[Spidey-]

I'm trying to get bloom to work. When I ran the ppdemo, the saturation and interlacing worked fine, but bloom won't enable.

here's the debug
http://pastebin.com/m58fa354b

[Hery]

Bloom is enabled by default.
Probably the effect is too slight so you don't notice it. Run FSO with flag -bloom_intensity 160 (or even higher but then some artifacts may occur). That should make bloom much more visible.

[Spidey-]

lol, that's exactly what it was... i'm so silly

[KeldorKatarn]

I have one question here... why is it, that we have a post-processing table with a bunch of pretty useless demo effects, while the only really useful effect, bloom, is controlled via command line? Why is that not part of the table? Isn't that a bit inconsistent?

[Hery]

Bloom is a different kind of effect. These which you don't want to use and hence consider as useless are intended to be fully customizeable by modders, hence the table. Some vital parts of bloom are hardcoded, hence it is an example of an effect that can't be added to FSO without modifying FSO source code. That's why adding it to post_processing.tbl would be inconsistent.
Bloom intensity is configured in the same way as other lighting settings, using flags.

[Kszyhu]

What's so useful about bloom?

[pecenipicek]

nothing. at all.







[serious] it makes glowy things a bit glowier. and it makes shiny things hurt your eyes [/serious]

[Kszyhu]

I know what 'bloom' is supposed to do, but I can't see why it's useful (perhaps I looked at some examples of this effect for too long).

[KeldorKatarn]

Because it enhances image quality? (If implemented right)

Oh and I don't think things like contrast etc are not useful. I just don't see what they are supposed to do in a LDR environment.
Tone mapping, contrast enhancing etc (and a fully effective bloom for that matter) simply do not work without a HDR source image. So why add them at this point?

And about the command line... well... if anything one should have moved certain lighting settings to a table and others into a config screen inside the game.
it's kind of strange to have the rendering detail in a nice graphical interface ingame but one has to activate normal mapping by a commandline flag and then activate
contrast enhaving in a table and bloom intensity is a flag again and....
I hope you see my point.

I don't really care where goes what, since Saga will most likely write their own simplified Launcher which hides all that stuff from the users anyway, but I just think in the long run, adding thousands of command line flags is just not a very good design decision.
And I don't see what bloom has to do with lighting. It is a post processing effect that works on a finished image, just like your contrast and disturbance stuff. It hasn't got anything to do with lighting.

[chief1983]

I don't know if I'd say it's an enhancement to the quality, but it's supposed make things more life like or some such.

[Dilmah G]

Yeah, it's overdone in some games these days though. I mean, you don't see a significant bloom effect when you look at someone's face and all they're doing is standing in front of a computer screen IRL, yet in games like Halo 3 everyone within a 10 metre radius of the light source has indistinguishable faces.

[Hery]

Oh and I don't think things like contrast etc are not useful. I just don't see what they are supposed to do in a LDR environment.
Tone mapping, contrast enhancing etc (and a fully effective bloom for that matter) simply do not work without a HDR source image. So why add them at this point?

I don't think that the fact that "contrast" effect would give much better results when using HDR is a sufficient reason not to include effects like (de)saturation, film grain, etc, which may be useful in cutscenes. Actually, this part of the discussion is completely pointless since there are no disadvantages of implementing these effects at the moment.

And about the command line... well... if anything one should have moved certain lighting settings to a table and others into a config screen inside the game.
it's kind of strange to have the rendering detail in a nice graphical interface ingame but one has to activate normal mapping by a commandline flag and then activate
contrast enhaving in a table and bloom intensity is a flag again and....

I don't really care where goes what, since Saga will most likely write their own simplified Launcher which hides all that stuff from the users anyway, but I just think in the long run, adding thousands of command line flags is just not a very good design decision.

I agree that it's a bad design. There is a plan to change the way in which FSO settings (lightning, bloom, etc) are organized. However, this won't happen in a near future.

[Tolwyn]

I agree that it's a bad design. There is a plan to change the way in which FSO settings (lightning, bloom, etc) are organized. However, this won't happen in a near future.

Such settings do not belong into the command line at all. Like Keldor said, Saga will probably write its own launcher, that hides the command line. As an artist I'd like to have control over the general look of the game, it is not up to the user to decide on it. Not to mention that this approach is very prone to errors. Just imagine you would accidentally delete the parameter from the command line. It's not an issue for frequent HLP visitors, but it is for an inexperienced user. I could go on and on.