[blackhole]

HDR makes even more sense in a space game. Think about it - HDR was invented because we can't accurate portray the full range of dynamic contrasts on earth, where we have an atmosphere providing a buffering ambiance. In space, you are presented with even more extreme contrasts, and so to accurate depict space you would most definitely need HDR. That's why turning down the ambiance results in a more realistic feel - but it is limited by LDR constraints. HDR would allow for even more contrast.

In general, when done correctly, HDR will benefit any situation - even a single room with a lightbulb. The commercial games just like to abuse the crap out of it to try and make themselves look cool. They also attach excessive bloom to the effect.

The same goes for bloom, actully; slight bloom actually does make sense because bloom is also an artifact of our own irises, it's just only apparent with extreme contrast (like say, a space environment) and is far less obvious then what is usually depicted in games.

I once was playing around with a fake bloom effect and inserted some screenshots to see what they would look like. Looking back, the bloom effect was far, far too strong, but here is a decent example:




Obviously a real implementation would be much more refined, based on HDR, and more subtle, but you get the idea. Of course, simply adapting the picture to the average luminance is just a basic implementation of HDR. Advanced HDR techniques enhance the image as a whole based on the HDR information.

Personally I tend to agree with Herra Tohtori in that we should be implementing HDR and either no bloom at all or a very subtle version of it. Besides, where are the stinking shadows?! We should be implementing shadows before HDR.

[Wanderer]

I would like to have an option for fairly strong bloom on certain items.. Say like with thrusters, suns, and possibly some - most likely not all - explosion effects. That is bloom would for all that i know provide extremely convenient way of getting rid of the clipping issues which are all too common with the thrusters these days.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

I read somewhere that the bloom would be able to fix the warp clipping planes as well, the sharp edges where ships (dis)appear.

Would it be able to do other clipping planes as well? Thrusters, like Wanderer said, and possibly beams? Explosions? Would sure be nice...

[Aurora Paradox]

Bottom line will the downloading the upgraded version of Open GL give any kind of boost?

[blackhole]

I read somewhere that the bloom would be able to fix the warp clipping planes as well, the sharp edges where ships (dis)appear.

Would it be able to do other clipping planes as well? Thrusters, like Wanderer said, and possibly beams? Explosions? Would sure be nice...

I would like to have an option for fairly strong bloom on certain items..

This is why HDR is used in conjunction with bloom. Make something be really really really bright in comparison to everything else, and the resulting overflow is expressed in bloom.

Bottom line will the downloading the upgraded version of Open GL give any kind of boost?

It might. I remain skeptical as to whether or not it will have any noticeable difference on FS2, but there's no reason not to download a new version.

[chief1983]

Other than currently, the Nvidia OpenGL 3.1 drivers are in Beta.

[AthlonBoy]

Quit posting pictures showing off bloom. You'll make people demand it.

And yes, HDR is perfectly suited to a space game. The perception that critics have is that HDR means overexposed outdoor scenes with hueg amounts of bloom around everything that isn't matte black. This is not 'good' HDR. A well-implemented dynamic exposure control system, coupled with bloom on areas out of gamut, would result in FSO jumping ahead a few generations in terms of graphics.

Just imagine the HLP Ulysses flying around you. It rolls around and catches the sun for the briefest moment, giving you a bright flash of light; he hits his afterburners and the thrusters glow brightly, truly obscuring the engines, none of that sprite clipping nonsense; before zooming towards the sun, becoming as black as pitch next to the intense light of the star. You wouldn't have the unrealistic sun glare that we have now, which simply brightens the whole screen up. This incorrect approach to sunlight actually makes the dark side of ships easier to see. With HDR, the sun would force the exposure down, darkening even the stars, while the sun blooms out over anything obscuring it.

There is no doubt that FSO would be better off for having HDR. Assuming a fully complete HLP remake, it would be almost on par with EVE Online.

The problem is, I have no idea how easy it is to implement. I don't get the feeling it's a walk in the park. If OpenGL 3.1 defines a new function for HDR, so be it, but it's rarely that easy. I remember that Valve had to re-write all of their shaders to work in a high gamut range when adding HDR to Half Life 2.

And therein is my doubt. How easy or difficult would it be to implement HDR? I'm not a software engineer, I only know what HDR technologies are designed to simulate, not how they're implemented.

[chief1983]

The problem is, I have no idea how easy it is to implement. I don't get the feeling it's a walk in the park. If OpenGL 3.1 defines a new function for HDR, so be it, but it's rarely that easy. I remember that Valve had to re-write all of their shaders to work in a high gamut range when adding HDR to Half Life 2.

They had to redo quite a bit, just play through Lost Coast with the commentary.  They mention a few times what work had to be done for the new HDR features.

[AthlonBoy]

The problem is, I have no idea how easy it is to implement. I don't get the feeling it's a walk in the park. If OpenGL 3.1 defines a new function for HDR, so be it, but it's rarely that easy. I remember that Valve had to re-write all of their shaders to work in a high gamut range when adding HDR to Half Life 2.

They had to redo quite a bit, just play through Lost Coast with the commentary.  They mention a few times what work had to be done for the new HDR features.

That's where I got my information from. I just don't have a good memory.

[blackhole]

And therein is my doubt. How easy or difficult would it be to implement HDR? I'm not a software engineer, I only know what HDR technologies are designed to simulate, not how they're implemented.

It would not be a walk in the park. The first step is rendering everything to an HDR texture rendertarget, then writing a bloom+color correction shader to work with HDR, then implementing one of the various techniques for determining overall screen brightness. I'm pretty sure Valve used a trick where they down-sampled to a 3x3 texture and weighted the middle pixel's lighting value. After that a bloom shader would have to be written, several textures and effects would need to either use HDR textures or be re-calibrated so they have the proper lighting values, I would assume the lighting would need to be adjusted, and that's just for a basic implementation. A far more advanced post-processing shader would be required for more complex utilization of HDR.

And we'd still need shadows.

[Zantor]

In my knowledge, FSO does NOT use OpenGL 3.0 or 3.1. I have an nVidia GeForce 7600GS ASUS card that supports up to OpenGL 2.0 (proof). In another thread about compatibility issues, a n00b user posted asking about OpenGL 1.2, which is the version that FSO uses (for proof do a forum search for "OpenGL 1.2"). I do not know about OpenGL 3.0, but I do know that it if it were to be used, it would be too new for some people.

[chief1983]

Just because it uses it doesn't mean it requires it.  The fixed pipeline does indeed require OpenGL 1.2, or so.  Use of the OpenGL Shading Language bumps the requirement significantly, and the bump can vary based on how the shaders are written.  The minimum for any shaders at all I believe is some form of OpenGL 2.0 or 2.1 support.  You could easily write shaders that take advantage of, or require OpenGL 3.0/3.1 if you wanted to, I imagine.

[Tomo]

Shadows are extremely difficult.

I spent my entire MSc trying to do good shadows with multiple lightsources, and I failed to get an effect I was happy with. The stencil buffer came close though.
- I did manage a perfect haze which is unfortunately pointless for FSO as there is no haze in space. (Those beauty shots in some space-based sci-fi showing beams of light around a ship are *wrong*)

The games that implement shadows either have them baked-in, or have baked-in shadows plus single lightsource shadows using the stencil buffer.
- Even Half Life 2 Ep 2 does them the latter way.

There are two situations where they happen:
1) Self-casting shadows, eg the 'nose-sticky-down-bit' on the Colossus casting a shadow onto the stem to the nose section.
2) A fighter/bomber flying *very* close to a capital ship.

IIRC, the stencil buffer can't do self-casting shadows so these need to be done a different way.

To do shadows properly, we'd have to support the following light sources:
A) The local star. This is a single point source, which casts hard-edged shadows. Relatively simple.
B) Multiple Beams. These are long, linear sources, which produce a very distinctive kind of shadow - soft edged along the beam, hard edged across the beam.
C) Multiple explosions. These could be treated as point sources casting hard-edged shadows, but there are quite a lot of them!

[Herra Tohtori]

Shadows from static light sources (suns) would likely be the most important thing; I doubt anyone would notice the lack of shadows from effects (enough to care).

[wolf]

The games that implement shadows either have them baked-in, or have baked-in shadows plus single lightsource shadows using the stencil buffer.
- Even Half Life 2 Ep 2 does them the latter way.

Uhm. Since when HL2 had technically advanced engine?

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1290000/1281671/p97-mittring.pdf?key1=1281671&key2=9048090421&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618

[chief1983]

HL2 is probably closer to something we could accomplish than a DX10 game.  Just a guess.

[wolf]

Crysis is not a DX10 game. There was much of the babble about what DX10 can do and what DX9 can't and some developers (including Crytek) played the ball. By manual tweaking of config files it's possible to enable "DX10 only" features on DX9.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182140/index.html

[chief1983]

Then how is it so much more advanced than HL2.  If they're both basically DX9 games what's the big difference?

[wolf]

http://img.gram.pl/upl/artykul/20070921134340.jpg vs http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/966/966403/gdc-09-crytek-talks-cryengine-3-20090325035851934.jpg

Is this even a serious question? Because, you know, both solitare and Crysis basically require WinAPI to run, so they can't be that much technically different.

[chief1983]

I said how is it more advanced, not how does it look better.  So they have more processing power, etc to take advantage of.  I'm just saying, they're built on the same technology, but it seems that Cryengine2 has managed to make a few nice technical achievements.  However, many of those could be added to the Source engine without it requiring a full rewrite as they're still built on top of the same API.  And since Valve seems to keep doing stuff like that, I have a feeling the next big release of the Source engine will still be on the ball.