Graphics engine improvement

[zGuba]

Interesting idea!

I saw it ingame recently, during rain. Dunno if that was scripted.

[Alselius]

First of all my discontent might be caused by my monitor or graphics card so if the problems here sound unfamiliar the disregard the entire post.

I downloaded the Invasion 1944 mod recently and noticed that night-time missions without night vision goggles look very bad for a military sim.

First, contrast at night is terribly high - I can easily spot targets hundreds of meters away because ground texture is way lighter than soldiers/cars/whatever. I tried decreasing my monitor's contrast and played around with the brightness and gamma settings but wasn't still fully satisfied.

My second problem is the overall darkness during night. In real life, even in winter you can still see pretty well to some distance once your eyes get used to the lack of light. When I messed around in the editor last night I couldn't see my gun or the grass in front of me even in the middle of summer.

Enough of ranting; my point is that missions in bad lighting conditions would be amazing if the engine could make them immersive enough. I've been thinking of making brightness/contrast dependent of time and date but I don't know if that would do the trick.

[Dreahack]

Just please remake the game with your new engine ...


Rocket launcher kills a tank but not a helicopter on the ground .... what a big joke.

[NeuroFunker]

acutally in winter at night, you can see alot better cause of snow (and maybe becuase of something else)

[BasileyOne]

basically i more missing decent lighting from OFP:R in Arma2 :[
cute skies, sun, sun effects[those who never played OFP, maybe played Stalker games 2 get what i mean], even stars, comets.
ie, FAIR light, where you believe in what you see.
thats why i ALWAYS turn on volumetric clouds on servers i install/manage :P

also kinda await use of Directx11 by BIS, unlimited anymore to two-streams/back-ends, like previous API revisions and thus - extremely scalable per/CPU-cores.
BIS also can adopt OpenGL/OpenCL optional renderer too["unsuported(yet option", huh ?], sooner, cause Intel moves to OpenCL too.

It would also be nice to see temperature effects in game like seeing your breath when its cold.

its done on some UE-based games.
pp shader, i guess.
heated air[from used gun or environment objects], and trembling visual chiling effect in different one.
basically its better use for GPU shaders than extra-AA/Bloom/USM, like done in [somewhat interesting in other aspects]Crysis2.

combined with amBX (https://www.ambx.com/wiki/Main_Page http://www.microlp.co.uk/amBX/ https://www.facebook.com/amBX.1 ) support to control lightning/airflow/vibration/etc environmental stuff put WAY more immersion into Arma2 or VBS2.

[Samurai]

Hi everyone! Yes, I don't read the whole 72 pages of text and maybe it is already written by someone here. But as it has no progress, I decide to write it:

Graphics in ArmA 2 is great and even if it runs on DX9 it can compete with many curr-gen games except 1 very "visible" disadvantage:
Only Sun casts the shadows!
No other lights do that even with buildings and other big objects, and this is looking very queerly.
I think engine can do that (the Sun can, why other lights can't?) correct me, if I wrong. And this "feature" will make the game much more authentic and beautiful.

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Edited:
Ha-ha! ) While I writing the reply, BasileyOne already wrote about fair lighting )

[PuFu]

Only Sun casts the shadows!
No other lights do that even with buildings and other big objects, and this is looking very queerly.
I think engine can do that (the Sun can, why other lights can't?) correct me, if I wrong. And this "feature" will make the game much more authentic and beautiful.

-------------------
Edited:
Ha-ha! ) While I writing the reply, BasileyOne already wrote about fair lighting )

Just to let you know, not even A3 will have shadows for multiple light sources (although this time around the engine will support more than A2's light sources - sun and moon). There's hope for deferred lighting, but not in the initial release (might have changed due to postponing of the game further into 2013).
There won't be any improvements on this part of the engine for A2/OA though

[metalcraze]

the Sun can, why other lights can't?

As far as I see it it's because BIS will either have to do everything or do only sun/moon. Imagine a scene where a car is a lightsource and 3 guys exit it and turn on flashlights. You can't just draw shadows from one flashlight and ignore the other lightsources because it will look even worse (your flashlight will make some wall/barrel/car cast shadows, but other flashlights will just penetrate through it). How many PCs will handle so many real-time shadow calculations at once?

Of course other games like L4D2 and BF3 have a compromise of rendering only player's flashlight and everybody else just have a graphic of it shining (but not casting any light) or limiting number of light sources (like Killing Floor which turns your flashlight off if somebody else is trying to turn a 5th one on) - but it won't work in a game like ArmA where you must see what everybody else sees.

[machielste]

I´d like that

[RadicalAtHeart]

This game badly needs PhysX. It would help a lot in firefight situations. Offload the CPU and SLI systems are a win.