Why The Thermal Visor Looks Worse In Metroid Prime Remastered
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ต.ค. 2024
- Jack Mathews explains why Retro Studios had trouble with the Thermal Visor. Be sure to check out the full interview!
Full Interview
• Metroid Prime Remaster...
#metroidprimeremastered #metroid #thermalvisor
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Full Interview here
th-cam.com/video/lu7O2bRSrSg/w-d-xo.html
Kiwi is amazing. The clip starts right away with the information advertised in the title and with a perfect 4:20 clip. Thank you for being so refreshing.
🙏
Oooh 420.. I watched this video with a coffee in my hand.. should it have been a joint instead? :P
@@phattjohnson you got two hands dont you? :)
@NDA if you're gonna correct me by 1 second you atleast should have spelled 'but' correctly
Honestly, my thought process with the new Thermal Visor was just that they were going for more realism. Thermal cameras tend to have a very low resolution, blurry, and have a lot of motion blur due to how they operate (at least the more commercial ones) so it's pretty plausible that they were just attempting to emulate those.
agreed
I'd like to agree with you but it really is quite jarring. I'm having trouble believing devs opted for low rez high motion blur just to be in line with some human optics. This is Metroid after all 🙂 I bet it's just cause they couldn't hit 60. Oh well not like you have to use thermal all that much.
Still looks like shit.
Ah, the realism concession. My favorite videogame feature...
My thoughts EXACTLY.
While Metroid is sci-fi future tech, modern thermal cameras are BLURRY. They don't have sharp edges like the MP camera. "Predator" is a bit TOO far in the opposite direction (because it filters out the thermal of the environment to a MUCH greater extreme than a real thermal camera would, focusing ONLY on active heat sources), but that idea of thermal is much more what people "expect," and the MP:R version is a lot closer to THAT.
The original version was great, but the new version - while blurry and less crisp - feels more accurate to what we'd see in a modern real-world setting. I had NO problems with it. Not sure why so many people did.
Man, love your interviews. Those details of how they manage to solve a issu without sacrificing the quality of the game are awesome.
And here I was thinking the new Thermal Visor was purely a stylistic / design choice.. these behind the scenes tech breakdowns really shed some light on what makes games (both 'old' and new) tick! Instant sub my friend!
The fact you can't turn off the motion blur is a bummer
Just change visors! Thermals only get used for several minutes cumulatively throughout the game.
@@phattjohnsonYou always kept it on the moment the lights went off in the Phendrana labs. Same with one room in Phazon mines.
For me it was more like
"Damn somehow that looks like, oh wait that's space pirates tech. That's explains everything🤔 "
Such a great explanation from the dev of the game. It’s funny how simplicities from 2002 became hard complexities in 2023 because of how unique Nintendo developed their cpu for the GameCube, I imagined the devs for the remaster didn’t want to sink an unnecessary amount of hours trying replicate thermal from prime GameCube so they said screw it and threw in blur like Jake is saying. Proves technological knowledge and development aren’t parallel with time, some techniques are simply forgotten and you always have to be creative with making a game look “good”.
It's the product of a couple of industry-wide changes to graphics rendering. The Gamecube (for reference using a ATI (now AMD) GPU, so not just Nintendo's tech here), had everything done up such that the set of paths things took to be rendered, lit, shaded, and so forth was basically set in stone, with the programmer basically setting (many, many) switches to determine which path to take, sometimes with a bit of programmable shading logic available. Around 2006 or so new GPUs ditched the fixed lighting and shading logic in favour of leaving that fully programmable, as that allowed for more flexibility in what the GPU's silicon was doing, allowing for better use of the whole chip; and then around 2016 new GPUs, notably including the one in the Switch, completely abandoned even the fixed path for basic rendering in favour of full programmability, making it way more efficient when working with multicore CPUs.
Unfortunately that does mean that, as the dev said, you can't just switch a few global variables to make the GPU do everything differently, you have to basically load a different shader program, or at least change what its variables are, but the architecture changes work a lot better overall given how everything else has changed since.
Well it's not always that these techniques are forgotten, but they can just disappear due to hardware changes. Back when every console needed its own architecture they essentially created low-level hardware that was designed to be really good at one specific thing, and by taking advantage of that hardware is how you'd make games that could look and feel ahead of their technological generation.
With how powerful modern hardware is, it's now much easier to use standardized architecture to make devices that are theoretically very good at everything. But when you do have a game where you have to balance visuals with performance we have lost access to this low-level hardware to try and offset the performance cost of certain things like lighting on the Gamecube.
If your solution is "add motion blur", you need to go back to the drawing board because you've failed in your mission.
Too bad. The thermal visor looked really pretty on the gamecube, and i loved using it.
It looks fine on the remake too, just different. Nothing bad here.
@@phattjohnson the blurry pixelization is not very pleasing.
@phattjohnson It quite literally strains my eyes on Remastered because of the fuckton-amount of blurryness.
I specifically turn off motion blur in every game I can because it's tiring on the eyes to constantly try making something clear/focusing something but literally cannot due to design.. Remastered's thermal visor is terrible.
@@jackbuchanan6441 hopefully you can stick with it! MPR is great otherwise!
@@phattjohnson It looked terrible. I hated using it, and avoided using it whenever possible.
Honestly, I'd take just low res over low res + blur. Especially when I clearly remember how easy it is to see with the thermal visor on the GC and Wii versions, I appreciate how clean his approach made the visor far more useful for navigating dark spaces. In the Remaster, the blur with the new render method does too little to make background geometry stand out, and rooms that were originally designed with it in mind are a nightmare now when the lights turn out.
It makes those pitch black rooms a nightmare to traverse now which is stupid as you’re using the tool that’s supposed to make it easier! You can’t make out pillars or level layout while wearing it (except heated platforms) and honestly it’s pretty terrible
This is the equivalent of an old finnish guy with a Mosin nagant outshooting a younger guy who has a multiple thousand dollar Accuracy International rifle with all the bells and whistles.
Sometimes, it's how you use the tools, not what tools you have.
The moment I heard thermal I thought number to color on a line.
I then got real deep into thought thinking what happens what happens once you assign numbers to enemies, parts of bigger enemies, flooring, and different environments with their different ambient temperatures.
They got it nice and perfect on the original game.
I love your retro interviews man.
I think it looks better tbh, fits the idea that the pirates don’t have the best technology and their replication of thermal imaging isn’t perfect. It also just looks more like real thermal imaging in the remaster. There’s also more detail with the actual heat registration as the cannon actually heats up more as it’s fired, the plasma cannon is always burning hot in the imaging, and the ice beam is very cold and gets even colder when it is charged which is some awesome detail that’s more accentuated in the remaster.
That being said there should still be an option to reduce the blur and static on it for those who find it dizzying.
I've loved prime remastered, but i often don't want to play it because the thermal visor hurts my eyes, my brain is constantly trying to focus on something i can't focus on and it's real tiring after a while.
It made me want to avoid exploring the dark areas as much as I could
What I do in dark areas is I use the X-ray Visor to see in the dark.
@@militantpacifist4087that’s ok but you don’t get that until later in the game and you have to use that infernal thermal visor for certain sections. It seems they made the dark rooms even darker in the remaster too so thermal visor is even more of an necessity
I wish they had patched this, the thermal visor really hurts my eyes when trying to use it.
Interesting. I relly like the new Thermal Visor! I think because it looks more like an actual Thermal Camera. In the original game, it looked more like a basic color pallette swap.
The added details to the thermal visor more than make up for the blurriness imo, the different beams look how you'd realistically expect them to, and they heat up and cool down when being used / charged up
That was the same in the original
@@rikspan1925 I disagree, the beams in the thermal visor look much more realistic in the remaster and the heat up / cool down looks better too. In the original it looks like it's just a palette swap - so any heat up / cool down matches whatever colour of light it's giving off through the combat visor, instead of changing heat by the intensity and in the specific areas you'd expect them to through a thermal camera.
You can see a comparison here:
th-cam.com/video/WlePtX-IB2Q/w-d-xo.html
TL;DR version for what this guy said, You can use Plasma and the Arm Cannon isn't unbearably hot all around, while Ice kills all temperatures while charging.
the old beams looked better in the visor, also the visor in general makes me want to vomit
I knew I wasn't going mad. Back on the original, I would happily play through using the thermal. When it came to the switch would actively avoid using it unless it was absolutely required. Which is a shame but it is interesting to know the reason behind it.
Using the thermal visor in the remaster actually hurt my eyes so i would've much preferred if the game ran at 30fps when using the thermal visor over the blurriness
The original looks like the eyes of a actual predetor with thermal vision. The remastered looks like a low quality snapchat filter
I can’t believe how they missed some amazing details that were already in the original GC version..
I want a whole series where original and remake devs talk with an interviewer together about the tech.
That will never happen until both parties have retired, primarily cause of NDAs
its not really worse, its just different. Both look good for their respective times they cam out in. I just wish the remastered had a little less pixel- noise or less motion blur. In the old one, I loved using the thermal visor in random places that did not really need it, now I cant do that as much without bumping into shit or getting stuck.
It is worse when you consider how the game looks out of the thermal visor, both the combat and x-ray have very sharp image that looks really good then you enter the thermal and the resolution goes to crap not sure how this effect is called but gives me literal headaches if I stay too long on thermal and since there is also no light casted by shoots going to pitch black rooms becomes very annoying as I either have too choose between a headache or stumbling my way blindly.
Saw that in the full interview. When I played it didn’t seem how I remembered it. Never went back to compare though. Now it makes sense. Great interview BTW!
The blur looks kinda cool.
But it would be real nice being able to switch it on or off😎😁
i think my problem with it is more the background is an unintelligible soup of black and almost black purple and every enemy is now just a blindingly bright blob of yellow rather than everything having depth you can actually see. the blur is more just the icing on the headache-inducing cake that is the new thermal visor
Shoot, the Switch is a lot more limited than I thought
it was underpowered in 2017
@@massivive yeah but I always thought people were exaggerating about how much
Why did Retro drop the Beam lighting the surroundings????
th-cam.com/video/0oiIm5Ymu6s/w-d-xo.html
This is another video on the same channel where they talk about it. It's pretty much just the Switch hardware that kinda sucks.
There's another vid on this channel covering EXACTLY that now! "Why Beam Lighting Was Removed In Metroid Prime Remastered"
cus the Switch simply sucks. thats why
yeah, they intentionally left it out because of the switch's hardware limitations. it was either drop the lighting or have the FPS get hammered. its really interesting to see how much depth that was on the gamecube simply cant exist on the switch due to archetectural and computing changes
The virgin Switch vs the Chad Gamecube.
It looks more like actual thermal vision looks like but I personally had issue with the look because it made it more challenging to look at for a gameplay perspective. GameCube vision it wasn’t difficult to know what the hell I am looking at.
It was done good enough were it didn't break immersion. I didn't notice the decrease in resolution. I have a lot more issues with just seeing with the thermal visor on because everything is dark, which is an issue I had on the gamecube, and that's understandable the entire point of the thermal camera is you use it in dark areas.
I understand why they had to do what they did, but honestly I would have preferred a completely different method of a “thermal visor” if it meant a higher resolution and sharper image. The blurryness looks really terrible and makes the thermal visor nigh useless in the exact sections of the game in which it’s supposed to be helpful. Those being dark areas where you can’t see.
The type of infrared camera they are emulating works on rather long wavelengths, so you have a real-life physical limitation on resolution that not even bird magic can overcome.
That feels like a very leading video title.
I noticed it was bad when I first saw it. Silly they made it worse
I didn't play the original, so when I saw how the thermal visor looked on the GCN, I was amazed at how good it looked there compared to the Switch.
It not only looks MUCH worse in the remaster but gives me a headache whenever I have to use it. I’d take it looking worse than the original if it wasn’t so blurry and the colours so blown up. Really wish they would do something about it because it’s the only fault in an otherwise awesome remaster
Either way the fact that it runs at 60 is an achievement
I thought it looked fine, the arm cannon was no longer inexplicably transparent and the enemy models didn't have such obvious polygons
It could be performance concerns but also if you've ever looked at real thermal/FLIR imaging...it actually is pretty low-res and motion blurry.. So either they wanted to save on performance and/or they wanted to add just a touch of realism to how thermal imagining works. Obv. Metroid is not a realistic game but little touches like that can be nice here and there.
For old low end crap, sure it's accurate.
It isn't accurate to even modern midrange stuff though, let alone literal supertech.
It's a real shame that the Switch is a bit underpowered.
Wouldn't palette effects be trivial for a fragment shader? I'm not familiar with Switch hw, is it not running shaders of some sort?
Yeah, I was thinking that too. They could just use a lookup texture indexed to whatever RGB -> brightness conversion function they like and Bob's your uncle, just have whatever "tagged as hot" means be something encoded in the surface textures that increases the brightness output by whatever you need. Granted that'd be just if you wanted to imitate the Gamecube 1:1, which I expect the remaster was trying to do more than that.
weird, i noticed right away when playing that it looked different, but i never felt it looked worse. thermal always seemed a little too crisp in original prime, at least based on our own thermal technology as humans. i figured for switch they'd just added some fuzzy visual filters to mimic the type of visual noise you get on an infrared camera, and i assumed that it was a level of visual effect the gamecube couldn't handle stacking on top of all the others which is why it wasn't in the original
But Chozo-designed thermal visor
Yeah I know it's all space bird magic but the game designers still had to base it on what we know thermal to be capable of within our own experience
I am gonna agree with someone below who said the thermal is low because that is how real world thermals work, I agree with them as it is jarring due to the setting as this is the distant future, all weapons are energy based, so a low resolution thermal does not make sense but I can accept the devs were given a dead line, the ymade it possible with some corners cut.
I liked it; looked more like real night vision.
The GameCube was ahead of its time. If it sold well they could have produced powerful or enough to good quality games, expensive but worth the gaming sales.
If it was so simple to implement in the original then it doesn't make sense to have performance issues in the remaster. I think it was a design choice rather than an issue
Eh, I like the new thermal visor, and it seems intentional to me, being a much more accurate representation of visual heat signatures. I get that it can be jarring to look at though.
So basically Nintendo went the lazy route vs actually porting and updating the code or am I missing something?
My problem with the original Thermal Visor is that it showed the Gamecube's flaws as far as graphics go. You could see the polygons moving around and it kinda took me out of the experience. I tried using Thermal vision as little as possible for that reason. The Switch remaster makes more sense since that's more in line with what thermal vision really looks like in cameras and it's still more clear than what we have now.
Not once have I ever considered the thermal visor crappy looking in the original back then or now. What did you play it on?
@@locklear308 Gamecube? It was almost nothing like how real thermal vision works. Not only did it show the low polygon count models more but you saw through models like they were transparent. It looked more like you just shut off the textures and changed colors.
@@Misty25939 And just how does it not look like real thermal imaging? Not that that matters because it was cool as hell at the time and I think it still is now. And I've no idea what you mean by low poly models, low for the time? How? When was the last time you have played the original?
@@locklear308 Real thermal imaging is always blurry because of the readings that generate heat. That's more in line with the Thermal Visor in the remaster. You're not just seeing the models that generate heat, you're seeing the actual heat itself. It's a little touch for realism and I really appreciate it. Prime still looks great for its time of course but not all of it aged as gracefully.
While these clips are great, it also makes me feel better about replaying my GCN version, recently. (I didn't know that it was remastered until after i beat the game again).
"Performance issues".
What ever.
This reminds me of how many games ported from the PS2 have lost effects. I don’t think the rain has been correct in any version of MGS2 not on the PS2.
I don't buy it. Why is this a problem for the thermal visor and not the xray visor? This really needs to be explained to me. It took me over a year to finally get into this game because of my motion sickness problems with first person games (which has gotten worse as I have gotten older), and even right now with me being in a "good" phase regarding motion sickness it's still a noticeable issue. And then I got the thermal visor and almost had to quit again. Thankfully I didn't and just used the thermal visor even less than usual compared to my original GCN days, but I'm having trouble understand why this was necessary here and not for the xray visor.
Well, it is thermal….
Heat detection
While the visor looked worse, it actually made the immersion better for me. Thermal imaging wouldn't be as crisp and defined as in original Prime
you play a space bounty hunter thats half bird, human, and Metroid. Have a nemesis thats a Giant space dragon that regenerates from eating people and somehow finds a way to screw you over, a race of aliens that have sniper rifles for arms, An ancient space virus organism that can replicate a form with enhancements and a Earth Gov that can build super murder exploration robots. And somehow clear Thermal Imaging is less immersive because it doesn't match our modern thermal imaging?
@@watch.v-dQw4w9WgXcQ yup. Because im not talking about lore accuracy. Im talking about game design and linking the player to the gameworld. Giving the real world player a sense of familiarity to a game world element is a great idea. Granted i now know this wasnt intentional but it still worked for me
@@killingtime4444 I don't think you actually understand, if we could unblur thermal imaging more we will do it and replace the blurry effects to increase precision, otherwise we would be using 244p for every video since the "lower resolution" is understandable to the modern real world person on the time... This game takes place in a better technological era, its like watching Star Wars and expect people to be wearing glasses to improve their vision instead of fashion when their in a Tech era where even people in sand huts can get their eyes adjusted for dirt cheap. You play a fucking Space Bounty hunter that's using super alien bird tech that can gene splice your DNA and are borderline gods of their universe yet you want to familiar with them using low end tech by their standards to feel real to you.
Its like we should all be using guns only on fighter jets since missiles are too advanced and unfamiliar to WW1 pilots. If there's something better why use and inferior variation especially when you're a high end service dealer. You don't pay the cheapest plumber to do your pipes if you know they dont have the best quality.
TL;DR - Its just a better thermal imaging using Bird tech why the fuck should it be more shitty than IRL Thermals. Thermals are familiar to real world anyways we're suppose to be using bird tech version which is just better. The game is Sci-Fi not Real World Fiction
@@watch.v-dQw4w9WgXcQ no you don't understand my point. I understand yours and you are one hundred percent right....if i was sharing your same perspective. I chose to view it differently and justify it.
@@killingtime4444 I understand your perspective, its just that your justification sucks and it makes the game also feel like crap.
Ok I'm not crazy. It was ugly and not blurry as heck.
Huh. That sucks. Was hoping someone made a mod by this point for it but I guess not. Maybe more difficult as explained in this video. Sooooo maybe an update wouldn't help perhaps? That's a problem, cause it makes you nauseous.
It's really disappointing that the Gamecube was able to do these things better than the Switch, not gonna lie. I was always impressed with the things the GC was able to pull off!
It wouldn't be surprising if Retro Studios drops dead after Metroid Prime 4.
I never played this game before, so playing the remastered I see nothing wrong with the thermal visor. I don't have that comparisson.
im inclined to believe the effect were added to look more like what a real thermal camera looks, playing the game on an emulator at up to 8k and the thermal camera still has a slight blurriness to it
You'd likely need to modify the game code to remove the blur.. how's an emulator going to negate a hardcoded effect tied to one specific in-game ability like that?
@@phattjohnson I think that was their point, since the blur effect is still there regardless of resolution, it is programmed to intentionally add a blur effect and not a side effect of anything like lower render resolution.
I honestly thought it was an improvement.
Finally, I was tired of seeing everyone saying it looked bad, it actually looks really good
@@larkyark3261 IT LOOKS LIKE SHIT
How is it an improvement when it physically hurts your eyeballs?
Correction, it hurt your eyeballs, many of us didn’t have that problem but I wish it had been a good experience for you too, this being said.
Nah it looks like ass
I prefer the new thermal visor
I actually liked how blurry it was, felt fun to have to work around that effect.
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When using the thermal visor for more than a minute, I went to the options menu and set the color assist to RED, and then the sensitivity to LOW. This helped alittle bit...
🟥
I wonder what they could have done with the Wii U hardware. Sucks that Nintendo killed that platform so early on.
i don't understand what everyone's issue is with it in this game
The lengths Nintendo fanboys are willing to go for their perfect company. They would even question and disregard the original developer's opinion and testimony. No matter what, Nintendo can't do wrong apparently.... 😒
It's infuriating honestly
You guys never met Sony fanboys then huh? Lmao
So the way they did the thermal visor on the switch was for realism. I have watched plenty of ghost hunting shows and thermal cameras are really low resolution. And when you move the camera everything blurs so bad on that thing because of the lower resolution. Unfortunately from a gameplay perspective, the thermal visor is so bad I would rather spend no time in it at all. Unfortunately they made the dark areas EVEN DARKER on the switch, and it's impossible to navigate without it on. This sucks too because the lack of ambient lighting from the morphball and shots made getting the missile expansion really really difficult because you can't run thermal in morphball, and you don't have light emanating from the morphball itself anymore, which made getting that missile expansion even more difficult then it used to be. You can't see the track, you can't see anything. Everything is 100x darker now because of the lack of ambient lighting from things like bullets and the morphball.
Like others, I think the thermal visor is a great improvement. Its low res is more of a creative decision rather than a technical one. The escape from the lab was way more terrifying this time because of the discomfort that comes with it
this was a game for the gamecube xD thats why modern gameing is almost dead
Everything but the lighting and textures look worse in the game, though.
So nit picky bruh it looks like how it’s supposed to
But it doesn't look worse, so... 🤷♂
modern hardware hasnt supported pallettes for a long time because theyve been supporting shaders which lets you do like 100 mathematical pallette passes per frame wtf are these videos lmao
hideous new visor
Or maybe it was a artistically choice (same as the doors)? 🤔
NO!!!
Nintendo should stop releasing such weak hardware every generation.
I miss the old handcrafted workarounds in technology we had prior the 7th gen of consoles. In Prime Remastered they wanted to make the thermal effect as accurate as possible, but it's hard to replicate the same effect nowadays in Switch, there's too many meshes, opacity and various effects in the way so it's only natural they lowered the resolution. However the motion blur effect looks really really bad and I wish I could turn it off.
Metroid Prime Remastered would have run @60 on Wii U and could have included all the GCN effects that got cut on Switch. 😎
Without doubt one of the most annoying games I’ve ever played.
Really dislike the new Thermal Visor. One of the very very very few things I don't like about the remaster.
Yeah, I actually dropped the game because it gave me headaches.
@@aktchungrabanio6467 I'm curious as to what kind of screen and distance you're on? Are you playing like 7ft back from a 60" TV? Or on a small computer monitor with the chair pushed right up? Or heaven forbid.. on the Switch screen itself 🤢
THE MORE I FIND OUT, THE MORE I SEE THAT THIS REMASTER FUCKING SUCKS AND IT MAKES ME JUST WANNA BE DONE WITH NINTENDO. oopse caps was on and im not retyping that