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Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

godotengine.org

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Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#111
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted, but Epic is extremely anti-competitive. This is likely the reason.

Epic's store offers a cheaper alternative to a near monopoly on digital game distribution on PC. How are they anti-competitive?

People like being able to buy their games in a single online store. They don't like having 5 different stores just to play their collection of games.

Therefore, Epic's exclusivity deals rub some people the wrong way.

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#112
post #54

Re-upping this blog post (sadly overlooked when first posted to HN) which asks the reasonable question 'why not just use Godot for general-purpose applications?' https://medium.com/swlh/what-makes-godot-engine-great-for-ad...

There's a lot of functionality that a general purpose UI library has that Godot will likely never approach, like support for input methods in text editing. Productive applications require extremely robust text editing, something that game engines don't spend a lot of time with. Stuff like selection, text input for non-English keyboards, IME popups, that sort of thing. Even RTL text display is usually minimally unsupp…

Regarding multi-window, I notice that most electron apps don't support multi-window.

It's not impossible, but apparently very hard.

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#113
Makes me realize that photo-realism is not the most important thing. Illumination(and by consequence shadows) is. Bad looking 3D games look bad because of two reasons: Aliasing (which is the worst thing in 3D imo, but easily solved) and most importantly, because of bad illumination code. If the lightning code is realistic, you don't even need textures.

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#114
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's anything naive about this take.. Why wouldn't a company like Epic, who is the dominant market player by far, put some funding into smaller open source research projects like this? Godot is no threat to them, and quite the contrary brings positive contributions to the whole industry. Not only is it good PR, but as they say a rising tide lifts all boats.

Not sure what market you mean, Unity has a larger marketshare. Can't find a good source for numbers but a lot of places are quoting that Unity has 48% of the total market and Unreal has 13%. Also not sure how this is being measured, but in my experience Unity is more popular.

Engine market share doesn't matter much if you're just going by games released.

Steam (the video game marketplace) gets hundreds of releases each day (seriously), and the vast majority of them are bad, and make no money.

I think if you're looking at serious money-making studios that put out good games (whether they are indie or AAA), I bet the engine distribution would look different than your numbers.

But that's my best guess..

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#115

This looks really cool and impressive of course, but I still feel the easiest way for most indies (which Godot is aimed at) to stand out is to get away from photo-realism.

PBR gets you photo-realism, GI gets you a self-consistent looking scene so fewer things look out of place

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#116
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted, but Epic is extremely anti-competitive. This is likely the reason.

Epic's store offers a cheaper alternative to a near monopoly on digital game distribution on PC. How are they anti-competitive?

Epic paid obscene amounts of money to studios to force them come to their store and force exclusivity on them.

They basically exploited their Fortnite money-making machine to try to become a monopoly on PC.

How is that not anti-competitive?

For reference, Steam has never forced exclusivity on partners to distribute their games.

As for cheaper, Epic didn't become they couldn't charge the same. As simple as that.

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#117

So if I wanted to make a simple 2d game, should I go with godot, pygame, or a JavaScript game engine?

Depends if you want to sell it or not, plus your target platforms. IIRC Godot is not great at exporting to Switch or other consoles but maybe that has changed.

To add another option to the others, https://www.monogame.net/showcase/ is fairly popular.

It's probably worth running through a tutorial in each and seeing what clicks for you if you have no experience.

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic's store offers a cheaper alternative to a near monopoly on digital game distribution on PC. How are they anti-competitive?

Epic paid obscene amounts of money to studios to force them come to their store and force exclusivity on them. They basically exploited their Fortnite money-making machine to try to become a monopoly on PC. How is that not anti-competitive? For reference, Steam has never forced exclusivity on partners to distribute their games. As for cheaper, Epic didn't become they couldn't charge the same. As simple as that.

How is obscene amounts of money forcing anything?

This sounds good for developers all around, and a minor inconvenience for gamers who are free to buy from as many stores as they like on PC. Yet could benefit gamers long term as it motivates Steam to be more competitive.

Anti competitive would be buying up competing battle royale franchises to reduce consumer choice.

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#119
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic's store offers a cheaper alternative to a near monopoly on digital game distribution on PC. How are they anti-competitive?

The enemy (Godot) of my enemy (Unity) is my friend. Is essentially what this thread is talking about. At this point (ie. Epic sitting on truck loads of cash), lost revenue for Epic Games competitors is almost as good as revenue for Epic Games. That is what people are talking about when they say anti-competitive. It's another form of a price squeeze.

So Unity is suffering because a rich competitor is funding more competition? Having used Unity and Godot I don't think the former needs to sweat this modest sharing of the wealth with the latter.

If anything well regulated markets might tax oversized competitors to fund upstarts to maintain a balanced, competitive landscape. There's room for more than just two game-making tools.

Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination

#120

I get why Epic probably funds this, and I love to think how great Godot could be in another year or so (and how they could surpass Unity, etc). What I don't really understand, though: Why wouldn't Unity just implement this now, too?! It's open-source & MIT-licensed; if it's better than Unity's GI -- and it IS better, because Unity does not currently have ANY realtime-GI solution in their latest versions (they stopped…

"Unity does not currently have ANY realtime-GI solution in their latest versions"

Not 100% true; there is ray-traced GI.

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