I absolutely agree with you. However, CLOD had great sunsets not because the team did a great job, but because they used a clever technique to emulate atmospheric scattering that was developed by someone else.

Here is his website, just scroll down to atmosphere to see what I am talking about (incidentally, his teams work on clouds are also worth a look, hint hint 777)
http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Membres/Eric.Bruneton/

CLOD literally uses his code. If you look through the shader files, which can be done with ketegys extractor, you will see that the "new sky" sections is credited to him and line for line identical to his work.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. He released his work for free, and several other titles have used it to great effect. Space Engine being one of the best examples - and something I highly recommend anyone with an interest in space or modern rendering techniques to download. Its really is that amazing.

+1

As a person who has had a keen interest in photography since being a child, and who also enjoys 3d modelling, I can definitely back what you are saying.

Far too many games on the market today push the contrast up until its far too "punchy". The end result is tons of blown out highlights and crushed blacks, with little subtly in the mid range. It looks unnatural, but some people prefer it. Compounding this problem is that textures themselves often have far to much contrast - things like a gravel road or blocks of cement should never have areas of pure white and pure black!!!

And I've found that most people who work professionally in the area of graphics in games (emphasis on the games part) almost never have any background in photography. Instead they base their work on what their peers are doing. Ideas that are common to even the most entry level photographer are completely foreign to them (again, in my experience. They are a few people I've met who work a bit differently then the norm)

And there are plenty of other problems inherit to real time rendering that compound the above issues.....

But I'll miss how CLOD had the eye of a photographer behind it. I have never seen a game that did things like bloom right until I saw CLOD. Hopefully 777 will be taking some notes.

When you photograph something, you will consider whole scene, but usually have some part of it, which is the most important and which needs to be emphasized, so you can let some other parts suffer a bit without much heartache. The most difficult photographs are the ones, which have been taken while making hard compromise on what had to be preserved, and what not. Sim is like those difficult photographs, because you can't know, what will be important for player or what should made important for player. It is very different from some action/rpg/horror games, in which you have to emphasize things to create emotional atmosphere. Sims artists aim for average cases, but unfortunately average will always remain just average, so there always will be things to be "picked" on.

That explains it. Thank you for the info. I thought Oleg, being a proffesional photographer made that natural lighting engine. It looks very interesting. I think I'll post this in the requests for BOS ,hopefully Jasson is willing to get that into the new game.



Absolutle agree with you. This is the part about CLOD that had the biggest impact on me from the start. Nobody ever got the lighting so close to natural. It blew me away. That's why I got my old copy of the game going again. I really missed that natural beauty.

This is all pretty interesting (no sarcasm), and surprisingly well-mannered. What I prefer in RoF over CloD (visually) most is the horizon. I don't know about the technical side of it, but the RoF horizon is the closest to what I see IRL that I've come across in games.

I think that this really helps to conjure up the sense of distance and the volume of space that you're "flying" in. What also helps is the maintenance of resolution of plane models at distance, so that when you look over the side of your cockpit and see little aeroplanes wheeling about below you, they really appear to be in the distance rather than just smaller sprites. This in turn gives you a feeling of height.

As has been pointed out, it's all subjective, but I don't get those same sensations when flying CloD.

nice discussion.
I may have somethings to add to this, coming from a slightly different perspective.

First off, in R/L i'm a lighting designer, mainly in a 'rock 'n roll' context, tho have done quite a bit in theatre also.
I did a degree in Biophysics (a long time ago). 3rd yr project was on frog eyeballs.
I've repainted the 'odd cockpit' in IL2.

My first point would be that the human eye works in a different way to a camera, then the 'image' is translated by that most adaptive computer, the human brain.
This is not to disparage photography, just that there are differences in how they 'see' the world.
TV cameras in particular. are somewhat restricted in the variation of light level, colour temperature and also require 'backlight' to bring the subject out from the background.
The eye/brain combination is much better at this with even very dim scattered light as long as the visual 'clues' remain consistent. If something inconsistent is seen though, alarm bells go off in the brain- is that a sabre toothed tiger looking for a snack?! It is this ability to spot something wrong that any game designer has to avoid triggering as it destroys the illusion of 'being there'- things like black shadows.

Anyway, enough waffle from me

Lol... from one LD to another (nodding buckets are much too clinical compared to a parcan and specs rig :) )

This is one thing that imediately struck at me when they modified the lighting engine. If you looked at the sun, just after sunrise, in the old engine, you could see the colors of the entire area around the sun. and scatered light. The human eye can see that color.
The new "fix" made it work like a cheap camera on auto. when looking straight at the sun, they turned everything else but the sun disc in grey. This was a clear example of royally dumbing down of the lighting engine.

Here are two images that show the difference:
Old way of doing it:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...107_202855.jpg


And the "fixed" engine.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps95289997.png

Here is a paper on a slightly different method of atmospheric scattering. Incidentally, this is what Xplane 10 uses.
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPU...chapter16.html

Scroll down to section 16.6 where it talks about HDR, but here is the important pic.
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPU...pheric_04a.jpg

Left is with HDR, right is without.

Guess what MG fixed... er, I should say removed...

That first pic is rather wonderful Jaws.

Every time i fire up the old version of the game i have, and think about where we are now, and specially where we are heading, I want to kick a puppy.:evil: