Source limitations: Water + Gravity.. ?

[Skull]

I've been thinking about water in the source engine, is that going to live up to our expectations? I've seen some discuss about it here on the forums and I think some of them seem to believe in it too much imo.
I don't really think source can handle water like some seem to think, like: "...and then I'll blow the whole watertank up an water will come out flushing away everything" or something like it :O
Isn't that something that needs to be done with particle effects? I don't believe water in HL2 is handeled by particles, so the example above is impossible (?)...so, that leads me to some questions:
FOR EXAMPLE:
The tanks in the E3 movie (the ones with the orange substance that boils in the place where Alyx and the professor is).. Will I be able to break them ? Probably not. Bulletproof glass, ay ?

What do you think about this? Will we be shooting containers with water in HL2 ? :sniper:

-Skull

 

[righte0us]

I think Valve will be giving us the opportunity to do whatever the modders want, although I think they will be only showing us very little of what can be done in the product itself.

if you're asking yourself, huh? ... yeah.

 

[Skull]

So you mean we must program it ourselves as modders if we want fluid water, or that Valve isn't just showing us the fluid water in the single player ?
I find it wierd if Valve isn't going to show us something of that in the single player if it is possible..

-Skull

 

[Bennus]

maybe that weird red liquid needs bullet-proof reinforced glass to contain it

But seriously, this is a thing i've thought about too. It reminds of how when a place in HL was flooded the water just rose from the ground. And may i ask, how do you know the water isn't based on particles? Maybe Valve have gone above themselves again and found a middle way.

 

[Skull]

maybe that weird red liquid needs bullet-proof reinforced glass to contain it

lol, wouldn't want to break it then.. =)

And may i ask, how do you know the water isn't based on particles?

Well, I really don't know, but I have a feeling it isn't..anyone who knows ?

-Skull

 

[righte0us]

yeah how did you get to a conclusion it is not particle based? :thumbs:

and what I meant was, alot of stuff we're not even aware of, are possible. it's just up to us to find out about those things :E

 

[The Mullinator]

Most of the discussion about the water effects was about "it would be cool if..." Not about what we think will actually be in the game.

 

[chili pepper]

I don't think PC's are yet fast enough to handle something as complex as real-time flowing water. For example, a rushing white-water river, ocean waves, a real-time waterfall, diving into a swimming pool and making a big splash, etc.

The closest I've seen was a C&C Generals trailer where a dam breaks and tons of water rushes out but it is scripted not real-time. SO if Valve can't do it, no one can. Maybe they'll surprise us.

 

[Orion]

PC's are fast enough, but it would make the minimum specs for HL2 much much higher if they did do that, besides it also takes A LOT of extra work to do it.

 

[BWMASTER]

the orange liquid is flammable radioactive substance that when you shoot it the screen goes black because u died and they dont have to show fluid effects.....(my 2 cents)
:rolling::rolling::rolling:

BTW: full dynamic liquid engine will have to be in by HL3/4.

 

[Axyon]

Originally posted by BWMASTER
the orange liquid is flammable radioactive substance that when you shoot it the screen goes black because u died and they dont have to show fluid effects.....(my 2 cents)
:rolling::rolling::rolling:

BTW: full dynamic liquid engine will have to be in by HL3/4.

Doubt that will happen. It's too much of a cliché to re-use the fadeoff from Half-Life.

 

[Skull]

I don't think PC's are yet fast enough to handle something as complex as real-time flowing water.

That's the way I see it too, and that's why I made the conclusion that there is no particlesystem used in HL2's engine..So, maybe we won't see any splashing real-time water effects for now, but the gravity and cool bumpmapping is good enough for me :cheers:

-Skull

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

I think right now the average PC could be hard pressed to do absolute realistic water and considering the system specs we've been given, its not gonna happen. However that isn't to say that when you shoot something, the water isn't gonna pour out. I suspect valve have come up with some really clever way of doing it which people haven't really thought about. Like they fake it somehow, or something.
Think about it though, valve goes through all this trouble to produce an amazing engine, only to have it collapse because water doesn't flow. Somehow I doubt thats gonna be the case.

 

[Bennus]

waitaminute we've still got the water splash effect, don't we. And that's damn realistic.
I think Valve have perhaps put in an effective substitute, like polybump in Doom3 and Far Cry (where they render a model with 1/4 million polygons and then paste the realistic textures onto a model with around 3000 polygons - brilliant effects, fast game)

 

[[Matt]]

I have to agree that people are expecting way too much from the water system in the game. The water as seen in the E3 video which Gordon walks through in the graphical part of the tech demo and the water in the sunset bay with the wooden walk way is perfectly flat. The only difference between the water in HL1 and the water in HL2 is the graphical effect applied to it. Whilst in HL1 the water is a mere moving texture the water in HL2 does away with any texture and uses a refractive bump mapping that gives the water an awesome appearance. For those interested even Geforce 3 and radeon 8500 cards can achieve this effect although not as efficiently as DirectX 9.0 based cards.

 

[Skull]

I suspect valve have come up with some really clever way of doing it which people haven't really thought about. Like they fake it somehow, or something.

Farrowlesparrow I really hope so, because it feels like somethings missing :|
I agree with matt, water in HL2 is just much much nicer than in HL1, not more real..

-Skull

 

[Apos]

As I've said before, a true fluid dynamics physics model is beyon the reach of even the top of the line home PCs. Few supercomputers even bother rendering such models in real time. I'm not talking about waterfalls or other predictable water flows: those can be modeled just fine. It's when you try to simulate water being released into the open in a chaotic way that you simply can't accurately simualte all the tons of different things it will do. You essentially would have to simulate real atomic particle physics, which is NOT the same thing as a 3d engine "particle" system.

Source DOES have a particle system, and a very good one, but you can't use particles to recreate flowing water. Particles are graphical effects, though they can, as seen in the "tunnel" HL2 demo, be made to bounce off surfaces. But those are just a few large particles: water would require many many orders of magnitude more particles, much much smaller (so small that they appear to be a discrete liquid) with not only a reaction to gravity and objects, but also a surface tension.

Sadly, all this means that real "rippling" water when something splashes into it, much less a real "water come gushing through a hallway" effect, is simply beyond any 3d engine for the time being, unless it is simply scripted in (and there's nothing wrong with doing that, remember!) Why waste the immense amounts of reasources needed to calc it when you can "fake" it good enough at the right moments anyway?

 

[chili pepper]

Yeah I agree it can't be done but if someone figures a clever way to pull off real liquid dynamics on a PC they'd be a millionaire.

It would be cool to see in action a computer simulation of real liquid dynamics for example on a supercomputer or a workstation used in high-tech research labs. The kind of machine that takes up a large room and costs a few million bucks..

 

[Apos]

I suppose they could do smaller implementations with a combination of a deformable physics object and sprites/particles. You'd need a very high polygon object with no defined shape that would flatten, strech out, and deform if not supported by other objects, and would do it VERY quickly. Using shaders you could give this object a transparency and distortion effects. Finally, you could use particles and lost of tiny sprites to give the object the illusion that it's much more deformable than it actually is: give it splashes, bubbles, rivulets running away in various directions, etc.

 

[Straylight]

I've never seen a game, or even a tech demo where water water would spash and splatter correctly as it flows out of a shattered container like you described so I'm not sure why this is a "limitation." It's just not something that anyone has figured out how to do yet.

-Straylight

 

[Private Snafu]

I don't think you'd need to simulate every water particle to have a good recreation of fluid dynamics. Remember, he said they have deformable meshes. So, what if you programmed a large object that was a body of water and through a bomb in it. When it exploded it would alter the mesh of water (presumably creating a large number of particles). Now if enough of those particles hit a certain area of a dry surface, they could form a new, smaller alterable mesh in the form a of a puddle. For the water flowing down a halfway, you'd just need the dynamic mesh to grow down the hallway, headed by a particle effect (so it would look like your seeing real watter, but your just seeing particle of the front of the wave, while the water mesh it's being deformed).

 

[Apos]

The problem is this: water is infinately divisible from our marco perspective. The way that 3d engines render objects, however, prevents you from having such objects unless they are ALREADY separate objects that for the time being just move together (like the headcrab on a zombie). With truly splashable water, you would have to be able to splash out any volume of water into the air, completely separate from the main body. So deformable objects is really the least of ones worries. The problem is not just that water needs to be extremely deformable as a connected mass, but that any part of the the mass has to be able to disconnect at any point, at any time. Thus, either you'd have to have a totally new system of objects whereby they can create whole new internal geometries in game as needed, or you'd have to have a single body of water actually be made up of tons and tons of smaller objects that comprise the whole (which is basically back down to the fluid dynamics problem)

 

[Aknot]

To technical for me. I want to know if there will be "swimming". Some of the more intense parts of the 1st one was the underwater action with the great big fishy thing.

 

[LoneDeranger]

Yeah, I'm sure there will be "swimming".

 

[Foggy]

If it's really possible i swear they would have showed us at E3. It would be historical... So no, it's not possible

Edit : Wait, Black and White 2 supports it You can trow water at people and it will find its way to the bottem, same with lava..

 

[Idolon]

If you ask me then the fact that water alyx doesn't float out on the floor is answer enough.
it shows that water is just a texture+effects on a brush.
(now i'm not a mapper but brush is the right word, right?)

one thing that interest me more is if you apply a wood texture on alyx, will she splinter like wood?

 

[Guest]

gee **** the water !!!

 

[Wesisapie]

Yeah i honestly think it's gonna be pretty simple water in comparison to what you guys are saying.

That guy was made out of water in the tech demo, and he didn't fall apart everywhere, he just had the water effect on him. that's probably what the stuff inside the tank has. A cylinder with the water effect, inside the tank.

 

[Deacon]

yep i agree wif u there m8

 

[Idolon]

Originally posted by Wesisapie
Yeah i honestly think it's gonna be pretty simple water in comparison to what you guys are saying.

That guy was made out of water in the tech demo, and he didn't fall apart everywhere, he just had the water effect on him. that's probably what the stuff inside the tank has. A cylinder with the water effect, inside the tank.

I thought that that was exactly what I said... :dozey:
ah hell...
im just glad everybody agrees.
lets stop bitchin' about this and close the thread...

 

[Slash]

Oh Jesus people, it's water. Noone is going to be a millionaire for making "true" water. What the hell are you thinking. If it tricks you into thinking its real water, it's job is done.

Hey I bet if Unreal2 had "real" water, it would be a huge hit and everyone would buy it and proclaim it the best game ever made...

wait.. no.

 

[simmo]

Water effects isnt a must have, but if its there it would rock

 

[The Mullinator]

True water effect would be cool, but no game will probably have it for awhile yet. Too much proccessing power for current PC's. Now lets close this thread.

 

[Guest]

Ie: you have a sealed box with water and you shoot at the box, the water will flow out of the (bullet)holes in a realistic way, even the water height drops down...

In the game mohaa you have that option. When you shoot at the oil bars...

There are plenty of examples in games but liquid water + grafity is damn possible with the current cpu/gpu and technologies.

 

[The Mullinator]

Not waves caused by wind, realistic splashing, or realistic displacement (get into a bathtub and have the water rise because you displace it). I don't think those things are possible with current proccessing power. Not yet at least.

 

[Guest]

Like said: It's not a must when you jump into water and the water is rising cause you displace it.

It's not a must when you jump in the water and caysing real-time and realistic waves...

When I see the tech demo I can say: it's fine

 

[The Mullinator]

I agree, IMO the water weve seen so far is the best ive ever seen in a game. Its definatly good enough for me.

 

[EVIL]

true. I like the water.. the only funny thing I find about it is that it is flat!. I hope it can ripple, based on your movement trought the water. If that is the case then I am happy as a drunkenmonkey

 

[Lordblackadder]

Well let's hope it's not so realistic you get seasick playing HL2.

Or it shorts out your computer, or leaves a puddle in the last place you played HL2.

And everybody was saying I was anal retentive because I worried about realistic wood effects.

In any case, the water's good in HL2. But unless you have the latest hardware, it might not matter.:burp:

 

[A.A]

Originally posted by Skull
I've been thinking about water in the source engine, is that going to live up to our expectations? I've seen some discuss about it here on the forums and I think some of them seem to believe in it too much imo.
I don't really think source can handle water like some seem to think, like: "...and then I'll blow the whole watertank up an water will come out flushing away everything" or something like it :O
Isn't that something that needs to be done with particle effects? I don't believe water in HL2 is handeled by particles, so the example above is impossible (?)...so, that leads me to some questions:
FOR EXAMPLE:
The tanks in the E3 movie (the ones with the orange substance that boils in the place where Alyx and the professor is).. Will I be able to break them ? Probably not. Bulletproof glass, ay ?

What do you think about this? Will we be shooting containers with water in HL2 ? :sniper:

-Skull

If you've read so much about it, then you would have seen that the one saying that about the watertank never was serious and is now banned, not for that, but anyway. And no computer could ever simulate such an event like water spilling out of a container, and that has been said in a thread where water was the topic.
But offcourse water spilling out of something can be done, but it wont look that impressing.
I don't think, and I know, that no game will ever be able to give ous goodlooking, flowing, spilling, runing water with natural effects and realistic movement.