the Accessibility options the game has to offer, this is an odd one to exclude.

 

[Le Dude]

Consoles should just have an OS level feature like NVIDIAs in game overlay thing, which lets you set filters, color/contrast, etc . . . On a game-by-game basis. You can make games look like Skyward Sword, throw in a film grain, make a black and white mode like Ghosts of Tsushima, etc . . .

 

[TechnicPuppet]

It's horrible in games and horrible in films when it's faked. If your going to put it in, let me turn it off.

 

[LuxCommander]

Aesthetics. No other reason. For games that are trying to emulate the look of high-end CG, it's a must, as that aesthetic factors in the grain. Personally, I tend to prefer crisp and clean for the vast majority of games, but on occasion you run into a game that benefits from it. More often than not, it's a horror game, and it's because low-quality film stock is borderline synonymous with the genre's aesthetics.

 

[Tyaren]

It ads texture and grittiness to the image, it also dulls the vibrancy of colors a little. I guess they thought it suited the game's art style well.

 

[Rodney McKay]

Mass Effect 1 wad the first game I noticed this as a graphical option.

And I immediately turned it off, haha.

 

[BAW]

Always turn that shit off. Just like CA there's no reason to make your image quality willingly worse.

 

[hydruxo]

It's just a stylistic choice. They're going for that filmic look. Personally I like how it looks in TLOU 2 but they should have made it something you could toggle off or on in the settings.

 

[infinityBCRT]

I think it's part creative choice. But I also think its partly to hide some of the low res assets and textures. There's an area very early in the game (maybe 20-30 mins in) where there's a lot of NPCs in the area, and while you're meant to just kinda hop in and out of that area very quickly, if you actually stop and look (use L2 to zoom in) you can tell those NPCs are low res/low poly and the film grain does a lot to hide it.

 

[Deleted member 51691]

A game that wants to be like a Hollywood blockbuster has got to look the part!

 

[USF]

That's actually my thing I love it

 

[Playboi Carti]

It looks cool

 

[Radicality Incident]

Its very helpful as a extremely immediate visual cue to remind me that I have forgotten to adjust the graphics settings in whatever game I'm playing. If I see it I realize I need to immediately go into the graphics settings and turn it off along with chromatic abberation and motion blur, and probably need to find an FOV slider and crank it up to something that doesnt give me motion sickness after 5 minutes.

 

[Deleted member 420]

It looks gorgeous when done right. TLOU2 is a good example.

Games often do it wrong though. The Mass Effect trilogy has a terrible film grain effect.

 

[Nbz]

I had this same thought playing Last of Us 2. It annoys me so much and its baffling that you can't turn it off!

 

[skeezx]

i don't feel strongly either way but i mostly prefer it. detracts from the overall "gamey" feel

 

[Adryuu]

How realistic would be it for them to patch an option to adjust the grain, or to turn it on and off? Just seems like with all the Accessibility options the game has to offer, this is an odd one to exclude.

Click to shrink...

This is exactly what I was thinking. I wouldn't be surprised if they added an option to adjust or remove it.
I'm not against it, I played mass effect with it and some other games after it that had the option to disable it, but I understand it affects the image in a way some people may not enjoy. Ultimately as an artistic choice, it is what it is, either you eat it or leave it. I don't think it's that big of a deal not in this case I hadn't noticed it was there until I've got my hands on the game but I think it was why I thought the game looked kinda grey or washed out.

Now I'm curious to see how it looks without it on photo mode.

 

[HBK]

It's the same point as bloom and motion blur and chromatic aberration and whatever else. Some people hate them (sometimes for pretty weird reasons but that's besides the point) but in the end they're just post processing effects the art director wants to add for, well, artistic reasons. Lots of games provide options to disable them because some people hate them (I'm quick to disable chromatic aberration myself) and the game director feels that while they may add atmosphere, they are not integral to the experience.

 

[WellbornWarrior]

The same as chromatic aberration and lens flares: mimic films as much as possible no matter if it makes sense.

At least film grain helps against ghosting so it has a purpose.

 

[Deleted member 37928]

The only game where I've actually enjoyed it was Control. It brought a lot of atmosphere and really enhanced the visuals.

 

[jon bones]

i'm into it - adds a nice cinematic touch to TLOU2

 

[JudgmentJay]

More annoying to me is the lens dirt. Like... why? If I made a game as beautiful as TLOU2 the last thing I'd want to do is force people to view it through a dirty fucking camera lens.

But yeah I turn off all postprocessing garbage like this when possible.

 

[TheXbox]

It's dumb. Possesses none of the aesthetic charm of actual film grain, just looks ridiculous laid over digital graphics. I always turn that shit off.

 

[Andromeda]

It's the same point as bloom and motion blur and chromatic aberration and whatever else. Some people hate them (sometimes for pretty weird reasons but that's besides the point) but in the end they're just post processing effects the art director wants to add for, well, artistic reasons. Lots of games provide options to disable them because some people hate them (I'm quick to disable chromatic aberration myself) and the game director feels that while they may add atmosphere, they are not integral to the experience.

Click to shrink...

Apparently in TLOU2 this is the most important visual aspect of the experience for the directors as you can pretty much alter anything else using the extensive accessibility options. If you hate grain filters, it should mean TLOU2 is not for you.

 

[Deleted member 49319]

Because as we all know film is the superior medium.
jk

 

[Lost Knight]

It's for tone and atmosphere purposes. I always turn that shit off though, it looks ugly to me. More power to ya if you like it, but I don't. While we're at it, motion blur sucks ass in most games too.

 

[JusDoIt]

Style.

 

[Mathiassen]

Film grain can help smooth out color gradation. It can be used to hide visual artifacts of temporal solutions. And, it can be a purely visual choice for a more film-like atmosphere.

 

[eso76]

Aside from everything everyone already mentioned, it sometimes simulates some amount of the micro detail that couldn't be modelled/drawn, making surfaces less smooth and improving the perceived photorealism.

 

[HBK]

Apparently in TLOU2 this is the most important visual aspect of the experience for the directors as you can pretty much alter anything else using the extensive accessibility options. If you hate grain filters, it should mean TLOU2 is not for you.

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Yeah, if it can't be disabled, it likely means the game directors felt it's integral to the experience (which in this specific case is hardly surprising given how hard they go for "filmic" rendering).

 

[Crossing Eden]

It's one of the many many things that they did that really makes the game look closer to film.

Someone made a comparison that it's like a game that constantly has that order 1886 style emulating the look and feel of offline renders.

 

[Pargon]

RE 2 also had it but at least we could turn it off […] What's the purpose of this effect anyway? Do you always turn it off too when it's possible?

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In some games it's purely an aesthetic choice, but the film noise setting in Resident Evil 2 eliminates posterization/banding in dark areas.
The lack of this option is why Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 3 have such poor image quality in comparison (banding everywhere).

This comparison was brightened a bit to make the differences easier to see:

Adding noise to the image can increase the apparent detail as well.
I don't have any examples to hand, but I was recently doing some work upscaling some old DVD content; and by denoising the image, upscaling, then adding grain on top, the appearance was significantly improved.
Denoising the image was important for removing artifacts, but gave it an ugly artificially-smoothed-over look. Adding higher resolution noise prevented it from looking like all the detail had been stripped out, and gave the impression that it could have been sourced from a slightly fuzzy Blu-ray rather than a DVD. It dramatically changed the appearance of the image.

I believe this is the same process which has been used in many Blu-ray or 4K remasters: remove the coarse film grain, and replace it with finer/higher resolution noise. The Aliens Blu-ray is one which stood out as having this "look".
They don't just denoise the image and leave it at that because it looks horribly artificial to see everything without much textural detail.

 

[EVA UNIT 01]

Artistic choice that works or fails hard.
Just leave a toggle in devs please.

 

[Mukrab]

It so the GPU only has to render half the pixels so you can make people think that your game is a graphical masterpiece.

 

[Dusktildawn48]

I'd prefer to turn it off in lou2, but its a great implementation of it, so I dont mind.

 

[Rizific]

Imo this effect only removes the image cleanliness.

Click to shrink...

thats how i feel about it and is why its one of the effects that immediately gets turned off before starting a new game. its trash.

 

[Rosebud]

It's one of the many many things that they did that really makes the game look closer to film.

Someone made a comparison that it's like a game that constantly has that order 1886 style emulating the look and feel of offline renders.

Click to shrink...

Sometimes I think I'm not enthusiastic enough for this forum, to me it looks normal like other games.

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

Noise is the key for getting rid of banding. With how complex shading is, the amount of transformations the color of each pixel goes through during the rendering of a frame the mess of colorspaces games have to work with and so on banding is really prevalent, and noise takes care of the banding.

 

[Aleh]

I love the film grain effect tbh it makes things look so... smooth?

 

[Mirage]

It's one of the many many things that they did that really makes the game look closer to film.

Someone made a comparison that it's like a game that constantly has that order 1886 style emulating the look and feel of offline renders.

Click to shrink...

I think TLOU2 looks great how it is yeah, I wouldn't change it.