New volumetric lighting demo

[Humus]

Another demo comes around. This time it's volumetric lighting in a fragment shader.

Looks like this:

Available here:
http://esprit.campus.luth.se/~humus/

 

[Grall]

Humus, couldn't you like combine as many of those funky effects of yours as possible and see what kind of framerate we'd get on current hardware? Maybe that would even make a good video card benchmark...

Btw, who designs the models and textures you use? All your own work, or do you use public domain stuff for that?


*G*

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

very cool, just like all your demos! Anyway I know ATI hired you awhile back... what happened to that? Did the contract just expire? I'm amazed that somebody as talented as you is not working for some company, surely somebody could use your skills... And have tried any stuff like like ATI's HDR demo and or rthdribl? The demos I've seen look really good and I'm surprised you done one yet.

 

[CorwinB]

Very nice demo !

 

[Nick[FM]]

Nice stuff! I like the "mood" in the demo. Would it be possible to add to this demo somekind of a shadow system? Maybe something like perspective shadowmaps or something?

 

[Salvee]

Wow, lighting looks great!

The girlie textures are from Unreal Tournament, right?

 

[Humus]

Humus, couldn't you like combine as many of those funky effects of yours as possible and see what kind of framerate we'd get on current hardware? Maybe that would even make a good video card benchmark...

I suppose I could, but than combining like 5 effects tend to take at least 5 times as much time, if not like 25. Not all effects works together that easily.

Btw, who designs the models and textures you use? All your own work, or do you use public domain stuff for that?

Sometimes I create my models and textures myself, but I generally suck as a modeller or texturer. For simple stuff like the gold bar in the Glow demo I can fix that myself, but for a little more complex stuff I prefer to just rip some free stuch from the web.
Sometimes, like in this demo, I use maps from games. This is the DM-Tutorial map from UT.

 

[Humus]

very cool, just like all your demos! Anyway I know ATI hired you awhile back... what happened to that? Did the contract just expire? I'm amazed that somebody as talented as you is not working for some company, surely somebody could use your skills... And have tried any stuff like like ATI's HDR demo and or rthdribl? The demos I've seen look really good and I'm surprised you done one yet.

Well, been there, came back. The contract was for ten week, that's what we agreed upon in the first place. Just wanted to finish school before going anywhere, but I've been offered to come back once I'm done at uni.

 

[Humus]

]Nice stuff! I like the "mood" in the demo. Would it be possible to add to this demo somekind of a shadow system? Maybe something like perspective shadowmaps or something?

Shadows is the only shortcoming of this technique. I've been thinking about ways to do it. Sure you can add shadows just like in anything else, but you'd want to see the shadow in the light volume. Haven't come up with a good solution on that yet, but I suppose it's doable.

 

[saf1]

very cool, just like all your demos! Anyway I know ATI hired you awhile back... what happened to that? Did the contract just expire? I'm amazed that somebody as talented as you is not working for some company, surely somebody could use your skills... And have tried any stuff like like ATI's HDR demo and or rthdribl? The demos I've seen look really good and I'm surprised you done one yet.

Way off topic, and I'm really sorry, but 'Panda - your name killed me. I pretty much have to clean up my monitor and keyboard now after laughing while drinking water...

That is a damn funny name.

 

[Luminescent]

I'll try out the demo asap.

Edit: Tried out the demo and found the volumetricity of the lights incredible.

Here is an applause for humus' hard work!!!!

 

[SirXcalibur]

Good stuff humus. One thing though. This has the same issue as the gold brick one a while ago. That is, when you look through the glowing lights they make objects behind the glow visible regardsless of their distance. Fixing that would probable change the feeling of the demo a fair bit.

I like those textures you borrowed though

 

[Luminescent]

Do any of you with the 9700/9800 pro get some texture artifacts (little dots on what appears to be the edges of triangles) with AA off?

 

[Ante P]

Uhmm, how does this run on ATi boards?
14 fps on a FX 5800 running at 510/1010 :?

And I also get flickering yellow dots along some polygon edges here and there (not much though)

 

[Miksu]

Do any of you with the 9700/9800 pro get some texture artifacts (little dots on what appears to be the edges of triangles) with AA off?

Yep, same here with 9700Pro and Cat 3.4. Turning AA & Aniso off didn't do anything to performance, I seem to be maxed out somewhere near 21fps. Didn't notice a way to change resolution, it must be defaulting to 1600x1200 because my refreshrate dropped to 60Hz.

Anyway, really nice looking demo.

 

[tEd]

i get around 40-50fps with 4xAA 16xAF on my r9700pro(320/620) cat3.4

 

[Hyp-X]

Didn't notice a way to change resolution.

Press Alt+Enter, then change resolution from the menu.

 

[Humus]

This has the same issue as the gold brick one a while ago. That is, when you look through the glowing lights they make objects behind the glow visible regardsless of their distance. Fixing that would probable change the feeling of the demo a fair bit.

The problem is the non-linear distribution of luminance. Try raising you gamma to around 2.2 and the effect is gone (though the mood is kinda half destroyed with that gamma value). Mathematically, it shouldn't make the background more visible. But the value of say 4 vs 5 in the framebuffer makes for less contrast than when I add glow and it's more like 130 vs 131 which makes the background details more visible.

 

[Humus]

Do any of you with the 9700/9800 pro get some texture artifacts (little dots on what appears to be the edges of triangles) with AA off?

Yes, that's because the source geometry contains T-junctions. So you get some pixel leakage. AA cleans it up though since it takes 6x as many samples at the edges (assuming 6xAA) so whenever it leaks it generally only gets 1/6 the effect.

 

[Humus]

Uhmm, how does this run on ATi boards?
14 fps on a FX 5800 running at 510/1010 :?

What resolution is that?
I'm getting 41fps in 1024x768 with 6xAA/16xAF.