Best water rendering effects *spawn

[Arwin]

I loved the water in AC4: Black Flag as well. On PS3 it already looked amazing. The PS4 (and PC) version took it to another level.

Would love that to work with actual realistic sailing someday.

Sea of Thieves looks good. I thought when it was shown originally it looked much more cartoony ...

 

[AlNom]

Playground (Forza Horizon 3) seems to have done a bit of tech sharing with Rare. (stolen from newguy's link in another thread)

The sea in Forza Horizon 3 is also the sea in Sea of Thieves,” says Fulton. “Doing proper sea tech is incredibly complex. We knew the guys up the road at Rare were working on the same problem. They’re doing more deepsea stuff, but we got in touch with them, shared a bit of code, and we optimised it back and forth, so we’ve both benefited.

 

[DavidGraham]

Dragon Age Inquisition has some of the best water in modern times, it looks fantastic in motion:

 

[legendCNCD]

From DA:I Jaws Of Hakkon

 

[DavidGraham]

Just Cause 3 has a very solid water implementation as well:

 

[cheapchips]

This seems to be the most recent water rendering thread? Surely not? We must have had more fun water since 2016?

Anyway, Counter Strike 2 has some really nice 2d water /sewerage effects. Matthew Wilde at Valve, who bought us Alex's lovely bottle liquids shader, was involved.

 

[Karamazov]

effect is nice also in R&C rift apart

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Syrupy deformation. The CS2 water is definitely a league above in sheer detail. One of the issues with water is it was largely 'solved' with Uncharted and SOT. Improvements on these were incremental or just absent. There's possibly scope for next-gen water - 3D fluid dynamics, ML solver, yada yada - but in the grand scheme of graphics tech it's no longer a make-you-gasp-in-amazement feature and just placeholder water is 'good enough'.

I think we mostly moved on to reflections as the next worlds best graphics benchmark. I don't recall Fire ever getting much attention but that's been layers of sprites for donkey's years and I'm not sure anyone's managed decently modelling on that. We had the fake trailer for the dragon in a dungeon (PS3? PS4?) but the final game lacked the effect.

 

[cheapchips]

Syrupy deformation. The CS2 water is definitely a league above in sheer detail. One of the issues with water is it was largely 'solved' with Uncharted and SOT. Improvements on these were incremental or just absent. There's possibly scope for next-gen water - 3D fluid dynamics, ML solver, yada yada - but in the grand scheme of graphics tech it's no longer a make-you-gasp-in-amazement feature and just placeholder water is 'good enough'.

I think we mostly moved on to reflections as the next worlds best graphics benchmark. I don't recall Fire ever getting much attention but that's been layers of sprites for donkey's years and I'm not sure anyone's managed decently modelling on that. We had the fake trailer for the dragon in a dungeon (PS3? PS4?) but the final game lacked the effect.

We're at a point of gen 8 maturity on water. 'At sea' waves are nicely done by those titles you mention. There's plenty of others too, going back to Black Flag, and the recent AC's have good oceans.

Where water intersects objects is still clinging to either inadequate billboards or particle techniques. It'd be nice to think we'd get something better crop up this gen. More volume, more randomness, more atmospheric effects surrounding spray. Not necessary a full on simulation, just nicer cheats.

As a game that was missed and should be in this thread, Horizon Forbidden West has nice rolling shoreline waves, and not brilliant spray riding atop of them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Really nice waves! Those shapes are gorgeous. To get the finishing qualities though probably takes more power than justified, and we're stuck with basic particle effects

 

[cheapchips]

Really nice waves! Those shapes are gorgeous. To get the finishing qualities though probably takes more power than justified, and we're stuck with basic particle effects

You're probably right, but there's maybe some hope. Looping back to your point about fire, I kind of see foam, froth and splashes as the similar performance problems to fire and smoke. Do you get to something suitably better looking with just more & more varied billboards or do you need to go a volumetric effect. A nice combo of both perhaps?

Last year's Hellblade 2 demo had some really nice fire and smoke when the giant is set on fire. Hard to know if that's realtime playback of an authored simulation though. The smoke is nice, as is the smoke we see in The Coalition's UE5 character demo.

NSFW due to gross zombie giant thing

 

[davis.anthony]

Cryostasis is still the king of interactive water for me.

 

[milk]

Cryostasis is still the king of interactive water for me.

That's a lot of particles for surez but the end result does not behave much like actual water to my eyes.

 

[jlippo]

That's a lot of particles for surez but the end result does not behave much like actual water to my eyes.

Still quite lovely for it's time.

It's really shame that we never saw any game use flex solver for water, should have been quite a bit better.

 

[Seanspeed]

One of the issues with water is it was largely 'solved' with Uncharted and SOT. Improvements on these were incremental or just absent. There's possibly scope for next-gen water - 3D fluid dynamics, ML solver, yada yada - but in the grand scheme of graphics tech it's no longer a make-you-gasp-in-amazement feature and just placeholder water is 'good enough'.

I think we mostly moved on to reflections as the next worlds best graphics benchmark. I don't recall Fire ever getting much attention but that's been layers of sprites for donkey's years and I'm not sure anyone's managed decently modelling on that. We had the fake trailer for the dragon in a dungeon (PS3? PS4?) but the final game lacked the effect.

Dont really agree on the water front. Water continues to be a weak point visually in many games and so ones that do it really well still manage to wow me. You're right that 'good enough' can be, well, good enough, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement still.

As for fire, I definitely agree there's not been nearly enough advancements made there. Though I'd say at least explosions have gotten better(Star Wars Outlaws looks really nice here).

 

[see colon]

I don't recall Fire ever getting much attention but that's been layers of sprites for donkey's years and I'm not sure anyone's managed decently modelling on that.

There was an old PowerVR demo from the Kyro days that I think used render to texture to make a 3d model of fire that looked volumetric, and moved properly with camera perspective, but because it was a texture, they had proper transparency and maybe some other effects on it. I'm sure my mind is remembering it as much more impressive than it looks now, but I remember at the time being impressed that it worked as well as it did. This was from 2000 or 2001, so back then, if you used transparent polygons to make a volume, you always got some weirdness where some of the transparent polygons were visible though others. This solved that. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that used in a game. Also, I did a quick search to try to find the demo, but I couldn't find a video of it, nor the original file. I think it was called D3DFire.exe, though maybe it was D3D_Fire.exe.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Fire

?

 

[see colon]

Fire

?

Maybe. The description doesn't match. Maybe I'm remember it wrong.

 

[davis.anthony]

A Plaugues Tale Requiem probably has some of the best fire seen in a game released over the last few years.

In terms of water I was always fond of how it looked in Ico on PS2.

 

[Liandry]

In terms of water I was always fond of how it looked in Ico on PS2.

What can you say about water in Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance on PS2. In my opinion, that sill is best water in games.