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Making graphical magic after the image is rendered
Postprocessing is where effects are applied to the 3D image after the frame is rendered. The term postprocessing comes from the film industry, where effects are added to movies after the movie is actually shot.
Postprocessing is really a catch-all for special effects that are generated, typically with shader programs, and aren’t necessarily part of an existing graphics API. Of course, the GPU itself needs to be programmable.
Adding effects to rendered frames first began to show up with DX9 games. We’ve seen increasing use of postprocessing effects in DX10 and now, DX11 titles. A wide variety of postprocessing effects are possible; examples include depth of field, heat distortion, wet distortion, bokeh, dynamic blur, and film grain.
Some of these effects can be used to add realism to a scene. Heat distortion above a fire or hot desert sand is a good example of that. Other effects actually make the game less realistic, but more cinematic. Examples of these include depth of field, film grain, and bokeh effects. (Bokeh is the blurriness you see in out-of-focus areas of a photograph. The quality of the bokeh is one of the parameters used to rate the quality of a camera lens.)
Without Bokeh
With Bokeh
In Just Cause 2, you'll see bokeh effects when you use an Nvidia graphics card.
We’ve all seen these effects in movies and television, but rarely experience them in real life. Game developers add these effects to make their games seem more like big-screen movies. This makes sense in some games, like the over-the-top action of the recently released Just Cause 2, which emulate big-budget action movies in their overall feel. If you have an Nvidia-based graphics card running with the PC version of Just Cause 2, you’ll see bokeh effects in action.
The use of bokeh helps to focus the player’s attention on whatever is nearby. Clever shader-program writing can give developers granular control over the effect, as we see in the AMD Ladybug depth-of-field demo (downloadable from the AMD developer website.) This demo gives the user control over aperture settings, as if they were shooting with a camera. Stopping the camera down results in a soft blurry background behind the sharply focused image. Opening up the aperture brings the background into better focus.
The game Borderlands (below) uses depth of field to focus your attention on whatever you’re aiming at with your weapon.
Programmable shaders took a big step forward with DirectX 11. Previously, if a programmer wanted to add multiple effects to a scene, the shader program became large and unwieldy. Now they can call in shader routines as needed, allowing for more efficient writing of shader programs and more efficient use of effects.
Borderlands uses depth of field to focus your eye on an object you’re aiming at. In the screen on top, everything is in focus, but when the player takes aim, only the target in the foreground is in focus, as seen in the screen on the bottom.
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July 11, 2010 at 3:54pm
Simply well put! I have owned my share of both manufacturers; back from the days of the 8MB Diamond Monster 3D and what mesiah is pointing out is completely true...
Settle down fanboys! I go with the best performance/efficiency/bang for your buck offerings that get the job done...whatever brand that may be.
Submitted by mesiah on Wed, 07/07/2010 - 5:44pm
Aparently you missed the point of this entire article. This was not a comparison of ATI vs Nvidia. This was a comparison of DX11 vs DX10. Yes, ati and nvidia were differentiated in the article because each companies cards respond differently to the added effects.
As far as driver stability goes, neither company has a clean track record for their drivers. Of course an Nvidia fan boy is going to claim he has never had a problem with Nvidia drivers. An ATI fan boy is going to do the same. Having owned my fair share of cards from both manufacturers, I can tell you that they both put out their fair share of lemons. But if you insist that Nvidias shit still smells like roses, I will remind you of their recent driver recall.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/nvidia_yanks_19675_drivers_investigate_overheating_reports"
gothliciouz
July 09, 2010 at 9:59pm
dx 11 sounds pretty cool, now if only game developers will use them properly. beautiful games we will get.
Valek7
July 09, 2010 at 9:33pm
Generally speaking, I've had a lot of good experience with DX10 and only a couple of games (like Crysis) actually showed a noticeable decrease in performance over DX9. With everything else, it was either a minor boost or no change at all.
But, the one game that I have to tout is Flight Simulator X, which now runs like a scalded cat in DX10 mode and Windows 7 on a Core i7 920. I was able to increase the detail settings much much further than I could with DX9 and I'm getting more than double the frame rates! With DX9, I'm talking about low end detail settings and barely... I mean BARELY 20 fps. It was a joke, at best. With DX10... I now have plenty of the good detail settings (scenery nearly maxed, textures maxed, further view distances... you name it, all bumped UP) and I get 50+ fps consistently! It's like a whole new simulator! DX10 and FSX FTW!
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gliscameria
July 08, 2010 at 2:54pm
First off, very good article. DX11 sounds awesome.
It's been a while since I've done photography, but I think you have this backwards:
"Stopping the camera down results in a soft blurry background behind the sharply focused image. Opening up the aperture brings the background into better focus. "
Bigger apertures capture more light but reduce the FOV. I always remembered this because nature hates us and has to make everything difficult.
//Glis
dracx619
July 09, 2010 at 5:03am
something that has confused me plenty. lets see i have to think about this, to get a nice DOF, i decrease the shutter and increase the apeture (lets more light in), to get a shot in full focus, i increase the shutter and decrease the aperture(less light in)... yep, you right, i think?
gliscameria
July 13, 2010 at 1:37pm
I'm drawing off of old knowledge here...
When you increase aperture you allow more light in, but you also allow light coming in from more directions, which will decrease your DOE. Back in highschool VisCom you usually make pinhole cameras, they don't need a lens because the aperture is so small, but the exposure has to be pretty high. It's always a nasty tradeoff. It would be cool to see if you show a reduced DOE for humans in the dark. Maybe it's harder to focus on stuff in the dark because the focus has to be much more accurate, like seeing your blurry clock (outside of fuzzy eyes).
//Glis
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July 13, 2010 at 3:23pm
screw all this, it makes my head hurt, lol. i gotta dust off my dslr and try it all out again
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samduhman
July 08, 2010 at 10:27am
So is it time to buy a DirectX 11 card? I've been weighting this issue for a couple weeks now. I have a 4890 but being a hardware junkie I'm usually in the market to upgrade some part/s of my PC. Would you suggest I go ahead or wait for the next generation of gpus? I want a 5870 but don't want to spend that much.
cahedler
July 08, 2010 at 5:51am
It's interesting to see the results from Call of Pripyat, which have the GTX 480 being outperformed by a significant margin by the 5870. Can anyone shed some light on why it doesn't perform very well in Call of Pripyat?
Scintor
July 07, 2010 at 5:12pm
I cannot offer direct side by side comparisons, nVidia vs ATI, but there appears to be a lot of traffic in various forums to call into question the lack of stability in ATI's drivers for their video cards. On the other hand, nVidia has provided rock solid drivers for each of their video cards I have owned over the years.
It is relatively easy to compare performance of each company's video cards by using hard numbers for frame rates, and it is not so easy to quantify driver stability, but word of mouth is not so good for ATI, so I'll stick with nVidia.
Thanks for the 411 on DirectX 11.
mesiah
July 07, 2010 at 5:44pm
Aparently you missed the point of this entire article. This was not a comparison of ATI vs Nvidia. This was a comparison of DX11 vs DX10. Yes, ati and nvidia were differentiated in the article because each companies cards respond differently to the added effects.
As far as driver stability goes, neither company has a clean track record for their drivers. Of course an Nvidia fan boy is going to claim he has never had a problem with Nvidia drivers. An ATI fan boy is going to do the same. Having owned my fair share of cards from both manufacturers, I can tell you that they both put out their fair share of lemons. But if you insist that Nvidias shit still smells like roses, I will remind you of their recent driver recall.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/nvidia_yanks_19675_drivers_investigate_overheating_reports
K0BALT
July 07, 2010 at 6:41pm
I love Nvidia and would pretty much call myself a fanboy, but I will also admit any flaws within their products as well. The ONLY issue I have encountered was the one driver that disabled overclocking... which only lasted a few weeks. All I have had is Nvidia and can't really compare the two brands. I've always had Nvidia and have never run into a problem besides that one driver...which didnt affect me because I dont overclock my cards unless im benchmarking. Theyve treated me well and I know ATI makes good things too. Which is why I don't put them down. But... in the end I am a firm believer that Nvidia is overall a better product because of their technology and software in daily use. ATI is greats stuff, but I think Nvidia will reign supreme. It's like comparing Windows to Linux. Theyre both good, but one is more used than the other for a reason.
This is my opinion and I'm entitled to it....as are you. not trying to start a flame war. We're all here for the same reason, so let's be adults. MaxPC to all!
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mesiah
July 07, 2010 at 10:38pm
Everyone is entitled to their opinions. That doesn't make them right. Just kidding :P No, I agree with you. There is nothing wrong with brand loyalty. There are definately products out there that I have a preference for. What annoys me is when people let their love for a logo blind them to any and all flaws in a product. Its blind love for a brand that has made apple so powerful as of late. They could put out a dog turd with an apple logo and people would eat it up.
I think this is a good article and I didn't want to see the comments get derailed into an Nvidia vs ATI dispute. They have both put out good solid drivers, and at times they have put out some barely functional steaming piles of poo.
