JDPoZ

Agreed on the "shifting focus" part for vignetting specifically - but everything else... outside of specifically tailoring to fit a particular "aesthetic" I think are crutches that are generally used to obscure an overall graphical presentation in order to work in a similar way to how squinting your eyes works.

I agree that highly stylized games like "Bodycam..."

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...use things like a specific kind of grain, noise, distortion, aberration, etc. to create a highly appealing visual aesthetic designed to match an actual low-fidelity police body camera, but Battlefield and CoD have much less excuse in my book.

The camera aesthetic stuff only makes sense on things like the AC-130 killstreak in CoD where you're emulating the on-aircraft cameras actually used in the real deal.

I’m okay with a little chromatic aberration and vignette.

Why? It's literally something that pro camera tools have added in-software fixes for to remove them. Like - if you're simulating an old JVC vidicon tube camera and wanting to make something specifically look like an image capture device from a specific time, I get it, but otherwise, it just seems like a way to hide the fact that your graphics aren't quite hitting the realism mark and you think if you obscure it a bit, players will think it looks more "real."

Hey now... Don't forget camera bob, "lens dirt," chromatic aberration, and vignette!

AKA - the video game graphics equivalent of "beer goggles."

When a company is using AI in place of a person, it's not a sign of that they are "futuristic" or "forward-thinking..." It's a sign they are cheap, chase fads, and make short-sighted decisions that are not designed to improve their relationship with their customer.

Anyone using some headless white-label monthly subscription version of ChatGPT in an attempt to save a nickel on their bottom line - even if it means making everything worse for the company, product, employees, and customers in every way possible - is probably someone you don't want to do ANY kind of business with - whether you're a contractor, customer, or client.

Except FOSS. Because if you can fork it, it cannot be enshittified… every time they attempt to, another fork can be made.