Omni-Directional Env_ProjectedTexture

[ScarT]

Doesn't that also ruin the flashlight by not having a proper texture?

[Armageddon]

Now if we could just find a way to use these everywhere without lag, and making the shadow on models less black it will be perfect. Like this:

[Gary]

Shadow mapping if done right can run on many computers, blame Source.

[Gary]

Thanks for the texture, not sure why I couldn't get it to work properly.


Also, good work getting the resolution higher, I almost got there, but was stopped by the depth buffer limitations. It really doesn't hurt performance too much at 2048.

[joe_rogers_11155]

@Arma: I literally have $1000 right now that I would give to the person who gets my mod to have dynamic lighting like THAT.

I would kill to have something like that in my mod.

[Gary]

It doesn't look that much greater then what you can do with all the fixes currently for the env_projectedtexture. I could replicate that map.

[ScarT]

Well this could be optimized if you actually did some work on the flashlight project itself. Also the attenuation is bound to the view origin, and not the light origin.

Fix that

[dark0r]

Well this could be optimized if you actually did some work on the flashlight project itself. Also the attenuation is bound to the view origin, and not the light origin.

Fix that

I've got dynamic flashlight resolutions in the pipeline that sets the flashlight resolution depending on how close you are away from the projection frustum. This would greatly increase performance.

In addition to this I've got some dynamic near Z and far Z settings depending on if you're in the flashlight frustum and forward plane you can see (near/far). If you can only see the far plane, then the near plane will be brought right behind the eyes. If you can only see the near plane, then the far plane will be brought right behind the eyes, too. This means that there's no un-necessary shadow mapping done on objects that can't be seen by the flashlight or the player.

[Armageddon]

It doesn't look that much greater then what you can do with all the fixes currently for the env_projectedtexture. I could replicate that map.

Actually it does, because TWO dynamic lights can cross each other.

[poisonic]

Plague, dynamic lighting is a relatively "new" bit of gaming engines. Why should people wanting to make a game look that good worry about the low end?

LOL i could be wrong but did doom3 use dynamic lights ?

[Gary]

So did Halo2, it's really not all that new.

[city14]

It depends on the quality of the lights.

FULL dynamic is kind of a new thing; but some dynamic is completely common. Source is just not fitted to handle full dynamic lighting in any way.

[Gary]

Source barely handles one, think about it, it's only used as a flashlight and sometimes in Gman scenes. Halo2 used them quite a lot and Doom 3 used fully dynamic lighting. Source is just behind.

Doom 3 had very sharp and defined shadows and Halo 2 had slightly worse shadows then Source does by default(and Halo2 ran on the old xbox).

[MrTwoVideoCards]

Hey guys, having doing much of the same tests that Garry performed: Having a directional light for each side is mega expensive. Tests maps are perfectly fine to test them for programming, but for real perf issues you really need to drop them into a real map!

First your actively making an RT for each shadow you cast, then your doing extra work for when an object passes, or is within more than 1 FOV of the shadow-map. Likely this is always the case unless the object is some distance, this is always very expensive. I wouldn't recommend omni lights, as not even current gen games have them. They are just way to expensive unless coded properly to be a omni-light, which isn't possible for us modders considering that bit of the code is all gone and missing.

I'm going to more or less put it this way:

Have a very ugly map with omni lights in it, or spend your budget on a decently detailed map, with few projected based lights. I'm saying this because I've went through the pain, and frustration of dealing with how shitty this dynamic lighting system is in source, and more or less, it's pretty much the same in engines of the same suit.

Even Portal 2 only tends to have one light per visible area.


Also, comparing games isn't going to help you guys out. Theres a HUGE difference between how those games handle the shadow drawing, some of it isn't even shadow mapping, it's just a dynamic form of RTT based shadows.
Though I think you know that one Garry.

[Gary]

Halo 2 did use uniformed shadow mapping much like Source does, Doom 3 did use a completely different method(shadow volumes/stencil shadows). Stencil shadows worked fine in that game because there wasn't much detailed geometry.

The Halo engine also uses awesome RTT shadows, if you look, it has self shadowing, shadows cast on other models and they are properly oriented according to their light source, but cheaper then shadow mapping.


Though, it is true the shadow mapping system in Source is not that great, we can still improve it to the point that you can use nice looking dynamic lighting in moderately detailed scenes.


Also, I think the point of saying which games had dynamic lighting was to point out how outdated Source is.