Hl2 vs Farcry vs Doom 3 (Graphics)

[Jeehde2]

Well, the Doom III one is pretty clear...
So are the Far Cry and HL2 one...

Doom III looks really great, but well it really is tooo dark sometimes...

Far Cry also looks fantastic, but in a different way... if I play it with everything on very high, paradise, and than the new lightning, thanks to shader 3.0, it really looks awesome, and even in some ways better than HL2, I just have to admit that...

But of course if you look at Half Life 2, it just looks messianic, the environment is great, characters are great, physics are great, special effect are great...

But yeah, nice pic !

 

[Llevar]

Sums up the games perfectly. LOL. The Doom 3 one soooo hits the nail on the head.

The only thing it's missing is the feeling that an imp just spawned behind your back.

 

[Dragoro]

Some how I doubt that rock shown as the hl2 version, is really the hl2 version. Looks to me they took a picture of a real rock with a color filter on the camera lens.

 

[Llama]

From hl2w0rld...

I thought this was funny, so why not posted here.

Comparision pic

Sd retard

 

[Rocketman9mm]

The only thing it's missing is the feeling that an imp just spawned behind your back.

heh yeah. all through doom 3 i would go a ways then sprint back a few yards to where i came from anticipating imps.

 

[Llevar]

Some how I doubt that rock shown as the hl2 version, is really the hl2 version. Looks to me they took a picture of a real rock with a color filter on the camera lens.

Or they did the unspeakable to it. It starts with a "P" and ends with a "hotoshop".

 

[Rocketman9mm]

I think all three games have good visuals designed for the environments of the game. Doom is taking place in an under-funded, dark dank space-station that got invaded by demons, so naturally if the power isn't working well and there are no windows...it will be dark. convenient that it sets the mood. Far cry is in a tropical island chain so the went for the big bright lush colors. Even though they took it a bit too far and all the colors seem too clean and pure, the water is a bit too clear and blue. half-life 2 is the old war torn oppressed town with classic architecture so it has focused on high detail in the "every day life environtments" which may make it seem to look better or more real than the others because it is what we are used to in city life. i dunno.

 

[jacen]

Now instead of trying to describe in words whats wrong with doom3/farcry to those dumb lil fannyboys, I'll just hold up that picture!

...

in case u cant spot it: pay attention to the shadows and how they got casted through objects.

comparing hl with farcry or doom is nonsense ...
every1 who is doing this is just a fanboy of the one or the other game.


btw: in the comarison pic ... the hl2 stones wouldn cast shadows on other stones ... imho a pretty dumb picture to draw out the advantages of source to d3 or cryengine

 

[$niffy]

Someone should send that to valve...lol

 

[WhiteZero]

I think we all know that Source's shadows arent that great.

 

[THATWACKYDANTE!]

I think sources shadow's are just fine, oh well, may be a bit buggy but they server their purpose...thought story and gameplay is what made a game, not shadows.

 

[jacen]

I think sources shadow's are just fine, oh well, may be a bit buggy but they server their purpose...thought story and gameplay is what made a game, not shadows.

they y are those countless ppl try to prove that source´s gfx renderer is ahead in every single aspect?

i know that source i great in most parts, especially in terms of customizability, but tbh, the gfx are far behind in some spots.
even crytech managed to set up 1 dynamic shadow per object in indoor settings ... i dont get y valve is so stubborn against this

 

[diegomarino]

For those who did not understand the joke:

Normal: normal :dozey:
Doom 3: DARK!!
Farcry: shiny or maybe contrast???
HL2: (sepia tone) old or aged :frown: :flame:

 

[Jeehde2]

Nonononono

What??? Source Shadows??? Not Great???

Well, of course they are!!!

I played CS Source beta and well... the charater shadows were just fantastic and so were all the others...

The pic Jacen showed us, isnt quite fair... in a pic like this, you can look at it very, very carefully, but no one sees anything like this when he playing the game... so....

 

[Tarkin]

My take on the subject, including source shadows
image

 

[PvtRyan]

they y are those countless ppl try to prove that source´s gfx renderer is ahead in every single aspect?

i know that source i great in most parts, especially in terms of customizability, but tbh, the gfx are far behind in some spots.
even crytech managed to set up 1 dynamic shadow per object in indoor settings ... i dont get y valve is so stubborn against this

I don't know, make a guess. Maybe because there are just a shitload of entities on the screen? Source easily supports multiple dynamic shadows per entity, proven by Bloodlines, but they simply don't use it in HL2 because it's a useless power drainer.

Geez you people would make some piss poor gamedesigners, shadows simply have no priority, because they serve no gameplay role, so they chose a cheap way of drawing lots of shadows per scene.

 

[Sharrd]

My take on the subject, including source shadows
image

Thrue.

 

[Janet Reno]

lol doom 3 one was funny, i dont get the farcry one

Haven't you looked at the sand in Farcry? It's like...insanely bright.

 

[Vinnie_NL]

I liked it a lot, especially because I didn't expect something like this but a more serious topic

 

[A True Canadian]

I liked it a lot, especially because I didn't expect something like this but a more serious topic

Same here. That comparison was quite funny. :E

 

[Ennui]

lol is all i can say.

 

[SubForce]

Man I cant believe people dont like the doom 3 graphics. It took years to get that patented can't see shit technology right.

And for the guy who though they looked like real photos with a different lens: "DUH!"

 

[Fliko]

That one with the 2 buildings, the building on the left is half-life2, look, that one picture with the gravity gun is a low quality pic, trust me, you can see what i mean if you look closely on the left picture

 

[jacen]

I don't know, make a guess. Maybe because there are just a shitload of entities on the screen? Source easily supports multiple dynamic shadows per entity, proven by Bloodlines, but they simply don't use it in HL2 because it's a useless power drainer.

oh man what a complete bullshit
bloodlines have the same shadowmaps as halflife2 and cs:s
they are not dynamic at all.
stand near a character, fire ur weapon, look if ur muzzleflash is creating a shadow. (same goes for hl2/cs:s flashlight)

IT ISNT?
WHAT A GREAT SUPRISE!!!!

omg y dont u just stfu?

 

[SubForce]

hmmm, i would if the game was OUT. pointless arguement. wait for the games. both.

 

[Kragoth]

If you have done any programming at all in graphics you would know that shadow processing is the last thing done, first you remove hidden surfaces, then you calculate the relfected light and the refracted light and THEN you calculate the shadows. Now, if you look at the algorithm for this it is an algorith that takes at least numberOfObjects^3*number of light sources (iterations) to do. Thus, until such time as graphics cards have 1Ghz or faster processors on them real shadows when utilising the detail of the source engine is not physcially possible unless you like 5 frames per second.
So you say why did Doom3 and Farcry work? Well, look at Doom 3. For starters There is very little in the way of reflected and refracted light thus that calculation is minimized, and secondly the rooms have relatively few items in them. All the bad guys melt into the ground AND the major point, is it is a ROOM based game, there are very few open areas and the areas that are open are either empty space or foggy or low detailed.
So, if you want the detail of HL2 with the shadows of Doom3 then invent a very very fast graphics card. Cause that's why it is the way it is.

(Yes, I do software engineering, and i'm just finishing up an openGL unit so...i sorta know my stuff, but i'm probly wrong in a few ares )

 

[fantasiser]

oh man what a complete bullshit
bloodlines have the same shadowmaps as halflife2 and cs:s
they are not dynamic at all.
stand near a character, fire ur weapon, look if ur muzzleflash is creating a shadow. (same goes for hl2/cs:s flashlight)

IT ISNT?
WHAT A GREAT SUPRISE!!!!

omg y dont u just stfu?

I hate to ruin your shit all the way to Africa,
but far cry had a lot of non-dynamic shadows... and guess what?
SO DID DOOM3!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Granted i only found like 3 of them, but there were shadows that wouldnt move disappear no matter what you did to the light source, explain that my friend.

And the source engine supports almost everything (admittedly so do doom 3 engine and to a lesser extent cry engine), and each engine has its good and bad points. But personally i like HL2 for one major reason : It gives me great graphics, even better phyiscs, and it doesnt need me to break into banks to be able to afford a computer thats going to run it decently

 

[GWalker]

...

in case u cant spot it: pay attention to the shadows and how they got casted through objects.

comparing hl with farcry or doom is nonsense ...
every1 who is doing this is just a fanboy of the one or the other game.


btw: in the comarison pic ... the hl2 stones wouldn cast shadows on other stones ... imho a pretty dumb picture to draw out the advantages of source to d3 or cryengine

Valve have probably fixed this now. hopefully. :cheers:

 

[PvtRyan]

oh man what a complete bullshit
bloodlines have the same shadowmaps as halflife2 and cs:s
they are not dynamic at all.
stand near a character, fire ur weapon, look if ur muzzleflash is creating a shadow. (same goes for hl2/cs:s flashlight)

IT ISNT?
WHAT A GREAT SUPRISE!!!!

omg y dont u just stfu?

Hey, go f*ck yourself.

Of course Bloodlines uses lightmaps I didn't dispute that, you'd be a retard to use a unified lighting system in a game like HL2 or Vampire. I was talking about multiple shadows per character, like this:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vtmb/screens.html?page=62

omg y dont u talk in proper English?

 

[jacen]

hmmm, i would if the game was OUT. pointless arguement. wait for the games. both.

you cant show it to me, because its not possible.

If you have done any programming at all in graphics you would know that shadow processing is the last thing done, first you remove hidden surfaces, then you calculate the relfected light and the refracted light and THEN you calculate the shadows. Now, if you look at the algorithm for this it is an algorith that takes at least numberOfObjects^3*number of light sources (iterations) to do. Thus, until such time as graphics cards have 1Ghz or faster processors on them real shadows when utilising the detail of the source engine is not physcially possible unless you like 5 frames per second.
So you say why did Doom3 and Farcry work? Well, look at Doom 3. For starters There is very little in the way of reflected and refracted light thus that calculation is minimized, and secondly the rooms have relatively few items in them. All the bad guys melt into the ground AND the major point, is it is a ROOM based game, there are very few open areas and the areas that are open are either empty space or foggy or low detailed.
So, if you want the detail of HL2 with the shadows of Doom3 then invent a very very fast graphics card. Cause that's why it is the way it is.

(Yes, I do software engineering, and i'm just finishing up an openGL unit so...i sorta know my stuff, but i'm probly wrong in a few ares )

ur paragraph was right in most areas.
in d3 the shadows got set up with the geometry and thus, BEFORE reflected lights via specular maps.
but:
-) d3 has dynamic light count max 8 per texel, and although it seems small, its pretty enough for most of the doom3 settings.
-) the rooms have very few items, sure, but take into account that the map geomoetry also casts dynamic shadows. thats so much workload for our poor cpus that its impossible to believe that id managed to make it run on 2ghz @ 30 fps+
-) you are right, d3 is, like q1-q3 was, a indoor optimized engine. however, the engine can evolve greatly with increasing cpu, and even gpu, capabilitys (hl2 will scale on newer gpus also great).
-) lastly ... the shadows used in d3 doestn have the least thing to do with ur video card. as i said b4, the shadows get set up with the geometry, so u can skip rendering texels that are completely shadowed. ONLY gf5 and gf6 cards can use ultra shadow to remove overlapping shadow volumes and to reduce the cpu workload.

I hate to ruin your shit all the way to Africa,
but far cry had a lot of non-dynamic shadows... and guess what?
SO DID DOOM3!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Granted i only found like 3 of them, but there were shadows that wouldnt move disappear no matter what you did to the light source, explain that my friend.

there are static, non shadow casting lights in almost every room in d3. simply because it would kill your frames down to 3-5fps even on 3.4ghz cpus.
U CAN build rooms with every lightsource dynamic, destroyable and shadow casting, but u cant play it on nowerdays pcs. just wait for games like jedi knight IV to see how they will increase the lightcount and even try to make outside areas (outside areas will NEVER looks as good as in farcry or hl2, or will they be so great, because of the totally missing of any lod or outdor occulsion system .. someone would have to heavyly modify the engine for that)
always remember, the fact that there are only a few entitys of a certain feature implememted, dont mean that u are restricted to that. (same applies to hl2 and poly count or genral complex shader count per scene ... u can wait for games that will drop your jaws just with stunning shader effects)

And the source engine supports almost everything (admittedly so do doom 3 engine and to a lesser extent cry engine), and each engine has its good and bad points. But personally i like HL2 for one major reason : It gives me great graphics, even better phyiscs, and it doesnt need me to break into banks to be able to afford a computer thats going to run it decently

source engine doesnt support dynamic shadowing.
i know that they call their shadowmaps dynamic shadowing, but the fact that they cant used to creat self shadowing or to creat real dynamic shadowing (u can use them to scale to existing, non-moving lightsources, but u well get bugs when u get close to the light ... see that great ut2k4 engine mod for that) still remains. in farcry u have, like in d3, realtime dynamic shadowing, but afaik, the shadowcount per model is limited to 1. i dont know if u can mod it to a higher count, but if u map good, it doesnt matter at all.

Valve have probably fixed this now. hopefully. :cheers:

valve wont fix this, its INTENDET TO BE THIS WAY.
only this way u can support high model count and still shadow them all (at least nowadays)

Hey, go f*ck yourself.

Of course Bloodlines uses lightmaps I didn't dispute that, you'd be a retard to use a unified lighting system in a game like HL2 or Vampire. I was talking about multiple shadows per character, like this:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vtmb/screens.html?page=62

omg y dont u talk in proper English?

sry, i missread ur post.
labeling shadowmaps (they arent lightmaps, they are shadowmaps, btw) as dynamic shadows still dont fit in my brain
sry
p.s.: i really dislike the bloodlines screenshot ... i hope u know y.

 

[oldagerocker]

They are good rocks

 

[Mikademius]

lol @ doom 3