81–90 of 169 posts
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So does plethora of today's AAA titles for subtle details like particle effects, grass and others.
yes. but sprites (i.e. enemies and weapons) are the primary method of interaction with Doom. Grass and particle effects are secondary.... How many FPS AAA titles today use sprites for enemies and weapons?
No mention of how to download it - either in the negative "You can't..." or positive. Seems a strange omission.
I hope they're going to release it later, after cleaning it up. Quake 2 is GPL'd, so I think they're compelled to, and it would also be a good example of how to use the VKRay API and what it looks like in an actual game.
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[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePos...
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Now it's not like it's only an engine change, for this to work they added PBR layers (metalness, emission, normal, yada yada) to all textures here, and that's a big artistic work. That said… gimme gimme gimme Half Life 1, plssssssss :D !
Maybe teams could use tools like AI Gigapixel (discussed on here yesterday) to upsample older textures? I agree with you that there is asset work to be done, but I bet there are tools out there that can simplify and automate this process quite a bit today.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/ai-neural-networks-being-us...
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yeah this exactly. I was half way through playing QII first time round when I went from Software to a VooDooII. I'll never forget firing a plasma rifle down a tunnel and watching the lighting effects coming off the bolt as it went down tunnel. There hasn't been such a step change in graphical capability as those days of going from a software renderer to a hardware one. (also at the same time, was unreal... I never un…
I would argue that VR is the next step like this. Even taking an "old" title like Skyrim drives home that no matter how nice the renderer makes it look on a screen, it is still flat. With VR you are in the place. Does the raytracing look really, really nice? Yes, definitely. Is it that much better? I don't think so (personal opinion, of course)...
Other things like more accurate reflections and specular effects add more to VR where subtle head movements that don't produce the correct response our brain expects impact immersion even when we're not able to consciously identify why the rendering is not quite right.
The additional performance demands of VR mean it will be a while before we really see these benefits realized but I think when it all comes together it will really improve immersion.
There are some other potential benefits to basing VR rendering around ray tracing too that might take even longer to realize. For example you can directly compensate for the optics of the lenses when generating rays and avoid the whole post process warping step and foveated rendering is very easy to incorporate naturally.
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> A nitpick: DooM (1 and 2), just as well as Duke Nukem 3D were indeed "2.5D" Double nitpick: Duke Nukem could actually have stacked floors and bridges over other playable areas. As such, if it didn’t use “real” 3D, its 2.5D scheme were considerately more elaborate than Doom or Wolfenstein.
Yes, but I remember you still had to use a really contrived way of explaining that 3d 'geometry' on the editor (BUILD.exe). Basically you still drew in 2d but you could overlap rooms with other lines that wouldn't intersect with any already existing lines, and that would configure 'a room above/below the current room'. Then you had to slope the floor until it actually connected with the newer room. It was pretty stra…
Elaborating a bit -- the Build engine had a feature called "sector effectors" that, when triggered, would teleport the player to a completely different sector in the map. The transition was seamless and permitted interesting effects like the illusion of having stacked floors.
The designers used this feature to most profound effect in the level Lunatic Fringe. In order to complete a full circuit of the central ring room, the player had to move through a 720-degree circle to return to the entrance. It was _extremely_ confusing playing that level for the first time.
https://dukenukem.fandom.com/wiki/Lunatic_Fringe
Fabian Sanglard wrote an excellent series about the engine here: https://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/
https://github.com/cschied/q2vkpt/
That's the source for Q2VKPT. I wonder if the source for Quake II RTX will also be released, which is the main target of discussion in this nVidia article and builds upon Q2VKPT.
"Glass, which reflects everything around it" except the character standing in front of it! It seems like it is over done but not done properly. I know it is a demo but still, its trying so hard!
Quake 2 did not have a rendered character model because it's a first-person shooter, so you never see yourself. If you look at the water reflections, you will however see your gun model and a disembodied/floating hand holding it.
The new lighting makes such a dramatic difference. Despite the same low polygon count, the levels seem much more lifelike. If all the game classics are re-released with raytracing engines, I will be all over it. The next years are going to be good.