Yet another graphics related thread

If SD/IC made a new engine instead of updating the existing Iron Engine i could see more eye candy work being done like what you are expecting. The fact that they got shadows, and afaik shader 3.0 in this engine at all is impressive in itself. So my guess would be that no it wouldnt be very cost effective to re-write the entire engine from scratch. Right now from the screens the ships look to be on par with HW2 minus the turret animations. Which we all know is not gonna happen. HW2 IIRC had shadows, but no bump mapping, and little to no specular, or reflection mapping. It took modders (Mainly CnlPepper) to add new shaders into HW2.

Why would you want the ships to look like "plastic" anyway? IMO vanilla HW2 looks far more "plastic" than sins.

Thank you for your answer. I think its obvious, why i want the ships look more plastic, it looks less 2D-ish that way. And yes, vanilla HW2 looks more plastic than Sins, thats why it looks IMHO better than Sins, despite the lack of specular shaders or bump. Again, but plastic, i do not actually mean "made of plastic", i am talking about looking 3D.

Just for comparison>

rebellion

HW2

Gemini Wars

 It is difficult to explain, but IMHO both on Homeworld and Gemini Wars the ships look like having depth or mass, with Sins this is not the case, i wonder whether this is technical or graphics style thing.

I see your point about the contrast. TBH i am not really sure if shadow contrast will be adjustable, or even moddable. We wont know until rebellion is released.

Its all about perspective. I think that is what you refer to as "plastic". Again i am not sure what if anything that could be done.

I think self-shadowing and ambient occlusion would have the greatest effect for plasticity. But I don't think we will have that for Rebellion, though I pray for self-shadowing (AO can be baked into textures afterall)

Hi Tobi,

how are you doing?

What do you mean by self-shadowing? Part of the ship casting shadow on another part of the same ship? Does this happen not on default, when you add shadow system?

 EDIT:

This is obviously not ingame screenshot, but this is how the lightning should look like. Both Starbase and Titan look far more "3D-ish" than on the ingame screenshots. It is difficult to believe that to achieve this  some kind of heavy work would be required.

I feel like the overall scale of the game might have something to do with this too. Considering how massive the game is, the ships feel a little wimpy to look at. Just a little thought

True. You have to consider the sheer volume of units that will be on the map as well. Now we got shadows. So that will be that much more strain on existing hardware. I plan on updating my video card soon, but some who play Diplomacy with lower end hardware are gonna have to consider upgrading as well if they want decent FPS with the shadows.

That screenshot (Obviously taken in XSI, or 3dsmax) looks like it had a different field of view than what we see in game (Its a perspective thing). The shadows are much darker than what the posted in game shots show as well. Certainly the contrast can be changed.

In Diplomacy focus on a fighter with a cap ship behind it, and take a screen shot. Then a frigate with a cap ship, and do the same. Then a few cap ships together. You will see there is perspective in the game, but when you focus on a huge fleet you dont notice it that much.

I hope my GTX 260 keeps up ok. I don't see upgrading for another year or so.

Thanks, was on vacation a couple of days (much needed) and am now fine again. Work on sotyr is progressing slowly, but davroth give much input.

As for your question, self-shadowing and shadowing can be implemented independently of each other (there are/were many games that implement a simple or more complex shadowing system but do not implement self-shadowing). I do hope they have both in because it does not look realistic the other way.

Sins graphics with the mods that enhance explosions lighting/beams etc is fine. Yeah some of the ships lack some depth but the battles are insane and is why I play the game. I don't want a game lagging to 2 fps because someone felt they needed more textures on a ship.

Yes, but sins is not lagging because of the graphics. It's CPU-bottlenecked. Our gfx-cards could do much much much more (see skyrim, crysis, ...)

I agree, I think the key issue here is scale.  Sins is massive where you can be fighting multiple battles on multiple fronts and it needs to maintain a good frame rate.  There are already issues late game with frame rate even on beefy systems. The engine as is great for handling the scale.  Yes HW 2 looks great for it's time, but the battles are never as large IMHO.  

Yeah, but that is again all about CPUs, not graphics. Your GPU is stressed with things that need to be displayed on the viewscreen, not with things, which happen on some other front.

@DannoOMG - i do not think my issue with the graphics is "texture" related, textures in Sins are quite fine and high-res. It is the lightning, which makes the game look not so good, as it could. Granted, proper lightning simulation can be very computing-intensive, that is why we still do not have pathtracing within computer games.

BTW one major difference between the looks of Call of Duty games and Battlefield 3 is lightning as well. Actual gun/character models in CoD - at least Modern Warfare 3 - are pretty decent, environment could be indeed better, but it is acceptable, so are material shaders and things like specular highlights, but the light - the light is nowhere near the BF3 standard. Scenes on MW3 look like its overcast day even though its meant to be sunny weather, they look dull and not "live" enough. Basically  the same issue as with Sins. 

Agreed, lightning is the thing that breezes life into graphics. But Sins is a dx9 game and as such has not the full graphical capabilities of dx10+ including the lightning models. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

You are correct. Sins is DX 9. So it will never be able to compete with DX 10, or 11 games. However Nexus the Jupiter Incident was a DX 8/9 game, but managed to pull off graphics that could stand up to todays stuff.. Pity the game itself sucked. Same could be said for Haegemonia: Legions of Iron. Again a dx 8/9 game, but with graphics that stand the test of time. I would KILL to have Haeg's particles, and explosions in Sins. I dont think its an engine issue, or DX issue. Its just how the game was made. I think with some tweaks Sins could surprise many people.

Couldn't they just make a patch for the games graphics in the future?

Yeah, i recall old Need For Speed Most Wanted looking fairly well, that was DX9 for sure. Not to mention the first Crysis, which look basically the same in both DX9 and DX10 mode. Granted these are different kind of games, in certain ways uncomparable to Sins, but my point is, as far i know, generally you can make pretty much same looking game under both DX9 and DX10/11, the main asset of newer DX versions is improved efficiency.

I loved that game and its expansion "the solon heritage". Was one of the greatest space strategy games ever. If only they had supported modding....

Its not an engine issue but per se - one can use dx9 for wonderful graphics. But dx10+ has new lightning and shading tweaks that can be used for more realistic lightning. But first I vote for HDR Skybox textures (if one looks at the early hdr demos of the radeon9700 - that was a stunning lightning model demo! Only using HSLS 2.0)

Self-shadowing!! YESS!

http://pc.gamespy.com/dor/objects/126556/sins-of-a-solar-empire-rebellion/images/sins-of-a-solar-empire-rebellion-20120217063944694.html?page=mediaFull

I think adjustments in the contrast is enough to make SOSE feel a little bit less plastic. Here is a rebellion shot I edited with merely just contrast values and it looks plenty fine (even without the contrast the original shot looked fine).

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2926042/contrastsins.png

You will more than likely be able to customize your contrast in the game on your own but if you can't I guess you can do it via your GPU's drivers control centers or just flat out live with what the game gives you.

Yes, self shadowing. I hope IC kept all those original textures of the original models before they baked the AO on them, perhaps some reduction in the opacity of the AO layer could be benificial. Perhaps there is no need for AO at all in Rebellion.

Yes there is. Self-shadowing and AO are not exclusive. The both define different light behavior (shadow vs dispersion)

Realistically, shadows in space are always hard. Soft shadows come from lighting that is coming through an atmosphere, or from a non point/directional source. A sun in most cases acts as a point light system.. Unless you get VERY close to a sun, the shadows are always going to be acting as though it were comeing from a single directional light.

Well, since we have a myriad of stars in space light is coming (albeit little) from almost all directions. Moons and planets reflect light too so enough ambient lightning to warrant a little AO. Pictures of Nasa never show this (and stars and other things) because when shooting photos you can only account for a small range of lightning. HDR shots in space are (to my knowledge) not being done yet. Would be kewl for a picture though.

Shadows in space in low earth orbit. Would be the same in interplanetary space, but without the earth shine ambient light. In interstellar space there would be next to no light at all. For example if you stood on pluto the light received from the sun makes the surface no brighter than on earth during a full moon. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture they took this into account, and made the ships semi "self illuminated". So you could still see them in a low light environment (like interstellar space), and basically lit them up like a 747. No game will come close to this kind of lighting at present, but in a few more years the hardware and software should be damn close.