Sadly overlooked effects

Shifty Geezer

Shifty Geezer

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We've got DOF and motionblur aplenty now. We've got per-pixel lighting and normal maps, and fancy reflections, and we've had good water for ages. But some effects are just utter rubbish. Watching some Motorstorm vids, the fire trails are some of the worst computer game graphics I've ever noticed because they stand out like a sore thumb. A sequence of yellow starfish (supposedly tongues of flame) fly back and then suddenly disappear. They don't even fade out! It looks awful. They need an advanced flame simulator+renderer running on a SPE! Then Lair could borrow it and give us the fire from the trailer instead of it's own variation of yellow-particle-spray.

What other minor effects are remaining stand-out eyesores in current games? Can they be improved with simple artistic workarounds, or are advanced technologies needed to solve them?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Watching some Motorstorm vids, the fire trails are some of the worst computer game graphics I've ever noticed because they stand out like a sore thumb. A sequence of yellow starfish (supposedly tongues of flame) fly back and then suddenly disappear. They don't even fade out! It looks awful.
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True that!

They could use volumetric fire to do that but maybe it is too much to ask? Dunno, one could use it in the crash-replay, then use standard spritestuff on gameplay if too much overhead.

Crysis has volumetric fire and I think it doesnt go far from the F1 Championship implementation?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
They need an advanced flame simulator+renderer running on a SPE! Then Lair could borrow it and give us the fire from the trailer instead of it's own variation of yellow-particle-spray.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't even go so far as to say they "NEED" an advanced simulator.. They NEED better artistic flame representation but with a dev team who were so pushed for time that they didn't even include 2 player or online player, I'd expect that they didn't have much time to care about updating the fire effects to be fair..

Shifty Geezer said:
What other minor effects are remaining stand-out eyesores in current games? Can they be improved with simple artistic workarounds, or are advanced technologies needed to solve them?
Click to expand...

In my oppinion the vast majority of games have particles and effects that just don't work well.. The majority of developers i've spoken just don't seem to consider improvement in this area necessary since they believe people don't care about such effects but in my oppinion they matter significantly in terms of defining the overall visual appeal of a game.. Alot of developers are pushing for volumetric particle systems/simulators for whatever they can think of just because its an easy way to say "look what we can do on this shiny new console that show just how much more powerful it is!" but without the proper artistic care, even the most technically accurate cloud simulations (capable on modern hardware) still have the potential to just look ugly..

Take for example a game like ZOE 2.. This game for me is by far one of the most beautiful games i have ever played, not because it has DOF, HDR or bump mapping.. Not becuase it uses GI or has some wierd and wonderful technical effects that have never been done before n a game and take up half the processor in real-time.. But becuase what it does have (animated-textured models, textured-environments, billboard particles & point sprites.. basically nothing that hasn't been seen beofre from a technical standpoint..) it does EXCEPTIONALLY WELL..

The smoke/explosions on ZOE2 are some of the best I've seen in a video game and they work well, not because they are volumetric (because they aren't) or because it's a technical masterpiece, but because it's an artistic one..

I think the vast majority of games (gritty realistic or cartoony/light-hearted) could all benefit from much more time taken investing in not just powerful, but beautiful effects engines which really bring the game to life rather than having the terrible contrast of amazing very high res static environements, highly detailed sparse characters on screen and PSOne particles for gunfire and explosion (CoD anyone..?)

It's these kinds of things which really ruin the visual appeal of games for me..

Just my 2 cents.. (maybe a bit more like £5..);)
 
I can understand your complaint about MotorStoem but why are you complaining about LAIR? A game that is FAR from finished :rolleyes:
 
Shifty Geezer said:
we've had good water for ages.
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i would have to disagree with this one. in the past few years some good games with some great water simulation have come out but i STILL see a lot of games using flat water. games using real waves and water with a real sense of bouyancy are still in the minority. also about water, i think one of the hardest things to do in games right now, and it shows because it still looks like crap most of the time, is when people or creatures come up out of the water, or dive in. even in Gears of War

* spoiler alert * [highlight text to read]
when you kill the big spider crab thing and it falls into the emulsion liquid, it just looks totally fake. a few crappy bubbles came up but that was about it. everything looked great up until that point and then when i saw that i thought it looked a lot like some old effects from Metroid Prime. tsk tsk... we still need much better water interaction! i want to see water running off creatures as they come out of water and i want to see them make waves and tidal pools etc when things dive in.
* end spoiler *

i still think super mario sunshine's water beats a lot of next gen water. fire is going to be another tough one, but the Lost Planet explosions do look great. pretty much everything related to like, solid surfaces and objects are looking great but i think when trying to recreate the natural elements of fire, water, wind, atmosphere etc, things get a LOT more complicated.
 
Eagle-Vision said:
And the best fire goes with games from Capcom (REs, or for a more recent example, DMC4).
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It's artistically good but it's technically just flat animated textures like any others.

An effect that could be labbeled with the "next-gen" monicker would be a fluid simulation effect. There's a video of a Hellgate demonstration of D3D10 effects, in the PC games forum, that shows a fluid model based smoke effect, if you want to see an in game implementation.
 
Vysez said:
It's artistically good but it's technically just flat animated textures like any others.

An effect that could be labbeled with the "next-gen" monicker would be a fluid simulation effect. There's a video of a Hellgate demonstration of D3D10 effects, in the PC games forum, that shows a fluid model based smoke effect, if you want to see an in game implementation.
Click to expand...

Was it just a flat animated texture in RE4? At least on gamecube, there seemed to be some awesome dynamic lighting related to it.
 
almighty said:
Half Life 2 has the best water IMHO
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Yeah, I like HL2's water also :D . Many of the games I've seen has what I call a "jell-o" water, because thats exactly how it looks like :LOL: .

For future games, Bioshock has some pretty good water effects and simulations(then again, it doesnt come as a surprise since the developer stated about that in the video)

My favorite fire effects were Far Cry and Crysis. Theres some nice flames in that game :smile:
 
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