Arguments for and against photo scenery

[Codex]

I get what they're trying to do but using satellite images for the land scape "looks" fake anyway. The problem is not that it's a photo, the problem is that its a static image, i.e. the lighting and colour doesn't change when the camera changes position.

A somewhat better approach might be to use photos of objects and use those images as textures, but you'd need to run some pretty intensive pixel shaders to make even these look realistic as you'll always have the lighting of the object to content with when the image was taken.

To recreate photo realistic images is the holy grail of the games industry, and from what I've learned the only real solution is ray tracing but we're a long way off from that being a real time possibility.

Originally Posted by Codex

To recreate photo realistic images is the holy grail of the games industry, and from what I've learned the only real solution is ray tracing but we're a long way off from that being a real time possibility.

5 years ! thats what the head of nvidia stated not so long ago.


its funny all these topical debates. because in the end theres somthing we dont like about Clod scenery, but it beats all other sceneries out there for flightsims. its marvelous in its construction imo.

[Codex]

Originally Posted by Ali Fish

5 years ! thats what the head of nvidia stated not so long ago.

If he was referring to OptiX it's still only a software engine at the moment (I think) using the GPU, and even with 3 Fermi cores in SLI, displaying one model, you get a slide show at best. Maybe in 5 years you might get it smooth enough, but to use it in a sim, even after 5 years from now, I doubt it. It would need to be hardware implemented meaning part of the graphics pipeline and that would mean a HUGE video card, like an Octo GPU solution or something crazy like with an equally crazy power supply ... lol. It is promising though. I'd give it 10 years

[Rattlehead]

Originally Posted by Codex

but using satellite images for the land scape "looks" fake anyway.

In my eyes it does too. Not a fan of it myself.