I do see the point of the author: HZD goes for a "realistic", high-fidelity 3D fantasy world, yet the lighting makes no sense in physical terms. The contrast and brightness shown in the picture are all over the place, and can only be an artifact of visualising a world through a computer screen which has a very limited dynamic range - it is immersion-breaking. The Resident Evil 7 picture below looks much better. The video I linked in another comment explains why: in the physical world, the stronger the light, the more washed-out the colour will become. HZD is a saturated, high-contrast mess with too much compression in the low light, because of a bad colour mapper in their pipeline.
One can claim HZD's look is an "artistic choice" and that's inarguable, but the author believes it's simply not enough attention to the tone mapping process, which is a very complicated topic that's not usually taken seriously in game dev compared to film production.
Games tend to ride the new release schedule more than most other forms of media (except maybe new movie releases in theaters), and there have been a few notable releases in the past few weeks. Apple had a big push with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4 Remake in the past few months; if you already own those games on Steam, you got the Mac versions of those games at no additional charge. Also, Baldur's Gate 3 (which is widely regarded as one of the best games of 2023) got a native Mac release in Q4.
As for it being a numbers game, neither Apple nor Valve release direct hardware sales numbers, so only they will know.
A friend of mine gave me a PSVR1 for my birthday (which I use on my PS5). I'm playing Resident Evil 7 in VR mode and it's the most immersive experience in any horror (or possibly any other genre, really) game I've ever played. I was legitimately terrified and didn't want to sleep the night I played it for the first time. I am not a person that gets easily scared in horror films or games and usually get a laugh out of the absurdity of gore and jump scares but RE7 just hit much different in VR. The dinner table scene at the beginning of the game, and the chase sequences were absolutely horrifying.
If Resident Evil 8 and/or the Resident Evil 4 remakes get VR modes I will buy PSVR2 on day one.
Hacker Cinema
3 comments on Hacker News
I do see the point of the author: HZD goes for a "realistic", high-fidelity 3D fantasy world, yet the lighting makes no sense in physical terms. The contrast and brightness shown in the picture are all over the place, and can only be an artifact of visualising a world through a computer screen which has a very limited dynamic range - it is immersion-breaking. The Resident Evil 7 picture below looks much better. The video I linked in another comment explains why: in the physical world, the stronger the light, the more washed-out the colour will become. HZD is a saturated, high-contrast mess with too much compression in the low light, because of a bad colour mapper in their pipeline.
One can claim HZD's look is an "artistic choice" and that's inarguable, but the author believes it's simply not enough attention to the tone mapping process, which is a very complicated topic that's not usually taken seriously in game dev compared to film production.
Games tend to ride the new release schedule more than most other forms of media (except maybe new movie releases in theaters), and there have been a few notable releases in the past few weeks. Apple had a big push with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4 Remake in the past few months; if you already own those games on Steam, you got the Mac versions of those games at no additional charge. Also, Baldur's Gate 3 (which is widely regarded as one of the best games of 2023) got a native Mac release in Q4.
As for it being a numbers game, neither Apple nor Valve release direct hardware sales numbers, so only they will know.
A friend of mine gave me a PSVR1 for my birthday (which I use on my PS5). I'm playing Resident Evil 7 in VR mode and it's the most immersive experience in any horror (or possibly any other genre, really) game I've ever played. I was legitimately terrified and didn't want to sleep the night I played it for the first time. I am not a person that gets easily scared in horror films or games and usually get a laugh out of the absurdity of gore and jump scares but RE7 just hit much different in VR. The dinner table scene at the beginning of the game, and the chase sequences were absolutely horrifying.
If Resident Evil 8 and/or the Resident Evil 4 remakes get VR modes I will buy PSVR2 on day one.