HDR in the Crytekdemo, not only for Nv. (56k warning)

There's the obligatory matrix code running down on one monitor... and then the obligatory monitor with crap code on it (asdfasdf stuff)

 

Bloom and HDR are actually pretty subtle effects if you use them to replicate real life. In fact, you may not even know you're looking at them, which is probably why everyone cranks them way up so you can point at them and go "HEY LOOK!!! IT'S BLOOM!!!"

 

HDR is not an effect. It is the underlying high fidelity colorspace that allows a great many effects to be implemented without bringing out limitations in the underlying data or by using 'strange tricks'. From what I gather it only addresses using high precision color and light values (FP16 in the case of OpenEXR half and FP32 in full). The floating point nature allows subtle color/light values to accumulate/blend before the final 8-bit (per channel) value is determined. Without this you may empahsize or de-emphasize calculations as you are forced to round ot the nearest integer.

One interesting thing about this is that the "HDR patch" in Far Cry 1.3 did not bring with it the assets needed to make full/correct use of HDR. If you look in contemporary games you will see that textures are pre-lit to enhance the look. With HDR you don't have the problem of highlights and shadows playing havoc with the color range so this should make life easier for texture artists as they only need to calibrate to one neutral/bias and map designers should not have to worry about where they place their lights and with what intensity because the blending can cope without the need to clamp values all over the place. At least that is my understanding of it not being a game/3D developer.

Edit: had to correct my own thoughts because somehow I managed to absorb 'bad data' from elsewhere and temporarily presented HDR as "high definition rendering" instead of High Dynamic Range. That's what I get for reading too many forum posts.

 

HDR is the biggest, useless crap i've seen. I disabled it immediately in Far Cry after I saw what it does. HDR is far from being real. Only bloom effect in a way done in Half Life 2 brings the picture to reality.

 

How does one get it to work o na 9800 Pro? I get a bunch of errors like this:

[SSGenericAPI_D3D.cpp] (line 1256): Can't compile HLSL pixel shader. The D3D error message is:
(1706): error X5608: Compiled shader code uses too many arithmetic instruction slots (69). Max. allowed by the target (ps_2_0) is 64.
[oRubyHelmetSk.ssh] (line 329): Error creating Pixel Shader

 

Again, it doesn't do anything, it just allows things to be done with great accuracy and, therefore, preserving image integrity. Personally, I consider HDR to be the biggest thing to happen in 3D rendering in a long time. It's like a CD player. You can't blame your CD player, amplifier, and speaker setup when you don't like the music it is playing. Instead, hope for better artists to produce CDs that carry data you enjoy.

People may want to look here: http://www.openexr.com/samples.html and realize that the first image in the sequence is a HDR image as well. It simply allows the adjustments in the following samples to be made without losing much of the data in the image (casued by clamping ranges when a greter range is not available).

 

I was heard, that the HDR implementation in NV40 is somehow "broken", and that results in low FP-blending performance (just like the OVP issues).
The NV43 was planned to fix this !?

 

Fellix, it seems a few people jumped the gun on making that conclusion. An investigation will soon be at hand.

 

No. Its just CryTek is using it in a "look we have HDR" way. The content wasn't designed for it so it looks like utter crap. CryTek couldn't have just implimented it in their next game and built the content for that...no, they needed to prove their measly little engine was advanced in some area and not about as advanced as UT2004, so they tacked stuff on.

Hell, CryEngine should be called the "TackedOn engine", because a lot of it is just "ME TOO!!!". HDR is an example of them trying to be one step ahead of the competition. They also added Stencil Volumes that work in VERY limited cases, and they work only indoors, and they only work on a select few things. Also, they tacked on 3Dc, another "ME TOO!" technology.

Finally...they really went overboard on the specular mapping! God, could they have made it any more shiny?

Ok back to the subject of HDR...Look at UE3. It has HDR, and man, does it fit in and add to the visual fidelity instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. Doom 3's engine apparently has HDR, but Carmack is not a man who "tacks" things on and he makes sure that it works well, works universally and is done right, so thats why (im thinking) the HDR was cut from the shipping build.

As Chalnoth told me, it's not really a big deal to add HDR. But redesigning the content to do so IS a big deal. Does CryTek really think that their solution is superior to licence than D3 or UE3? THATS why they keep tacking on this crap.

Ok, End rant.

 

MRT - Multiple Render Targets?

That would be my guess and normally what MRT stands for.

Anyways its not OpenEXR and the one in FarCry isn't either. OpenEXR is just a high defination image format not a rendering method.

 

I wonder how good multiple FP16 render targets will look.

 

Multiple render targets work by flip flopping between render targets from what I recall for each effect. Someone correct me if I'm wrong though.

 

I reduced the demo's res to 800x600 (modifying the system.cfg) to get the "HDR" to show. At default res the demo crashed with HDR activated after about 1s of playback.

The demo runs fine at all resolutions and settings otherwise.

Running 128MB 256-bit 9800 Pro with Cat 4.12beta. My 9800 Pro is quite new, but I dunno what core it has.

Jawed