zed, I find your arguments a bit strange.
You insist that cube mapping is a 'crap' form of representing a reflection, yet at the same time you claim if we were to use a significantly worse approximate (ronald...) then most people still wouldn't notice... Isn't this a bit silly? Cubemaps serve their purpose because they are fast, and fool the eye of the casual observer. They also can be quite easily optimised without having much of an effect on image quality, Eg, add fog + limited draw distance, and they still look fine for the most part.
It's only when developers make a hash of implementation that I get annoyed. It's inexcusable really. Test-drive unlimited is a prime example. I simply can't drive some cars as the backwards reflections are so distracting. Even the rear view mirrors (which are sphere maps) are done badly - when you look down, the reflection also 'looks down'. Urgh!
It was so distracting I complained on the atari forum but clearly it wasn't fixed...
Best example of Cubemap usage I can think of is PGR3. The combination of (I assume) FP10, and their correct usage looks awesome in comparison. They only thing they really needed to have done was mask the reflection of the windshield on the internal view (ie, have a static reflection mask of the insides of the car).
You insist that cube mapping is a 'crap' form of representing a reflection, yet at the same time you claim if we were to use a significantly worse approximate (ronald...) then most people still wouldn't notice... Isn't this a bit silly? Cubemaps serve their purpose because they are fast, and fool the eye of the casual observer. They also can be quite easily optimised without having much of an effect on image quality, Eg, add fog + limited draw distance, and they still look fine for the most part.
It's only when developers make a hash of implementation that I get annoyed. It's inexcusable really. Test-drive unlimited is a prime example. I simply can't drive some cars as the backwards reflections are so distracting. Even the rear view mirrors (which are sphere maps) are done badly - when you look down, the reflection also 'looks down'. Urgh!
It was so distracting I complained on the atari forum but clearly it wasn't fixed...
Best example of Cubemap usage I can think of is PGR3. The combination of (I assume) FP10, and their correct usage looks awesome in comparison. They only thing they really needed to have done was mask the reflection of the windshield on the internal view (ie, have a static reflection mask of the insides of the car).
