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Pushing the envelope: Achieving next-level clouds in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores

nikos

Member
They look like smoke or cotton candy. You can see them being drawn and dissipating as you move through them, which could be a technical limitation.

Not very realistic but the game's entire setting isn't either.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
I know the game is probably gonna have more aerial gameplay time, but i could not give less fucks about even better clouds that what we had already.

but they look indeed nice.
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
Hell yea.

giphy.gif


This is going to put 99% of the industry to complete shame visually.
Lol, the base game already does that.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
Yeah, being that I am not a PC gamer, I do miss out on great games. I want WoW and ARMA 3 and iRacing on console for example, but that won't happen :(

Oh...and...

green bay packers nfl GIF
Going to miss him greatly (though not the drama he's brought over the last few years).

Onward to the Love era, here's praying and hoping he's good.

jordan-love.gif
 

Kvally

Member
Going to miss him greatly (though not the drama he's brought over the last few years).

Onward to the Love era, here's praying and hoping he's good.

jordan-love.gif
Favre pissed me off at the end. But Rodgers has pissed me off more at the end. But both given us great football, so I am glad we have had them.

Time for some Jordan Love!
 
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nowhat

Gold Member
I would imagine the final boss of the dlc would be the Horus just tearing shit through the environment. Would be a sight to see.
I'm not really into multiplayer. Practically at all when it comes to online, couch co-op/vs can be fun though.

But something like a 30+ person team taking down a Horus as PvE - fuck yeah, I'd be down for that. As Sony seems to have an interest in GaaS, that's something I could see myself doing.
 

skit_data

Member
It makes me happy that it does indeed seem to focus on using the Sunwing and flight traversal, one of my problems with Horizon FW was introducing flying way too late in the game leading to it being very under utilized.
 

DarthPutin

Member
I want flying to be in all open worlds if at all plausible. Currently flying in HL and it's not even that well done but still super cool. I need well done aerial battles with pursuit, etc, at some point.

Can't wait too see what they'll come up with for DLC.
 

CamHostage

Member
They look like smoke or cotton candy. You can see them being drawn and dissipating as you move through them, which could be a technical limitation.

Not very realistic but the game's entire setting isn't either.

Oh, yeah, huh? They accidentally captured a little of their technical limitations of the culling process in their promo footage. (Look over to the right instead of the left/center... or don't, because once you see it you may not be able to unsee it and maybe it's too cool to ruin right now.)


MS Flight Simulator seems to have some of those little issues in its cloud system. (It also has some older approaches to solving cloud depth challenges, but for a game approaching 3 years old, it's still awesome as well.) Clouds in real life do shift and break apart in the airstream as well as show differently as light plays across its particles from varying angles, but not this fast or like that. Still, as cool as tech can get right now, and should be fun to soar through the skies.

495b0c674b1bce9a222e07604285990e54416a51.gif




This gif could of makes me pissed that Horizon 2 was available on the PS4 now. UGH!

But again, it's not like these clouds would have existed if they had targeted PS5 only. They had to totally rewrite Decima's Nubis weather system to pull off all the effects and environmental looks needed for Forbidden West, and then on top of that they went back in and wrote a new layer of complication for how to fully realize aerial space. They had to go through the whole crucible of progress to get here, and they had to make all the elements they needed for their plans on Forbidden West first (low-hanging clouds for cold environments, gathering and dissipating clouds for the changes of weather across biomes, swirling vortexes for the Supercell Storms, etc.) before they could think of something extra in a DLC or a sequel.

BTW, for those interested in Decima's Nubis system in depth, there are tech talks out there on Guerrila's cloud system. In fact, a 2017 SIGGRAPH talk after the release of Horizon 1 showed some of their future work experimentations, and these new cloud experiments ended up being what they actually delivered in H:FW and now Burning Shores.


OZVrTQk.jpg
 
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midnightAI

Member
They look like smoke or cotton candy. You can see them being drawn and dissipating as you move through them, which could be a technical limitation.

Not very realistic but the game's entire setting isn't either.
I don't think it's a technical limitation as such, these are animated voxel clouds, they are just sped up (like a timelapse) which is what the clouds and lighting in games usually is or you'd never see day/night changes. If you watch a timelapse of clouds you'd see similar behaviour.
 


Dumb question, how is this different than the cloud system in flight simulator?

Its not close.

MS Flight Simulator is an entire system, not just that but the cloud occludes light. The Cloud is also casts shadow and is also self shadowing. This is without even mentioning whether phenomenon (rain, rainbow, hurricane, storms, cloud types and formation, etc) and physics.

 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Its not close.

MS Flight Simulator is an entire system, not just that but the cloud occludes light. The Cloud is also casts shadow and is also self shadowing. This is without even mentioning whether phenomenon (rain, rainbow, hurricane, storms, cloud types and formation, etc) and physics.


Cloud-to-cloud shadows are also a thing in Horizon now.
 

01011001

Banned
Hell yea.

giphy.gif


This is going to put 99% of the industry to complete shame visually.

not really, most devs could have implemented clouds like these easily but they tank performance and are useless in almost any game.

only Flight Sim and similar games where you are actively flying around and/or through clouds have any real use for this.

UE4 has had very good looking volumetric clouds for ages as well for example, and they run pretty well too.

this is also essentially exactly how the new smoke grenades in Cointer Strike 2 work... they're just bigger smoke grenades 😅
 
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Kvally

Member
MS Flight Simulator is an entire system, not just that but the cloud occludes light. The Cloud is also casts shadow and is also self shadowing. This is without even mentioning whether phenomenon (rain, rainbow, hurricane, storms, cloud types and formation, etc) and physics.


Holy shit. That's pretty damn sweet. But given Flight Sim is about flying in the sky with clouds for the entirety of the game, it makes sense to see this much focus on it. These new clouds in HFW are impressive for what it is especially for being DLC.
 
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