I hate the way other games (not just driving sims) try to recreate sun glare. Take a game with 'good' glare effects and take a mental note of what it looks like. Then look at a setting sun and see what that looks like. Not the same huh!
Disclaimer: NEVER look directly at the sun for any length of time. If you must, use welding goggles or something very very dark, or be totally safe, and project it via binoculars or a telescope onto a piece of paper.
Glare would be good but not the stupid lens effect that so often plagues games. Flight sims have been implementing decent glare brilliantly for years.
However, surely glare is only relevant where time of day is an issue and in LFS at the moment, it's not. Most track stuff is done at times of the day when the sun is too high to be an issue.
All that Valve-hyped HDR stuff really irked me, especially with DoD:S. What does HDR do? It makes stuff shiny. Valve finally took the ultimate patronising step of simply making a game shiny to see if gamers would fawn over it - and they did! illepall Valve must be laughing their little heads off.
HDR is awesome. I'm sure it will be in all new major games in near-future. If you can't see the difference with HDR enabled/disable you are blind. It doesn't just make "stuff shiny", it makes viewing light much, much more realistic. For example, you walk outside on a sunny day, and you step in to a very dark corridor and you can't see almost anything untill your eyes adjust to the dark hallway and you start seeing in it.
If you actually want to find out how this awesome technology works instead of bashing it, download this tech demo which illustrates HDR very well. http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/
@thisnameistaken: Yeah, what you refer to is crappy glow effects that indeed looks stupid sometimes. What he ^ mentioned is much more the effect I'd like to see in LFS, namely simulating the eye as it makes adjustments to the amount of light present.
I took some video captures of that tech demo some time ago, so those who can't be bothered to try it out or don't have the necessary hardware can just look at these captures:
The thing that makes HDR and focus effects pretty annoying in games is the fact that the game cannot know which part of the screen I'm looking at. This means that every time I want to look at something I would need to move the view to point directly at it, something that, for example in LFS is pretty difficult unless you have a device like TrackIR; Imagine driving behind another car for example, the focus and HDR effects would adjust to the car and the track around it would get over-exposed and out of focus, and you couldn't see where you're going anymore.
I'm sure it will too, but not because it's "awesome". In fact Far Cry did HDR lighting a couple of years before it turned up in Valve games, although I can't remember how good their implementation was because I haven't touched that game in so long.
I didn't say I couldn't see the difference, I said it was shit.
Yeah, that's a neat effect, it also neatly demonstrates how limiting and frustrating your average FPS game's control scheme is. Most people move their eyelids unconsciously to limit/maximise the amount of light that the eye receives while the iris adjusts, but the HDR effects I've seen conveniently ignore this in order to show off a fancy effect.
I already checked out DoD:S and Lost Coast, seen it, done it.
My main beef here is not with HDR as-such, but with big-budget developers spending months developing techniques to make something shiny when they could be using that time to create an original game (when was the last time we saw one of those?). But of course, gamers like yourself wet themselves when something shiny is waved infront of them, and so the game developers take that as license to waste their time making stuff shiny. My problem is with thick gamers and spineless developers, not with silly lighting effects.
Heh, yet again one these people who don't want new and nice technology even though it's brought free at them. What do you have against having new and pretty effects and technology when it doesn't cost you a dime? Do you still prefer Wolfenstein graphics over the Source engine for example? Would you prefer no bump mapping, fancy shaders, HDR or other gimmicks that we are with treated with these days?
I'm guessing only HDR supported game engine you've tried is Source, which I think needs lots of improving with the HDR technology, but it is a good leap forwards. When you say you've got a grudge against big-budget developers spending months of development on "making something shiny", how do you know they aren't making something ground breakingly good as we speak? For example, Valve started making HL2 like almost as soon as they had gotten HL1 out and they didn't tell anyone about it until few years had gone by. And yet I do think the Source engine is the best FPS engine we've seen so far, alone thanks to the physics of it.
I don't go WOW when I see a new pretty technology demo released. I think it's cool for developers to actually DEVELOPE new stuff. Talking about originality you are partly correct, but there has been few good and original titles out in the past few years. I would like to play new games that are good as old classics like Total Annihilation, Monkey Island series etc. The truth is, games are very advanced these days and creating something original and appealing for all audience has become very difficult. But you go ahead, stick your head in to a bucket and play your oh-so-pretty and original Wolfenstein in peace.
First off: Sorry about being a bit nasty in my last post. This is just something that has been bothering me for a while and I didn't mean to take it out on you.
Well, potentially it could cost me a small fortune: Comparing the performance I usually get in Source-engine games, to the performance with HDR turned on, I'd need to invest in a whole new computer to get multiplayer-sensible frame rates. Luckily, I (like many) prefer the old versions of CS and DoD and haven't really bothered with the Source re-makes.
No. Are you happy that you're basically still playing Wolfenstein over ten years later but with fancy textures and lighting effects?
Because if any developers were making something original, ever, we'd see original games sometimes. Half-Life 2 was pretty, full credit to their art department because they really rocked it, but try to imagine playing it if it wasn't pretty - would you have bothered? Sure the physics were a new thing, so they were fun to play with occasionally, but they didn't make a great deal of difference to the gameplay - the same old gameplay we've been doing for over ten years.
When HL2 was slated for release it wasn't the physics I was excited about, it was the "revolutionary" AI. Remember how they hyped their fancy new AI? Remember how utterly average it was when you actually got the game?
Like...?
Nah, it's become commercially impractical. It's nothing to do with how difficult it is, it's all down to where the money's coming from and what sort of a return you'll need to show for it.
It's just like the way the music industry has gone - What's the point in investing in something new and fresh when you can regurgitate the same old crap with a different face and the punters will still give you money for it?
Actually, if megacorp games developers were doing their jobs properly, do you think we'd both be here relying on the work of a little indie developer to provide us with a decent racing sim?
I hate this "shiny graphics boom" that we are having in games now. Every game has this OVER-EXAGGERATED boom/blur/post-processing/whatever HDR effects which makes it look like a Chistmas tree. This blooming effect boom started from console games 2-3 years ago. Need For Speed: Most Wanted really made a new milestone on this area: it's like playing a game after enjoying some LSD pills.
This won't make games look more fotorealistic, it's more like the opposite...
HL2's HDR looks pretty good but it's still way too over-exaggerated.
The problem is that effects need to be applied quite subtly, you shouldn't go wow, that looks really cool, lots of effects there... because in the end the real world doesn't look like load of cool effects, so the games don't look realistic. I think Scawen has the right idea for LFS, anyone remember when the "haze" affect was added, and some people didn't notice?
I think LFS could do with shader support, but only for subtle (perhaps a bit more noticable than haze ) effects. I.e. cubic reflections for the cars instead of the rather weak environment map we have atm. It would be a subtle change, and older hardware could fall back on the env map, but it would look better.
if you want real effects, check out NFSMW, (yes i know i keep talking about it, but it does have many real.. stunning effects) ei: when nearing the exit of a tunnel, know how everything looks really bright outside? yep.. recreates that.. sun glare.. cant get much better either; cant see a damn thing (which .. is what it should be [only in morning and afternoon though.. i hope you dont see the sun any other time while driving lol])
motion blur has gotten better (except when you hit the nitrous.. thats still lots of blur).. but it has gotten much better, not like underground1 where you couldnt see anything.. what else.. oh.. headlights which stay on the whole time work when its raining.. kinda neat effect it gives.. leaves blowing! (thats really cool to see leaves float along when your going at normal speeds).. trees moving in the wind (as you see in LFS) but with realtime shadow effects.. always nice
you guys have to admit, all the companies that are under Electronic Arts sure are doing a fantastic job of recreating real world effects
Uh huh. Like the way hillsides change shape as you get closer in Battlefield 2. I've been waiting to see shape-changing hillsides properly represented in a game, I think it looks awesome
How about some real innovation for a change. How about a game that is completely audio-driven, perhaps with no graphics at all? Or a game that has remotely interesting AI? Or a game which is entirely voice-controlled? Or a game that is dependant on narrative for progression (like... *eek!* a story!) rather than firing twelve rockets into the flashing red thing to get the blue keycard or whatever. Nobody's willing to take the risk any more - we'll probably only ever see stuff like this from the mod community or from indie developers.
Edit: To be fair, Black & White tried in a couple of these areas, but unfortunately they didn't put enough time into the actual gameplay. Top marks for trying though
Np at all :-) I apologize if I was rather rude in the last section of my post.
This is what I totally agree with you, many FPS games are pretty boring these days. I liked Farcry for its quite open environments, I remember enjoying the demo when it was released and I could actually take separate routes to the top of the island, that was cool. Operation Flashpoint was also so incredible when it was released, those large open environments amused me.
If it wouldn't have had the Source physics and sweet candy GFX, no, I propably wouldn't have bothered with it, but it DID have those two party pieces and I still enjoy it. Ever heard of Garrys Mod? You should give it a shot. I do hate Valve for lieing at E3 for HL2:s AI and "non-scripted" storyline and levels, all the levels are the same pre-scripted crap back from HL1 Also the lies they said when the leaked beta was released on the net and Valve had been saying HL2 is almost done, the thing is that beta was one of the latest builds and the game was FAR from finished. After that Valve was blaming the people who stole the beta that now they have to "fix the code in case of cheats", which was of course utter bullshit.
Well, I can't remember all the major ones but here's quite a few that I liked:
- Operation Flashpoint
- Gran Turismo 3 & 4 (the best arcade car games imo)
- Fable
- Everquest 2 (stopped playing this last year tho)
- Hitman 1 & 2
- GTA 3
Those are just few titles that I enjoyed playing very much.
illepall Valve must be laughing their little heads off.
Also the lies they said when the leaked beta was released on the net and Valve had been saying HL2 is almost done, the thing is that beta was one of the latest builds and the game was FAR from finished. After that Valve was blaming the people who stole the beta that now they have to "fix the code in case of cheats", which was of course utter bullshit.