Half-life 2, Farcry, and lighting.

[barnacle]

The only thing I can't turn up on Farcry without it running like shit is the lighting, will Half-life 2 have the same problem, or is Farcry's lighting just more demading on your processor.

 

[Vegeta897]

We aren't really sure.. Ask Valve?

 

[kungfucheez]

I think we can only wait till the game actually comes out

 

[Big Fat Duck]

lets turn lighting off and have a completely black screen, shall we?

 

[Citizen 1150421]

umm if you have and ati card then your farcry lighting might suffer depending on your cpu and all that...

pain killer would do the same in certain dynamic lighting maps and the comps just slow down for the calculations.

i would say that doom 3 and far cry will tax similar on your comp (heavy on the lighting)

half life 2 will be fine cause its ati supportive.
provided you have an ati card..

 

[Mr. Redundant]

Chronicles of Riddick owns both
if you havent played it, I suggest you high tail it to the store and rent/buy it
(xbox only right now)
wow its great.

 

[nw909]

Half-Life 2 uses shadowmaps, Farcry uses them shadows that move with the light.

 

[sHm0zY]

for farcry you pretty much need a high end comp to run it on high settings, for hallf life 2 you dont.

 

[Big Fat Duck]

god damn you, crappy computer people... hindering half-life 2 graphics

 

[Kiva128]

Half-Life 2 uses shadowmaps, Farcry uses them shadows that move with the light.

That's not entirely true. In far cry, If there are objects (like desks) and it's dark, and you turn on your flashlight, the shadows don't move at all.

 

[Shuzer]

Half-Life 2 uses shadowmaps, Farcry uses them shadows that move with the light.

FC uses shadow maps too, AFAIK

FarCry's lighting system is very similar to HL2's. It's just got the unified dynamic lighting/shadow system used indoors in alot of areas

 

[yadalogo]

No, Hl2 still is graphically superior compared to FarCry beut hl2 just has more supoprt for non-super powered computer, they want to make sure everyone can get good fps but the game also rewards people with better computers too.

 

[blahblahblah]

HL2 is geared differently than Far Cry. Far Cry tried to do a little of everything, a little lighting, a little physics, a little shaders with nothing standing out. HL2 will focus much more on shaders and physics than lighting. Doom 3 will focus on lighting with some shaders and physics.

 

[nw909]

That's not entirely true. In far cry, If there are objects (like desks) and it's dark, and you turn on your flashlight, the shadows don't move at all.

Oh, heh, my bad.

I usually played FarCry with low-quality lighting.

 

[chimpmunk]

i hate farcry, i had to play it on 640x480 on radeon 9200, it sucks...

 

[Sparta]

Chimpmunk, save up your money if you can and buy a Radeon 9500 Pro, they're cheaper and better than a Radeon 9600 Pro, and even they are very good

 

[iamaelephant]

Or get a 9800 pro with the 256 bit memory and R360 core like I just did, kicks the balls out of a 9800xt for almost half the price.

 

[Platinum]

what is the difference between lighting and shaders??? i have a 9800 xt ... well wouldnt light create shade? ... and shade be an effect of light?? whats hte difference

 

[Mechagodzilla]

what is the difference between lighting and shaders??? i have a 9800 xt ... well wouldnt light create shade? ... and shade be an effect of light?? whats hte difference

Well, in most games they have to simulate the light and shadows almost seperately, so shade needs to be added after at the cost of performance.
That's why there were no character shadows in HL1.

There's no such thing as a real-time lighting simulator that's fully realistic yet.

 

[blahblahblah]

A shader is something that operates on a pixel. It can operate on them to add additional depth or distort reflections and other effects games. If you load up a game like Morrowind, Far Cry, or Halo (PC version), take a look at the water. It looks like it has additional depth to it (like ripples) and has distorted reflections, that is a shader. Shaders are performance intensive so they are not used on everything. Most shaders are not as obvious as the example I listed above.

Lighting provide light to the game world (duh). There are 2 types of lighting, static lighting (can't be moved) and dynamic lighting (lights can be moved). There are also 2 types of shadows, static shadows (shadows don't move in relation to light source), and dynamic shadows (shadows move in relation to the light source). You can mix and match (so you can have dynamic shadows with static lights) them, for best realism (to an extent) dynamic lighting and shadows look the best but is very performance intensive.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

[Actually knowing what he's talking about.]

Okay, so that explanation was better than mine.
But that's only because I didn't know what I was talking about!

So there!

 

[ScopeD]

HL 2 has superb lightning compared to other games. I mean it supports HDR (High dynamic range) lightning. You can witness this at the cs:source videos when coming out of the dark (indoors) to wide open outdoors. It's so beautifl.

 

[Shuzer]

HL 2 has superb lightning compared to other games. I mean it supports HDR (High dynamic range) lightning. You can witness this at the cs:source videos when coming out of the dark (indoors) to wide open outdoors. It's so beautifl.

That's not HDR. That's the camera adjusting to the brightness changing.

 

[Sparta]

Yeah i thought it was HDR too, but sadly it isnt

 

[ScopeD]

That's not HDR. That's the camera adjusting to the brightness changing.

Well, yeah, but it resembles the HDR effects lol. But I thought that HL2 source engine supports the HDR.

 

[Kazuki_Fuse]

It's either that or a dynamic glow effect. There's been no sighting of HDR since the HDR video, period.

 

[Sparta]

It does, but we haven't seen it in action in either of the games, only in Engine demonstrations

 

[jonesey2k]

i hate farcry, i had to play it on 640x480 on radeon 9200, it sucks...

I had to play it at 800*600 with a radeon VE when my 9800 died from VHigh.

 

[lans]

HL2 is geared differently than Far Cry. Far Cry tried to do a little of everything, a little lighting, a little physics, a little shaders with nothing standing out. HL2 will focus much more on shaders and physics than lighting. Doom 3 will focus on lighting with some shaders and physics.

Yep. I remember that Tim or Todd (one of them) mentioning that becuase they'd have good lighting/shadowing going on while some shaders and PPHD - they had to limit the number of physically stimulated objects. So like a couple of boxes will be static entities on shelves.

and I agree with Mr. Reduntant somewhat - the lighting/shadowing in Riddick is superior in comparison to Far cry (not sure about HL2 though - I hate to judge a yet to be released product) - pity the game is much shorter in comparison to Far cry, though. :|