Which one do you like better?

(I suggest to view full-size to get a better comparison)

If you picked the second/bottom one, we can’t be friends.  winkwink  😉

–The top picture has the game’s Filtering setting on Low. There’s a better sense of overall sharp focus.
–The bottom picture has Filtering on High (Average isn’t much less).  Notice the street lights are now big blobs of yellow glowing with “bloom,” and the palace in the background – and the tree, the road, and everything else – is more blurry and out of focus.  I can’t stand either effect. It’s the first damn type of thing I turn off in any game, whatever they call the setting, and if the game doesn’t let me turn it off (or at least greatly minimize it) I am an unhappy camper.  Ha.  I wish you could turn Filtering totally Off in FFXV, but at least Low is pretty darn close to off.

If it’s very subtle, bloom/similar used ONLY on things like lights would be ok. But it’s almost never that subtle, effects too many things, or worse it’s an overall soft-focus, bright glow over everything/the whole screen.
Background blurring just gives me a headache. Things in the background in real-life (barring atmospheric interface of some kind) don’t blur and game blurring gives me eye strain from my eyes/brain constantly thinking it should be in focus (eg, squinting). Now, I get it, sometimes it’s effective to selectively blur backgrounds, in order to put emphasis on a specific subject (in photography we call this “bokeh” ),  but having it active all the time (like in games) is blech. I suppose it helps performance at times tho, sometimes.

Anyway, I was messing with graphic settings tonight (mainly forcing things in the GPU, for example), wondering if the game could look a tad better (vs. performance).  Maybe a little. Probably not worth it tho.