quick question.

[Gordon-Shepherd]

they say the orange box comes with hl2, hl2e1, as well as e2,portal and tf2.
is there one without hl2 or hl2e1?
sorry if this was already answered, I'm a bit low on time to search.

 

[Narvi]

Black box can be bought over Steam, last I heard.

 

[Sheepo]

Black box can be bought over Steam, last I heard.

^What he said^

 

[Gordon-Shepherd]

I take it the black box isn't going retail then?

 

[Narvi]

Nope. Blame the retail chains for disliking value packs.

 

[soulslicer]

valve should update hl2 with the hdr effects once the box comes out..

 

[Planetary]

I think i heard somewhere that they will. I saw a video of someone playing a part of water hazard with the HDR on, you can see the Chopper's reflection in the water, and its shadows on the wall!
Very impressive.

 

[Silarn]

Uh. Neither of those has to do with HDR. If you enabled 'reflect all' you'd have been able to see the chopper's reflection since HL2 came out.

HDR has to do with how lighting is done. Light bloom, bleeding, range of contrast, 'eye' adjustment. It also allows more detail to be seen in very dark areas.

As for the shadow of the chopper, the difference would be in what the shadow looked like. The real problem was that shadows were in no way dynamic before. They would pass right through other objects so that you could see multiple shadow layers in some areas where many things were stacked upon one another. Also, multiple light sources didn't alter how shadows were cast.. Only the 'primary light source' (the big one in the sky) determined where and how shadows were drawn.

But yes, as far as I've heard they will be bringing HDR effects into the original. (I've only heard this specifically about console versions, but it would seem silly not to do it for the PC as well.)

 

[Planetary]

Yeah, during the strider battle at the Nexus, the strider's shadows goes right through that little bunker thing in the middle of the courtyard.
Quite disconcerting.