There goes hope of a GOTY at Gamespot...

[fabianoag]

Thats usually wat happends, if a piece of hardware doesnt support a feature, its unlikely to come up in connection using a google search...

 

[PvtRyan]

Shadows point in the wrong direction - that's a technical defect. Valve would have been better off by just displaying a single shadow using the z-buffer algo using the main light source as a reference, if they wanted engine performance without a glaringly wrong shadow system.

The shadow direction is set by the mapper, if the realtime shadows don't match the direction of the main lightsource (the sun) then it's the mapper's fault. But I think that's impossible, because I think the light_environment (the sun) sets the shadow direction. Not sure though. Bloodlines, however, uses shadows that are drawn based of the direction of the light, not sure if the shadows are of the same nature as the render-to-texture shadows of HL2.

Also, you need to get this right - cards don't come in with built-in support for PS 1.0 or PS 2.0 (of course a generation supporting the bare minmum has to be there - for nVidia it is GeForce4 Ti)- it is the driver implementation that matters. So forget stuff like having a "DX 8.0 card". The X-box runs on the nVidia XGPU architecture which can support gene mapping if you want it to. And the software support has evolved - the Xbox currently supports DX 9.0b.

Get the latest drivers from nVidia and your Laptop's Go5700 will become a "DX 9.0c card" (really - you ought to pay me for that!).

Not quite sure what you're trying to say here. But there's a big difference between DX9c compatibilty and compliancy. Even a TNT2 is DX9.0c compatible. I may be able to install drivers and software to run DX9.0c on my 5700, but it will never be able to do PS3.0 without the hardware being able to do so. I may have the software, but I don't have the hardware to do the programmable shaders of DX9.0c.

Cube-map based environment mapping is a faster way to generate reflections - agreed. But place the "cube-mapped" water reflecting the pinkish sky near the dam with the water earlier in the game (somewhere around Route Canal) - and the water would still reflect pink - it doesn't respond to the environment surrounding it dynamically - it is just using pre-computed textures!! To see the desired effect in action watch Serious Sam closely.

I'm absolutely clueless what you mean here, on reflect all, water reflects everything, from geometry to overlays and decals. Water in HL2 is not precomputed textures. It just renders the scene three times: one time for the world underneath the water, and then disturbs this with a normalmap to simulate refraction, one time the area above the water, and disturbs this as well with a normal map. Nothing precomputed about it on DX9.

And as far as a unified lighting model is concerned - John Carmack is the pioneer - heck, he devised a whole new algo for shadow volumes - search for "Carmack's reverse" - it is not an "original" algo but has never been implemented before.

Carmack may have very well the best approach to it, but it has been done before. See the AMP engine, Tenebrae or even Chronicles of Riddick.

OK, now the hot-point, HL2 doesn't become better with better hardware - it just looks better - and that's because they've got great texture artists. They've got high resolution textures for everything and that's why the game looks better. And after watching the game closely (after being bashed here in the forums), I saw this - they haven't got higher resolution "normal-maps" or "bump-maps" for the textures. So even if the texture-detail increases, bump-mapping detail DOES NOT increase - a feature which is there in Doom3. And also, although Source supports it - HL2 does not switch over to PS 2.0 from PS 1.0 with better hardware except for a few scenes (Farcry does - and the difference is apparent).

I'm pretty sure the normal maps of HL2 are the same resolution as the diffuse textures, but that may vary per material.

And what do you mean with the last bit? HL2 switches to the maximum shader level for the hardware, or as defined by the user. Every shader has it's PS2.0, PS1.4 and 1.1 equivalent. HL2's detail options are like of any other game. Better hardware definitely guarantees better pictures, not just higher texture resolutions.
For example, only DX9 has depth fogging for water, or 'soft shadows' and character normal mapping (and orginally HDR, RIP ;()

The Source engine is a good overall package but HL2 hasn't utilized it fully. Now if you can't utilize the damn thing in your own game, then that's not a thing to be proud of. Most of HL2 "special effects" are hacks - just using some clever alpha-maps with great textures and some good occlusion culling can give you eye-candy with reasonable performance - but that's no technical improvement over earlier engines. There, now I am speaking against my favorite game of all time!!! Give me a dynamic environment and HL2 fails miserably when compared to Doom3. We are talking about next-generation engines here and Source sure is one among them - but HL2 implements only a few features that can be deemed as "next-generation".

Of course HL2 hasn't utilized it fully, but even not fully utilized, it's using modern hardware to the max, so for a fully utilized Source game, you'll have to wait some time.