HL2 screenshot differences

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: Regs
I think it was OldFart that stated we should not be deciding IQ over a few lousy pics without seeing DX9 in action, or in animation. I tend to agree with him.

From what Anand states from playing the game demos, there is a significant and noticeable change in IQ with 8.1 vs 9.0 .

That's what I've been saying - I've seen the ingame footage released all over the web (which is DX9 in most instances), and while it DOES look better than DX8.1, it doesn't look $300 better. Not by a long shot.



IMHO of course.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I think it was OldFart that stated we should not be deciding IQ over a few lousy pics without seeing DX9 in action, or in animation.

I have around 900MBs of HL2 videos on my HD right now, I'm not just talking about screenshots

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

I think it was OldFart that stated we should not be deciding IQ over a few lousy pics without seeing DX9 in action, or in animation.

I have around 900MBs of HL2 videos on my HD right now, I'm not just talking about screenshots

I'll trade you my for my Randy Johnson rookie card !

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

I think it was OldFart that stated we should not be deciding IQ over a few lousy pics without seeing DX9 in action, or in animation.

I have around 900MBs of HL2 videos on my HD right now, I'm not just talking about screenshots

Same, cept I only got about 760 MB

 

[nRollo]

I have absolutely no doubt HL2 is going to be the vastly superior game, but from what I've seen I don't see a good reason not to run the game in DX7 mode, the edge in visuals doesn't seem to be there.

This CAN'T be true Ben.
If it were, no one here would have any reason at all to criticize and insult their fellow ATers with 5800/5900s, and they would all have to go back to playing games.
The whole theme of this flamefest would be changed, it would be reduced to people giving their opinions of hardware they had used, helping others with problems, and posting links to informative articles.
Just think, no more "Stupid nVidiot! HL2 will SUCK on your SHAT card!" posts.
Yep, that would be tough to deal with....

<shakes head sadly>

 

[DaveBaumann]

Dot3 falls within the scope of what is considered a shader

Dot3 falls into the scope of a per pixel operation on its own.

and without it Doom3 would look extremely poor.

As would HL2. Dot3 is used for detail "Polybump" style throughout the entire game - all the detailing on the building shots you see = flat poly's + Dot3; the rock detail on the cave walls = flat poly's + Dot3; the detail seen on the creature in the HDR shots = simple mesh + Dot3.

The Polybump style of detailing with low detail geomtry is hardly exclusive to D3 and its being seen in lots of places, HL2 makes very effective use of it.

Now you have had the advantage of seeing the game running first hand and have seen it running with HDR(as opposed to most of us who have seen a low res vid clip at best), so perhaps you can comment on the visuals.

Despite going to both E3 and ECTS I had managed not to see any of this so far - nor had I bothered to look at any videos. The first time I saw soemthing at all from it was earlier at shader day when a guy was talking about how Valve had implemented Lightwave to do the polybump effects. He displayed a simple outdoor, old city environment and when I saw it running I just turned to Lars and said "I'm not going to get anything done for B3D for two months after this is released" - I though the detailing was excellent, far surpassed the level of detail I'd seen in anything else from the polybump perspective. The HDR stuff looked very impressive as well - adds a very immersive environmental level to it.

Without HDR, the fragment shaders utilized in HL2 pale in comparison to many DX8 games we have seen to date in terms of visual impact.

I don't know - you appear to be prejudging unfairly. I don't know what you've seen, or what the videos contain, but when they are in the outdoors scene with the "tripods" attacking, it is an increadly impressive effect when it warps the environment and shoots at you - I wasn't expecting that at all.

WRT to the differences, remember quite a lot of the the immersive element for D3 is coming from the shadow mechanism, which is incredibly effective for the environment of D3, but not suitable for large outdoors scenes.

 

[BenSkywalker]

As would HL2. Dot3 is used for detail "Polybump" style throughout the entire game - all the detailing on the building shots you see = flat poly's + Dot3; the rock detail on the cave walls = flat poly's + Dot3; the detail seen on the creature in the HDR shots = simple mesh + Dot3.

HL2 has the extremely detailted character models, the best animation we have seen in a game to date- particularly impressive is the facial expressive animations IMO(for the entire game in terms of visuals), and the ability to manipulate almost anything in your environment. With the exception of the HDR shots, the Dot3 you mention is barely noticeable, looks more like a detail texture layer then anything requiring any shader power(or per pixel if you prefer).

The Polybump style of detailing with low detail geomtry is hardly exclusive to D3 and its being seen in lots of places, HL2 makes very effective use of it.

I'd say HL2 must be close to using an order of magnitude more geometric complexity then Doom3 from what I have seen. I've seen several impressive uses for the effect in game outside of Doom3, I haven't seen anything that comes close to having the same impact on the overall visuals(well, Evolva had an extreme impact but not D3 level).

He displayed a simple outdoor, old city environment and when I saw it running I just turned to Lars and said "I'm not going to get anything done for B3D for two months after this is released" - I though the detailing was excellent, far surpassed the level of detail I'd seen in anything else from the polybump perspective.

Without HDR? If so, I'm assuming the builds of the game they released the vid clips from are very old.

I don't know - you appear to be prejudging unfairly. I don't know what you've seen, or what the videos contain, but when they are in the outdoors scene with the "tripods" attacking, it is an increadly impressive effect when it warps the environment and shoots at you - I wasn't expecting that at all.

I have the ~650MB E3 vid clip along with every other one that I am aware of being posted anywhere. I am comparing what I've seen of HL2 to what I've seen of Doom3. I'm basing my comments on what they have shown to date.

WRT to the differences, remember quite a lot of the the immersive element for D3 is coming from the shadow mechanism, which is incredibly effective for the environment of D3, but not suitable for large outdoors scenes.

On a performance basis I would think not, and obviously in well lit outdoor areas its impact would be seriously hindered. For HL2 the impressive elements are the model detail(characters)/animation and the physics engine.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: Rollo

I have absolutely no doubt HL2 is going to be the vastly superior game, but from what I've seen I don't see a good reason not to run the game in DX7 mode, the edge in visuals doesn't seem to be there.

This CAN'T be true Ben.
If it were, no one here would have any reason at all to criticize and insult their fellow ATers with 5800/5900s, and they would all have to go back to playing games.
The whole theme of this flamefest would be changed, it would be reduced to people giving their opinions of hardware they had used, helping others with problems, and posting links to informative articles.
Just think, no more "Stupid nVidiot! HL2 will SUCK on your SHAT card!" posts.
Yep, that would be tough to deal with....

<shakes head sadly>

What can I say? It amuses me to get people riled up.

After hearing for a long time about much ATI sucked from the Nvidia faithful, it's funny to watch them suddenly denounce progress. Two months ago we were hearing how ATI was wrong for not having a low cost DX9 part. Now that we see that Nvidia doesn't even have a high end DX9 part much less an entry level one, the fanboys are all jumping on the DX bashing bandwagon. A month ago it was a vital upgrade, and now it doesn't look any better than DX8. Funny. Very funny.

 

[Insomniak]

I've never considered video cards a vital upgrade. Hell, I was still using Voodoo 2s last year.

 

[niggles]

oh my god, this thread is a frikin riot!!!

"Nvidia sucks, ATI rules... Nvidia is just misunderstood, ATI is over-rated.... pixelshader/no pixelshader - DX9 vs. DX8..."

I'm waiting for that line from Gulliver's travels about the war starting because one side broke their egg at the small end, rather than the fat end...

All this speculation is just flame bate, stop acting like a bunch of smacktards and wait for the games to come out. I feel less like this is Anandtech and more like it's Teenbeat.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: niggles
oh my god, this thread is a frikin riot!!!

"Nvidia sucks, ATI rules... Nvidia is just misunderstood, ATI is over-rated.... pixelshader/no pixelshader - DX9 vs. DX8..."

I'm waiting for that line from Gulliver's travels about the war starting because one side broke their egg at the small end, rather than the fat end...

All this speculation is just flame bate, stop acting like a bunch of smacktards and wait for the games to come out. I feel less like this is Anandtech and more like it's Teenbeat.

Welcome to the wonderful world of internet forums

 

[1ManArmY]

and the beat goes on.