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Does Doom3 still boast the best in-game lighting engine?
- Thread starter gofreak
- Start date
Littleberu
Banned
Pimpbaa said:
"Crytek invented Normal Mapping!!!!" -GAF
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-=::[Eagle-Vision]::=-
Banned
tenchir said:
Only an idiot would not be able to tell the difference between DOOM3 and HL2.
Yusaku said:
Why not explain to me WHY you feel that way? While it is only limited to one light source, SH2 used an engine in 2001 in which all objects were capable of casting soft shadows. Like I said, the vast majority of the games on the PC can't even begin to approach this technique.
Splinter Cell really didn't used any sort of unified lighting model, so it doesn't compare. In fact, SC actually used different types of shadowing per area depending on the requirements.
Burger
Member
dark10x said:
I think it matters. You implied that nothing on the PC *CAN* do this, which isn't true.
Halflife 2 has fake soft shadows, Unreal Engine 3 does soft shadows. Theif 3 has soft shadows.
When you take it into context, PC games often run at twice the framerate of a PS2 game, at twice the resolution, with hundreds of megs worth of extra textures, plus extras like anti aliasing and the list goes on.
So SH2 had soft shadows. Did it run at 1280x1024 ? Did it run at 32bit color depth ? Did it use 4x anisotropic filtering ? Nope.
When you have a game like SH2, which for the most part is in the darkness, maybe soft shadows is a cool effect which will add alot to the game, where shadows are very very important. Nearly every other game need not apply. Why take the hit when you don't need the effect.
dark10x said:
Bullsheeeeeiitt.
I've owned every Monolith FPS from the beginning. You didn't even need the most powerful rig to run the game properly. Farcry is a much bigger example of a game needing horsepower to run properly.
Yeah and what was the hardware differences? BTW you know you are comparing a canned demo of a product due out in 2-3 years time versus a playable game.
BTW I'm not saying Monolith soft games are more streamlined than ID products, but they aren't unplayable.
Burger said:
In 2001, you weren't going to achieve that on the PC. That's all.
I never implied that PC couldn't do it either, so don't hand me that line. PCs today own the hell out of the PS2 (though your framerate comment is off).
You can't make those shadow comparisons above. HL2 uses standard shadows that have shown up in games for years, Unreal 3 is WAAYYYYYY down the road (by the time we see it IN GAME, SH2 will be at least 5-6 years old), and Thief III absolutely DOES NOT have soft shadows either.
You do realize it is more than just soft shadows that was impressive at the time, right? In 2001, how many other games on any other platforms were using a unified lighting model? How many?
Surely you can understand why I believe SH2 is getting the shaft. The point is and always was based around the release date of September 2001. However, my second point was trying to stress how impressive it was for the time by pointing out that very few PC games actually exceed it (though we all know which titles do).
I dunno, I bought Shogo, Blood II, and NOLF straight out of the gate and played NOLF2 and TRON 2.0 right away. The first three were horrible. My machine in each case fell slightly above the recommended requirements, but those games had EXTREMELY poor performance AT TIMES. Sometimes, they would run fine...but many scenes caused severe slowdown. I remember being pissed when people claimed that NOLF performed well upon release. IT DID NOT!
NOLF2 and TRON 2.0 were much better, though, I'll admit...but considering how they looked, they should have run smoother.
I'll put it this way; I have yet to have a truly smooth experience with any Monolith product outside of Claw and Blood.
From what I've seen so far, I think that Unreal Engine 3 is the best engine.
Now, we aren't seeing the game soon because current hardware would have a lot of trouble with it, but the same philosophy may be carried over to the next UT game (perhaps UT 2005, if like Epic has said, a new iteration of the game will come out each year).
UE 3 = HL2 + D3
HL 2 represents the last generation where static lighting is taken to the next level. The resolution of the lightmaps are incredible, the amount of polygons being thrown are incredible, and the resolutions of the textures are incredible. They threw in some normal maps...but other than that, you can say it's much like HL but with better textures, more polys, and everything HL did but on a higher level, with a few extras kicked in.
DOOM 3 tries to simulate lighting in real life with their approach, but I don't think they take into account that nearly everything in real life is reflective, and creates some we call ambient lighting. They are taking thier approach to the extreme to the point where it seems like they don't want to add in ambient lighting because it will be seperated from their overall universal lighting engine.
UE 3 mixes both philosophies for it's engine. For some it's lighting, it's still using projections for God's sake!
Sweeney (or whoever is actually behind the engine) seems to realize that the next generation can't depend on dynamic lighting alone, it has to be a balanced mixture. I agree with this philosophy.
Now, if you are talking about any currently available game, I would say that HL 2 is the best engine. Why? Because while DOOM 3 will look better, as an engine it looks less adaptable to other games. The Quake 3 engine was used for many different genres. EA even used it for the PC NHL games (I don't know about the new ones though). I can't see the DOOM 3 engine used for a racing game, or a sports game. HL2 on the other hand, is much more versatile. Once the dynamic lighting technology reaches a point where it's feasable to create an outdoor/large world with no problems, I consider it inferior to the old generation of games.
Now, we aren't seeing the game soon because current hardware would have a lot of trouble with it, but the same philosophy may be carried over to the next UT game (perhaps UT 2005, if like Epic has said, a new iteration of the game will come out each year).
UE 3 = HL2 + D3
HL 2 represents the last generation where static lighting is taken to the next level. The resolution of the lightmaps are incredible, the amount of polygons being thrown are incredible, and the resolutions of the textures are incredible. They threw in some normal maps...but other than that, you can say it's much like HL but with better textures, more polys, and everything HL did but on a higher level, with a few extras kicked in.
DOOM 3 tries to simulate lighting in real life with their approach, but I don't think they take into account that nearly everything in real life is reflective, and creates some we call ambient lighting. They are taking thier approach to the extreme to the point where it seems like they don't want to add in ambient lighting because it will be seperated from their overall universal lighting engine.
UE 3 mixes both philosophies for it's engine. For some it's lighting, it's still using projections for God's sake!
Sweeney (or whoever is actually behind the engine) seems to realize that the next generation can't depend on dynamic lighting alone, it has to be a balanced mixture. I agree with this philosophy.Now, if you are talking about any currently available game, I would say that HL 2 is the best engine. Why? Because while DOOM 3 will look better, as an engine it looks less adaptable to other games. The Quake 3 engine was used for many different genres. EA even used it for the PC NHL games (I don't know about the new ones though). I can't see the DOOM 3 engine used for a racing game, or a sports game. HL2 on the other hand, is much more versatile. Once the dynamic lighting technology reaches a point where it's feasable to create an outdoor/large world with no problems, I consider it inferior to the old generation of games.
Burger
Member
dark10x said:
Hey, SH2 blew me away too. Theif 3 does have soft shadows, I'm not sure if they are static or dynamic though, I haven't done my homework on that one, mind you if they are the former I guess its not clever at all. HL2 does have soft shadows, they may not be 'proper' soft shadows, but it has this 'effect'.
Um, well zero. And the number is still zero today. Unless by 'model' you mean 'illusion', because the Doom 3 engine will be the first, and only for a long time, engine using unified lighting.
I don't get this hate on the Doom engine. D3 is just the beginning. Why couldn't you use the engine for other types of games? Carmack isn't going to make devs use certain lighting situations. D3 is the future, now. It has to happen sooner or later.
Granted it is a waste for most games right now, but the sooner everything is unified, the sooner we get ray-tracing, diffusion, soft shadows and all the other lightning effects that go on top of that.
what is wrong with fake soft shadows anyway? It still looks VERY GOOD! Btw did SH2 use REAL soft shadows or fake? because as I understand REAL soft shadows is hard to implement
in a feasable way for complex worlds. I mean look at ray tracers with soft shadow support, most of those use fake soft shadows and it looks great.
in a feasable way for complex worlds. I mean look at ray tracers with soft shadow support, most of those use fake soft shadows and it looks great.
SC as well as PT on the X-Box both suffer from erratic shadow implementation. Splinter Cell had a mixture of dynamic vertex lights and projected light maps, as well as some faked HDR effects. You can't achieve TRUE high dynamic range on any of the current consoles since they don't have floating point data types for fragments/pixels. You can certainly hack something that sort of looks like HDR on all of them though. A simple flare around lightsources done with a textured screen aligned quad is a simple way of faking HDR and film exposure. (ICO) Quake 3 did HDR on the gfx cards of yore by twiddling with the gamma ramp to exchange precision for higher dynamic range. But by definition of what high dynamic range means, you can't get it with integer math (unless you use a ridiculous amounts of bits for your datatypes).
Shompola said:
I'm sure it is a fake method, but all PC games that have supported global shadow casting have had very hard edged shadows. DXIW, Thief III, Far Cry indoors, and Doom 3 allow the user to create shadows from most major objects (with few exceptions).
The thing about fake soft shadows in PC games is that the games that HAVE used them don't feature any sort of impressive world shadowing engine. So what if HL2 has soft character shadows? Shining a flashlight around the world isn't going to cast anything...unlike SH2 (where virtually every object in the world will cast accurate shadows).
Silent Hill 2 had impressive lighting, though it was a major part of its visual design which emphasizes obscured views. Its use of soft shadowing was novel, but the fact that it's in SH2 and not in other games is really more of a matter of design choice than performance.
dark10x:
dark10x:
The difference between "virtually every object" and "every object" makes a big difference at least for what you've been arguing. And yes, not every object casts accurate shadows nor self-shadows in SH2. That doesn't take away much from its visual accomplishment, but it does mean that shadow implementation was goverened by selectivity like in other games (which limits the technical accolades with which it could be credited).
Teknopathetic
Member
NOLF2 ran at 60+ FPS on my GF4.
Tre said:
Yeah, NOLF2 wasn't so bad...most of time. A 2.8 P4 + 9800 Pro + 1gb ram couldn't even hold 60 fps on some levels, though (same deal for a P4-2.4 + 9700 Pro and an AthlonXP 2200 + GF4ti4200). So, I don't believe the game was constant on your machine throughout...
All games prior were just terrible, however. NOLF, Shogo, and Blood 2 ran like complete SHIT on most hardware upon release...
Though, to be fair, SH2 was capable of casting shadows and self-shadows throughout 99% of the world. Even chain-link fences (such as those wrapped in front of certain door frames) were capable of casting shadows. It was quite robust...
teepo said:
AH ha ha ha!!!
No.
First of all, MGS2 didn't do half of what SH2 did in terms of shadows. Example for you; In SH2, if you stand in a doorway with a table of junk in front of you, pointing your flashlight at that table will cause the doorframe, every object on the table, and the table itself to all case perfect soft shadows across the room (and on top of each other). MGS2 had nothing like this...
Of course, there is no point in discussing this as Silent Hill 2 was released two months before MGS2...
The big deal is that VERY FEW other games display shadows in this way. The only games that beat out SH2 were released within the last year...
If you really think MGS2 and SH2 use the same shadowing techniques, you obviously have no idea what we are talking about...