Shadow bug still existent

[CrazyHarij]

yeah valve sucks because they can't fix simple shadow problems like this

 

[poseyjmac]

@romeo

how does this have to do with lightmaps? these shadows overlapping are only shadows from dynamic objects.

and if you turn off dynamic shadows, thats one way to mend it.

 

[Gorgon]

Why is this so worrisome? Well, for two reasons, licensing and the future. Licensing is the worst one, Doom3 is an absolutely spectacular engine, head and shoulders above anything else out there. It is scalable, beautiful, has a marquee name, and is saddled with amateurish gameplay. Three out of four ain't bad, and luckily for Nvidia, gameplay is not its problem. In fact, only the first three are relevant to video. In the older engines, HL2, Q3, and others, ATI has a slim advantage. On the newer ones, Nvidia rocks. Which one do you think will be more prevalent in the next few months? Which one would you license if you had to lay the money down? Which one do you think will power the next generation in greater number? Yup, ATI has a problem, and it will only grow worse the further out you look. If you want real comedy, look at the requirements for Longhorn. Looking out, I see ATI with a minuscule advantage that it is clinging to, desperately hoping no one notices that the train left the station in early August with the release of Doom3. The future belongs to Nvidia right now, and the only hope ATI has is in the R500, but that won't be here for a long time. If it manages to catch up card for card, Nvidia still 'only' has a 2:1 advantage. I know where my money will be going, and an X800 seems like money badly spent if you don't plan on buying an new card every three months. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18029

Long live Nvidia.

 

[RomeoJGuy]

@romeo

how does this have to do with lightmaps? these shadows overlapping are only shadows from dynamic objects.

and if you turn off dynamic shadows, thats one way to mend it.

The dynamic shadowing system is a light map system. The very nature of this, is that a 2d representation is cast onto the texture and changes the lightmap value of the texture at the points needed, thus since to shadows are overlapping, the effect is happening twice.

 

[poseyjmac]

ahh ok i see.

i dont know, id be content with just the initial lightmap, and no dynamic shadows but thats me. in doom3 dynamic shadows are very important, but in hl2, it doesn't seem like as much of a big deal.

 

[Feath]

I just spent about 20 minutes in CS:S trying to reproduce this. Damn barrels.

EDIT: It does surprise me that so many people are getting quite angry over this. Calm down. It's only a game and a minor issue.

 

[lans]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18029

Long live Nvidia.

Tis true - source looks very very good, but it's not in the league of Far cry or D3.

Five years later, Half-Life 2 is once again going to enter into a fiercely competitive category. Most notably, the impending release of id Software's Doom III (slated for later this year) means that many people will draw comparisons between the two games. Doom III has already gotten a lot of people excited because of the impressive screenshots that id Software has released of the work in progress. At a glance, Half-Life 2's visuals don't stand out as much.Though Half-Life 2's graphics engine definitely looks good, it doesn't look dramatically better than the already-impressive graphics produced by some of today's 3D engines, such as the Unreal engine (used for games like Unreal Tournament 2003 and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell) and the Lithtech engine (used for games like No One Lives Forever 2 and the upcoming Tron 2.0).

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/preview_6026488-5.html

 

[Parrot of doom]

Funny how some people are taking a demo as being proof of the game being finished.

 

[noah]

It's not a bug, nor are they lightmaps (which are pre-rendered, static, and 'baked' into the level architecture)...it's a limitation of the chosen shadow technique - projected textures.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1171855,00.asp

I'm not a programmer, but I imagine fixing it would be a quite a big deal, as I would guess that they'd have to render each shadow out to a texture every frame, at least twice, to match the shadow color with the neighboring shadows. Once to render the actual shadow texture of an object, and again to change it's color. Even in that best case scenario, there would have to be a good, fast way to determine which shadows to render first in the scene - again, every frame.

Even that wouldn't work in all cases, as most shadows occurring in the game would not necessarily overlap each other entirely.

 

[poseyjmac]

nice old article there

 

[She]

Oh, how about you go make a game yourself, and come back in 6 years, it better be better than half-life 2 or I'm going to nitpick!

Valve are professional game designers / programmers.. + they are at least 20+ persons working on valve..

a single person with no programming or Design experience could not stand a chance making a better game..

but.. Valve, if you work on a game for 6 years... and cant fix the so called "double shadow" or "shadow on shadow" bug... well.. i dont know.
who cares.. it's looks like shit and ruins the experience.. but it STILL IS A GAME..

 

[Feath]

Valve are professional game designers / programmers.. + they are at least 20+ persons working on valve..

a single person with no programming or Design experience could not stand a chance making a better game..

but.. Valve, if you work on a game for 6 years... and cant fix the so called "double shadow" or "shadow on shadow" bug... well.. i dont know.
who cares.. it's looks like shit and ruins the experience.. but it STILL IS A GAME..

I think ruins the experience is a bit of an overstatment. This won't affect anyone except the most pedantic players. It will be a bit distracting, at the most.

It's not a case of Valve being unable to fix it, it could be a case of any solutions they come up not being satisfactory. Like, there could be a huge drop in frame rate, which Valve decided wasn't worth it.

 

[A2597]

VALVE SAID IT WAS FIXED.

Sheesh. Those vids are old mate...

 

[She]

I think ruins the experience is a bit of an overstatment. This won't affect anyone except the most pedantic players. It will be a bit distracting, at the most.

it's still "ruins" the experience.. no matter how you look at it.. not much.. but still.. everytime you see that ""bug"" you will think of it..

i don't care.. ( i did ).. if you want superior shadows.. play Doom3

 

[azz0r]

The shadows do have some layering going on

 

[Feath]

VALVE SAID IT WAS FIXED.

Sheesh. Those vids are old mate...

When did they say that?

 

[eth8686]

Wow you just figured out a mod you could do for hl2....gj

Actually, no. But thanks for assuming.

I REALLY wanted to discuss this problem in depth with mature intelligent people, to see if there is some specific reason why in 6 years Valve have not been able to fix this obvious glitch. But thanks DiSTuRbEd, now I know that can't be done here.

EDIT: In response to the post below me, I want to point out that in my opinion Valve has created a superb gaming engine (only this flaw kind of got to me).

 

[Mountain Man]

VALVE SAID IT WAS FIXED.

Have a link? Not trying to be a jerk, but confirmation would be nice.

Still, the only people who are going to zero in on this shortcoming will be id fanboys who want to rub it in our faces because it'll be the only thing Doom 3 will have over Half-Life 2.

 

[Banana]

VALVE SAID IT WAS FIXED.

Sheesh. Those vids are old mate...

I agree. I dont remember where or when i saw it but i'm 90% sure they said it was fixed.

 

[Feath]

Actually, no. But thanks for assuming.

I REALLY wanted to discuss this problem in depth with mature intelligent people, to see if there is some specific reason why in 6 years Valve have not been able to fix this obvious glitch. But thanks DiSTuRbEd, now I know that can't be done here.

Like I said, Valve could've tried to fix it but not been able to find a decent solution. They may have been too costly in terms of framerate or just made it look worse.

 

[eth8686]

Like I said, Valve could've tried to fix it but not been able to find a decent solution. They may have been too costly in terms of framerate or just made it look worse.

Yeah, that's my theory as well (except for the "made it look worse part" ).

 

[blahblahblah]

VALVE SAID IT WAS FIXED.

Sheesh. Those vids are old mate...

I'm not singling you out, but if the source engine isn't feature complete yet, we should be worried. I can understand some basic changes to the source engine late into develop for new featuers (ie 3Dc or SM3.0), but changing the way shadows are done seems like a daunting task.

With the Doom 3 engine, we are aware of its abilities and limitations. Carmack has publicly stated so. With the Source engine, we have no real idea of its abilities and limitations. We are walking towards HL2 with no idea of what it is capable of. It has me worried a bit. I would like them to come out and say what we can expect HL2 to look like.

As for shadows, IIRC, DX9 has support for fully dynamic soft shadows. However, no game has taken advantage of this technology yet since DX9 is still new. Even a game like Doom 3 use shadow techniques from the DX7/8 era.

I personally would have rather seen more emphasis gone into shadows than HDR. But that is a personal preference.

 

[represent]

who cares its a shadow if u want to see a shadow go outside.

 

[She]

who cares its a shadow if u want to see a shadow go outside.

congratulations for noticing shadows iRL...
i hope you're not serious...

 

[Smawg]

lol yeah that is a nuisance bug.

 

[Babka]

Then what the hell they been doing for the last 5 years ?

They have been working on the game. Shadows are just a small portion of the game that adds to the realism. They would this stuff later in the game development. And btw, what is it with everyone nit-picking everything they see in the ss? I don't know if you people realize, but you are just spoiling the game for yourselves by creating such high standards for it. And when it finally comes out, you will all be dissapointed. This always happens.

I just don't try to cry over the small details that's all. I would be more worried about gameplay mechanics and the fun-factor of the game rather than depress myself with small details like that. Not everyone can be pleased.

 

[^Ben]

Yeh lets turn HL2 into D3 i can see it now

Gordon walks into a hallway, then another, then another, then another, then another.

It's a limitation of the chosen shadowing method they have used, just like if we wanted fully dynamic lightsources like d3 we would not have some of the amazing outdoor scenery that source is capable of.

And what have they been working on for 6 years..... Hmmmm lemme think.

Best physics implementation of any game ever.
Amazing face and lipsync animation tools.
A state of the art graphics engine.
A game.
Other projects.
Tools.

I could harp on about d3's shortcomings because of technical limitations of the engine.

D3 and UE3 are the engines of the future but source is the engine of now, the pinacle of past techniques.

My freind once asked me do you think they will move games like call of duty onto the doom 3 engine and i replied "They would have to rename it corridors of duty"

 

[Jarman]

Amazing face and lipsync animation tools.

Are you sure the G-Man teeth don't need any antialiasing treatment?

j/k

 

[A2597]

Guys, did not Valve say it was fixed?

I mean, these ARE the vids from E3, that was what? 4 months ago now?
(And yes, they ARE that old. These binks are NOT re-captures with the most recent source. Note in the Tenements vid, it's still a man by the window, not a girl like in the new trailer)

I'd say, this bug is probably already fixed.

 

[poseyjmac]

yeah, remember the last few weeks of development for hl2 are going to be final polishing and lots of it, long workdays for a chunk of valve employees, aka crunch time. i think they are going to nail anything that looks unnatural.

 

[Beast206]

Those poor interns.

 

[Feath]

Guys, did not Valve say it was fixed?

We don't know, we asked you for a quote and you didn't give us one.

 

[Arno]

I don't think this is as easy as just "fixing a bug".
Going from simple shadows that only project on flat surfaces to complex shadows that correctly interact with all objects in the game is an enormous coding effort.
It's not as simple as just disabling the shadow of the box, because (like Feath said) you'll get problems once the box is pushed over the edge of the table.

 

[Alec_85]

Couldn't they just do it like this:

if -> there are 2 items
do -> cast ONE shadow on ground.
ignore ->shadow of item on top.

or

if -> there are 2 items
do -> cast ONE shadow below on the ground and the second between item 1 & item 2

or something like that.

 

[dreten707]

they COULD make the table of glas then it would be realistic

 

[Feath]

Couldn't they just do it like this:

if -> there are 2 items
do -> cast ONE shadow on ground.
ignore ->shadow of item on top.

or

if -> there are 2 items
do -> cast ONE shadow below on the ground and the second between item 1 & item 2

or something like that.

Good idea but what about when a box is half on a table, it wouldn't have a shadow even though some of it should have a shadow. The solution isn't as easy as you think.

 

[Big Fat Duck]

if you guys didnt notice.. doom 3 uses both lightmaps and dynamic shadows.. if you turn off the dynamic shadows option you still get the static lightmaps which basically look like crap...

If you people are like : OMFG MEH FPS WILL BE LIEK 2 IN OUTDOORZ w/ dynamic shadowing, why didnt valve just add an option to turn dynamic shadows or shadow mapping off or on

 

[^Ben]

Because it looks seriously inconsistent and even worse.

 

[blahblahblah]

if you guys didnt notice.. doom 3 uses both lightmaps and dynamic shadows.. if you turn off the dynamic shadows option you still get the static lightmaps which basically look like crap...

If you people are like : OMFG MEH FPS WILL BE LIEK 2 IN OUTDOORZ w/ dynamic shadowing, why didnt valve just add an option to turn dynamic shadows or shadow mapping off or on

No, they are still dynamic lights. No shadows are cast.

From the Doom 3 editor, you can choose whether a light casts specular highlights, shadows and something else I can't recall. Turning off the option of casting dynamic shadows does not mean the light is anyless dynamic before. It is a performance option only.

There are no static lightmaps in Doom 3. They don't exist, everything is dynamic in the game.

 

[brink's]

I can't believe this is such a large issue, look at those screenshots and tell me there not beatiful. So theres a shadow glitch, who gives a F*ck. It's one tiny little glitch, get over it! Valve decided not to use dynamic shadows so they could take advantage of things like realistic looking/dynamic lighting, HDR,soft shadows,realistic player models, great physics,large environments and holly hell does it go on.
Stop being so damn critical!

I don't know if you people realize, but you are just spoiling the game for yourselves by creating such high standards for it.

No shit