BoB lighting capabilities. OpenGL and Direct X question. HDR/Caustics supported?

[Mysticpuma]

So at the moment IL2 runs in OpenGL, and it appears that from Oleg's posts (and others) that BoB is being built around OpenGL as-well.

So with BoB does OpenGl support HDR lighting, caustics, radiosity and bump-mapping?

Sorry, I just don't know, but after seeing Crysis video, HDR, I think, would enhance the immersion and realism no-end.

Thoughts on this please?

Cheers, MP.

[Bulau]

I think even existing IL-2/FB/PF support bump-mapping, at least for terrain. You can see the effect when sun is low, and the texture map will generate shadows. The addition of self-shading to aircraft, IMO, would add significatly to realism.

I'm not sure where caustics might come into play in the sim, or if the performance price would be worth it. Radiosity (diffuse interreflection) would look nice, but again, at what cost performance wise?

I'm going to have to google HDR and see what that is.

[Feuerfalke]

Bump-mapping works with OpenGL and DirectX. You can allready see the effect in the renders of the Spitfire where the rivets and stuff are quite overdone to show the possibilities.
But HDR lighting, caustics and radiosity?
A friend of mine works as a 3D-artist for a games company. He stated several times that using D3D offers a great variety of effects you can only software-simulate under OpenGL with a lot of workarounds and extra-scripting.

I have not enough insight into his business, but it seems you have to make the decision to either be able to run a game on a wide range of operating systems using OpenGL or go for effects and eyecandy and use D3D. Downside of this is, that Vista does not fully support OpenGL AFAIK.
Instead it uses a new driver-version to emulate OpenGL via D3D with heavy losses in performance and quality. I hope this is not true or there is a workaround when BoB is released. Demanding many customers to switch back to XP for the complete life-cycle of StormOfWar will be a death-sentence.

[proton45]

IMO a lot of the dynamic lighting "effects" look great, but are most useful at ground level...95% of time we will be flying thousands of feet off the ground and I'm not sure that it would be worth the "hit" in fps...

Even though I spend a lot of time "ground pounding" and a detailed (beautifully lit) landscape would be wonderful, generally I'm flying by at 200mph (or more) and I don't have a lot of time to check out the sun shining through the leaves in the morning mist, above a reflective pond filled with fish...

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

Feuerfalke, it is not true about vista and openGL, I get almost the same performance with il2 in vista as I do in xp.

[Feuerfalke]

Feuerfalke, it is not true about vista and openGL, I get almost the same performance with il2 in vista as I do in xp.

Almost is the key. And IL2 is not as hardware-demanding as BoB will be and it uses very much standard-effects AFAIK.

[Codex]

The current engine in IL-2 1946 only bump-maps water AKAIK. There are no height maps used for the aircraft skins so no bump-mapping there, as for the terrain a lot of review sites have stated bump-mapping is used on the terrain but I fail to see it.

As for OpenGL, it runs fine under Vista its just not supported natively, meaning when you installed NT to XP, DX and OpenGL was installed with it, with Vista only DX is installed. Under Vista the OpenGL API has to be installed as an ICD and this is done with your video card drivers. The disadvantage of OpenGL v DX under Vista is that OpenGL doesn't have access to the memory optimisations that DX has, so to get the same optimisations the programmer needs to code more in an OpenGL game rather than have the OS do it for it aka more work for the programmer.

Almost all of the graphical techniques used in DX10 can be done in OpenGL2.1, it just needs a little more work/coding to do it.

[proton45]

The current engine in IL-2 1946 only bump-maps water AKAIK. There are no height maps used for the aircraft skins so no bump-mapping there, as for the terrain a lot of review sites have stated bump-mapping is used on the terrain but I fail to see it.

As for OpenGL, it runs fine under Vista its just not supported natively, meaning when you installed NT to XP, DX and OpenGL was installed with it, with Vista only DX is installed. Under Vista the OpenGL API has to be installed as an ICD and this is done with your video card drivers. The disadvantage of OpenGL v DX under Vista is that OpenGL doesn't have access to the memory optimisations that DX has, so to get the same optimisations the programmer needs to code more in an OpenGL game rather than have the OS do it for it aka more work for the programmer.

Almost all of the graphical techniques used in DX10 can be done in OpenGL2.1, it just needs a little more work/coding to do it.

one place you can see bump-mapping is on the frozen rivers of any winter map...

[WTE_Tigger]

Frankly the more thats possible to be enabled the better, as long as you can dissable a setting for lower end PC's the more dynamic effects supported the better, think the long term folks, the SoW engine will be around a few years and PC tech will continue to advance.

Me I would like to see support for PhysiX by Ageia. Now that would really set SoW apart from any other similair product.

My 2c.

S!

Tiggs

[Chivas]

I know nothing about opengl or dx9 or 10, but its interesting that water in IL-2's opengl seems alot better than anything I've seen in DX9 FSX. I haven't upgraded FSX to DX10, but know it has been improved, but not sure by how much.

[Bulau]

The current engine in IL-2 1946 only bump-maps water AKAIK. There are no height maps used for the aircraft skins so no bump-mapping there, as for the terrain a lot of review sites have stated bump-mapping is used on the terrain but I fail to see it.
It's quite noticeable on terrain if you set a late afternoon time, so the sun is low. It's not necessary to use a separate height map...you can bump-map a texture using itself as the bump-map, interpreting light/dark transitions in the texture as changes in height or angle. Or am I using wrong terminology?

I may have to revise my comment about caustics...I was recently testing some maps for SEOW, and noticed a line about caustics flash by in the console as the mission was loading, so perhaps there is already some support for it in the existing game. Perhaps to do with water in shallow areas?

[Feuerfalke]

I know nothing about opengl or dx9 or 10, but its interesting that water in IL-2's opengl seems alot better than anything I've seen in DX9 FSX. I haven't upgraded FSX to DX10, but know it has been improved, but not sure by how much.

Well, FS9 or FSX is not really a good example for realistic water with DX. ;)

[Codex]

It's quite noticeable on terrain if you set a late afternoon time, so the sun is low. It's not necessary to use a separate height map...you can bump-map a texture using itself as the bump-map, interpreting light/dark transitions in the texture as changes in height or angle. Or am I using wrong terminology?

Might be, but I haven't seen an example of bump mapping that doesn't use a height map. You might be thinking of Parallax mapping.


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