A sense of scale and proportions is important in many ways. It’s useful when you want to estimate distances, it’s pretty useful when you are handling business affairs, and of course it’s a very important thing in games.
Since in games (and VFX in general) it would be impossible to build everything in the correct scale, many tricks are used here. While small scale objects are usually built in correct proportions relative to the player, on the large scale things are different. A sky or horizon is never as far away as it would be in reality for example. Or take those huge mountains in Skyrim. They aren’t nearly as huge as they look like, just hills painted like mountains if they were real. It’s all smoke and mirrors as they say in Hollywood. This is a non-issue in 2D, but when it comes to 3D, especially in a VR-environment like on the Oculus Rift, correct proportions even on the large scale would clearly be best.
Due to the way vorpX creates its 3D-effect, it is able to account for such things to a certain degree. With a little bit of mathematical creativity it is possible to make objects appear farther away (or higher, in case of mountains) than they are in the game world. Let’s fix it in post – to describe it with another overused VFX-phrase.
There are limits to this, of course. But overall it’s more than worth it most of the time.
7 comments on “vorpX’s Sense of Scale”