Game engines: Optimising VFX, reshaping visual media

Game engines have emerged as a significant site of convergence for several visual media pipelines, from XR to animation and In-Camera VFX (ICVFX). However, they are a computational medium – the images they produce are the derivative by-products of their management of computational complexity. Focussing on the game engine-dependent production technique of In-Camera VFX, this article will explore the ways in which game engine visuality incorporates and re-mediates a great deal of the phenomenological and epistemic characteristics of photographic visuality, in a way that de-prioritises visuality as a sensed and embodied experience. The article offers an outline of the image pipelines of photographic and game engine visuality, emphasising the difference in their relations to external phenomena, profilmic reality, and processes such as data management and computational optimisation. The article discusses the production logistics of ICVFX with specific reference to the ‘magic cutaway’, a trope that represents, in its ubiquity, the successful optimisation of both film production and ‘real time’ rendering within the virtual production context. The article will then offer a case study to open up not just the aesthetic impact of ICVFX, but to reflect on the de-prioritisation of photographic, lens-based images – correlated as they are to embodied ocular perception – within visual media. Speculating on the epistemic impact of a predominantly computational, as opposed to ocular, visual regime, this article will conclude by drawing insights from critical algorithm studies and the broader field of digital humanities.