New Half Life 2 Level featuring high dynamic range lighting

[Regs]

For those who don't pay attention to steams update news -

Over the next month or so there will be a couple of interesting releases via Steam, in addition to the upcoming Counter-Strike map de_compound.

First, we'll be releasing an update to Half-Life 2: Deathmatch that will include the Slam, Stunstick, and the Crowbar. We're not ready to release the contest winning maps just yet, but we will be releasing a new map we've built at Valve to tide people over while we sort out the contest winners. There will also be a release to Counter-Strike: Source around the same time that will address a few minor issues.

One feature that we'll be adding to the Source engine in the coming months is high dynamic range lighting. To showcase this we've taken a part of the Highway 17 chapter of Half-Life 2 and worked it into a single level that incorporates HDR along with some new gameplay. We're calling this short level "The Lost Coast," and it will be made available free of charge to Half-Life 2 customers that meet a specific set of high end hardware requirements. We'll be publishing those requirements soon.

Concept Art 1
Concept Art 2
Concept Art 3

 

[mitchafi]

sweet.

 

[blurredvision]

Ya, read this earlier. Great news. Far Cry brought my system to it's knees when using HDR, I'm ready to see what the Source engine can do. Can't wait for it, but it does say "in the coming months", meaning we probably won't see it till Summer atleast.

 

[Regs]

da bump

 

[MemberSince97]

I hope it's released before Summer...

 

[agnitrate]

What's so special about those pictures?

It looks like they ran everything through the underpainting filter in Photoshop and increased the brightness by 100%. What's the big deal?

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

What's that fisherman gotta do with high dynamic range lighting?

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: agnitrate
What's so special about those pictures?

It looks like they ran everything through the underpainting filter in Photoshop and increased the brightness by 100%. What's the big deal?

ahah those are like people saying that screenshots are EXACTLY how the game is going to look like. DUH we all know thats not how its going to look cus they always spiffy up the pics but its still in early stages. im guessing these are the "ATI LEVELS" they were talking about before

 

[Regs]

It's concept so. So it really is just hand made drawnings put through photoshop.

 

[Azndude51]

Speaking of HDR, take a look at this thread. Remember, the workding demo video of HDR is from Sept. 2003 and they are only now putting it into the game :disgust:

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: ming2020
What's that fisherman gotta do with high dynamic range lighting?

I was wondering the same thing... Maybe that's Gorton Freeman.

 

[BW86]

Originally posted by: ming2020
What's that fisherman gotta do with high dynamic range lighting?

beats me.

 

[Insomniak]

Why bother hardware restricting it? If some people want to play at 2 FPS with HDR on, why stop them?

 

[Azndude51]

Originally posted by: Insomniak
Why bother hardware restricting it? If some people want to play at 2 FPS with HDR on, why stop them?

Maybe it's because some cards can't support the stuff needed.

 

[MisterChief]

Originally posted by: zerocool84

Originally posted by: agnitrate
What's so special about those pictures?

It looks like they ran everything through the underpainting filter in Photoshop and increased the brightness by 100%. What's the big deal?

ahah those are like people saying that screenshots are EXACTLY how the game is going to look like. DUH we all know thats not how its going to look cus they always spiffy up the pics but its still in early stages. im guessing these are the "ATI LEVELS" they were talking about before

CONCEPT ART, DUMDUMS

 

[0roo0roo]

now if they'd only bother fixing cs source and all the missing features that were working in plain old cs.. like team balancing, damage stats blah..grr

 

[clamum]

I doubt my Geforce 4 MX will be able to handle that Hahah

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: Azndude51

Originally posted by: Insomniak
Why bother hardware restricting it? If some people want to play at 2 FPS with HDR on, why stop them?

Maybe it's because some cards can't support the stuff needed.

And thus it won't run...I still don't see the point. If it won't run on certain hardware, there's no need to restrict the requirements - it won't run.