Support NeoGAF

[Vennt]

Do you think next gen we're really going to see shaders show their promise, or have shaders and the role they are meant to have been overplayed?

Last gen, including the PC even , shaders were either a "nice touch" or "over the top" depending on the title, we saw some cool water, neat (and not so neat) filter effects, good and bad metal textures, and from what I can recall not a lot else.

The one thing that impressed the living fuck out of me with the MGS4 teaser, and I've not seen mentioned yet much (ha!) is just how GOOD the rubber texture on Snakes bodysuit is, it looks like rubber, not plastic, not metal, not flat-but-should-be-like-something, but straight up rubber. Is this down to good shader use or something else?

For the devs and graphically inclined, What can we expect to see next gen from shaders that we haven't seen before? - And what can we expect from general 3D & lighting that we haven't seen before?

 

[Lazy8s]

Shaders are just instruction sets which, instead of only having access to a few parameters of a fixed hardware effect, can define their own effect. They aren't limited in the kind of lighting effects they can describe for a surface, but their capabilities for actually pulling it off improve with each generation of technology.

 

[Lord Error]

Vennt, I know exactly what you are talking about, and I expect good things. MGS4 does (finally!) show some meaningful and not-over-the-top use of shaders. Warhawk video shows really amazing looking water. UE3 engine, over the top as it is, does get that metal uber-shine nicely.

I can't wait to see things like subsurface scattering used on something other than tech demos. It looked amazing on that Molina face demo, and on those flying monsers. I hope Factor 5s Lair goes all crazy with this, with semi-transparent dragon wings and such. Obviously, if this effect is not too taxing for production purposes, which I hope it isn't.

 

[Lazy8s]

Current generation Xbox shading showed it was still good enough for organic looking properties across the range of Panzer Dragoon Orta creatures.