PrayForDeath
Diamond Member
Remember the HL2 HDR demo Valve released about a year ago showing all the visual features of the game? Here's a link, in this video, you can see incredible shader effects on the alien's skin, on the roof tops (red brick) and the metal plates, there's also the special sunlight effect through the holes in the ceiling, after seeing this movie a year ago I thought Half-Life 2's visuals are simply unbelievable, but after actually playing the game, I was hugely disappointed by finding out that NONE of the effects I mentioned above are actually available in the game, some of them are, but are hardly visible, they were reduced for some reason.
I went to the same place in the game, there's no alien of course, but first, the light holes in the ceiling look just like that, light holes with no special glare or any HDR effect around them, the red brick roof looks pale, with no shaders at all applied to it. The Metal plates look WAY less attractive, it looks like they've reduced the shader quality on them or something.
In a distant level in the desert I found that alien, I examined its body closely, and it looked pale too, all those fancy shaders in the Demo were gone! I can't find a logical reason for that, the alien looked amazing in that demo, why would they strip it out of those shaders? To improve performance? They should've atleast let US control this in the video options. I really feel cheated after seeing the actual game's graphics and seeing how the DX9.0 effects were severely reduced in the game compared to its previous demo.
I'll post some screenshots later from the game to give you a better picture of the case, though I think the demo should be enough to let you know what I am talking about.
What do you say about that? Am I missing something here? Is my card not running the game at its full quality? (running 1152x864 2xAA/16xAF MAX DETAILS) Or is it just Valve trying to let their game run fast on most systems by sacrificing some major IQ features instead of giving us control over that?
edit: I don't think HL2's graphics are bad at all, the water effects are amazing, and some shader effects are great, I just hate it how certain effects were cancelled/reduced.
UPDATE: These are the screenshots I took from the game from the exact same location in that demo:
Ceiling Holes:
1
2
3
4
Roof Top and Metal Plates:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
I even turned on the flash-light to see if it adds any special effects to the scene, unfortunately, it didn't.
As you can see, the difference is like night and day between that demo and the actual game. Comments?
I went to the same place in the game, there's no alien of course, but first, the light holes in the ceiling look just like that, light holes with no special glare or any HDR effect around them, the red brick roof looks pale, with no shaders at all applied to it. The Metal plates look WAY less attractive, it looks like they've reduced the shader quality on them or something.
In a distant level in the desert I found that alien, I examined its body closely, and it looked pale too, all those fancy shaders in the Demo were gone! I can't find a logical reason for that, the alien looked amazing in that demo, why would they strip it out of those shaders? To improve performance? They should've atleast let US control this in the video options. I really feel cheated after seeing the actual game's graphics and seeing how the DX9.0 effects were severely reduced in the game compared to its previous demo.
I'll post some screenshots later from the game to give you a better picture of the case, though I think the demo should be enough to let you know what I am talking about.
What do you say about that? Am I missing something here? Is my card not running the game at its full quality? (running 1152x864 2xAA/16xAF MAX DETAILS) Or is it just Valve trying to let their game run fast on most systems by sacrificing some major IQ features instead of giving us control over that?
edit: I don't think HL2's graphics are bad at all, the water effects are amazing, and some shader effects are great, I just hate it how certain effects were cancelled/reduced.
UPDATE: These are the screenshots I took from the game from the exact same location in that demo:
Ceiling Holes:
1
2
3
4
Roof Top and Metal Plates:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
I even turned on the flash-light to see if it adds any special effects to the scene, unfortunately, it didn't.
As you can see, the difference is like night and day between that demo and the actual game. Comments?
