Everything far away in a game engine can feel small, flat, and washed out. That is correct perspective, but it can make for some poor scenery sometimes. Two features I've added to my engine try to fight against that: Spatial Recession magnifies the distance. After a vertex is projected... I push its screen position outward from center. Near geometry is untouched. It only moves x and y, never depth, so nothing sorts differently and nothing z-fights. The result is a long lens bolted onto the far half of a wide one: the tower and the ridgeline loom instead of receding, while I keep the wide field of view I actually play in (FOV is identical in both of these examples). Dimensional Falloff is four distance ramps on the surface itself. Lighting contrast flattens so distant hills stop having a hard lit side and a hard dark side, which is what haze does in real life. Color then desaturates toward its own brightness to fake more distance. Then that desaturated color is pushed, and that is the one doing most of the visible work here. Last is texture detail, with a custom MIP value based on distances. All of it keys off real radial distance from the camera rather than depth This is so it stays put when you turn your head. Performance cost is next to nothing. The recession is two lines in the vertex shader. The falloff is a few lerps at the end of the pixel shader, which was already computing that distance for the mip bias anyway. Quite happy with the results, what do you think? #gamedevshow more

Holy shit. Ive never once thought about, not read about, such an implementation but looking at it, and thinking about it, it's so obvious. What inspired you to do this? The implications are huge.

A lot of things from media in my childhood. Movies used to do a lot of matte paintings for backdrops that would cause this kind of similar effect. Even the way old 2d animation was done, where the world felt 3d but still "layered." I just wanted that kind of "storybook" feeling to it, superimposed and pulling you to the horizon.

I've been playing with projection and camera techniques for ~20 years and never once thought of this. This technique is insanely clever and also so very obvious, in hindsight. Thanks for sharing about it.

This really makes me want to play around with architecture in this engine. It's so cool how you can see everywhere you want to go as if it's right there waiting for you, but it still takes time to actually travel there with the world unfolding itself as you move through it.

You've perfectly captured the balancing act there but I think its totally worth it to play with those two aspects together like this!

This is really driving me nuts, I know this is a creative commons song so anyone can use it, but did you use it after hearing it in a particular game? I am trying to remember where I know it from,

No, just found it searching creative Commons. Not familiar with it being used in another game. If you figure it out, let me know.

This is absolutely incredible. Good job on this! So essentially you're emulating the huge scenery advantage lower FOVs give you while keeping the FOV higher from the players perspective? game changing.

That's awesome and clever, and it's great to see a compressions video on my feed that is not DLSS5.

Thanks!

this is actually awesome and i totally get the feling just from looking at the difference. great idea. great job

Thanks Löblich, glad it resonated with you!

Wow, that is a really clever idea and it looks good!

That's extremely clever! Out of curiosity, if an object (flying character, projectile, etc) moves in/out of that scaling boundary, does it still look natural, or is there a moment where the movement and vert-scaling visibly counteract each other a bit?

No, its pretty inperceptable during the transition. There is no noticeable "switch" on the tower for for example as i approach it.

amazing! couldnt stop looking at it! now remember that video of aigen pixel art hill and castle?

This is genuine questions, I’m not trying to insult you. But this seems like a programmatic fix for a design problem? Why not just work on your environment design rather than break your perspective camera?

The design "problem" is i want something not "realistic" in a normal camera projection. Making the tower bigger might have a similar effect from far away but also cause different ones up close. I intentionally wanted backdrops to be over the top, playing more into feeling than reality.

Fair enough 👍

Amazing. Would these techniques work in VR in your opinion? Tempted to try

i think this looks awesome!

i really hope you put more work into the environment because this is very interesting and shows a lot of promise but i think the environment is lacking

The key here is that you aren't going with the default settings. You had an opinion, a unique perspective, and you cared more about how something would feel than whether it was "correct." I think even just on that basis this is worth the effort.

Smart, great effect. 👍🏻

Huge props and great final effect. I rarely use the save button on twitter/x.. but this absolutely is worth saving

This is so fucking cool, it gives the tower so much presence

Magic

This is crazy - both idea and implementation

Oh my gosh. You not only articulated, but also solved, a problem I have perceived but have been unable to describe. Hats off to you. Also, love the CRT shader.

Thanks Jesse, im glad you appreciate it!

Nice technique!

It’s enhanced the feel instantly. Instead of the tree line and tower fighting for focus, my eye is pulled/called to the tower and instinctively wants to frame it into view. I feel so inspired to try this myself. Thank you for sharing these techniques!

I like your funny words, magic man

Fantastico

I’ve always wondered why devs don’t do more to improve depth perception in the mainstream games. DOF, atmospheric perspective etc is just so poorly implemented in almost every game

this is cool I'm stealing it

Wouldn't have shared if I was concerned about that, enjoy 😅

Nonlinear vertex shader is interesting but the concept of Field of View kind of loses its meaning if the projection equation is different.

looks epic

Thanks Tom!

Does the tower stretch in odd ways if you look to the left or the right?

That’s a nice trick! Very clever

It’s in line with human perception. It’s wanting to take a photo of something in the distance, it’s feels so close. In the photo itself it does not stand out at all! With games you perceptions does the work as well, but not as strong an in real life. This makes that effect! Bravo

OFF

Great idea! I’m worried it might look unnatural on regular structures, like railways, fences, grids etc. did you try test it on a smth like checkerboard field?