We can avoid the situation in the screenshot of Battlefield 4 at the top here, which uses vignetting, motion blur, bloom and orange eyeball speckling to completely hide what's happening. Yes, because it would be mad to demand that the production company films without lenses, but in video games, you can! We have the freedom to do away with the flaws of modern film equipment. "Ah, but you're okay with a bit of lens flare in Game of Thrones, aren't you?" says my sly evil-universe self. These effects even turn up in fantasy games where cameras haven't been invented. These effects give you no information about the game world, harm your ability to see anything, and frequently undermine the integrity of the fantasy the game is trying to sell.
Eyeballs don't register coronas of searing lens flare around light sources. Eyeballs don't collect a fine layer of dust as a camera might. The pursuit of "cinematic" experiences has encouraged designers to simulate the foibles of film equipment, but when you're playing an FPS, the fantasy casts you as a person, not a camera. You'll see these specks everywhere nowadays, refracting light and muddying up the view. This isn't about dust particles you see hanging in sun rays-quite a neat effect that gives texture to empty space-this is the fine layer of gritty sparkling gunk smeared over your avatar's eyeballs.
For the last couple of years we've been watching our games through a fine layer of dust.