Author Topic: Real-Time Radiosity (Read 1158 times)

Agent4054 · « **on:** February 19, 2007, 08:37:07 PM »

I have heard many people say this is far in our future still for games. But After hearing the latest news and seeing a video of it, I think this is in our very near future.

Geomerics, licensor of game engine lighting middleware, has joined Epic Games' Integrated Partners Program for advanced lighting implementation into UE3.

http://www.geomerics.com/index.php?page=lighting

If any of you are familiar with Radiosity Lighting and the implications this has on future games, you will be very interested in the link above. The fact that Epic has taken them in, fortifies their claim on their technology. I'm sure it will take a top end video card to run such a feature, but it is for damn sure one of the coolest advancements to date in graphical technology.

EDIT: I guess to explain for those who don't know, There is no true real-time radiosity lighting in games today. The lighting that you see in the games now.. there is radiosity, but it is "baked" into the levels when you compile them in editors(Much like Half-Life 2). With real-time on the other hand, all lighting is completely dynamic. Which, until recently was thought to be next to impossible with our current consumer graphics cards.(Even Tim Sweeny, the master coder behind UE3 said that!)

Crysis, watch out.

Agent4054 · « **Reply #1 on:** February 19, 2007, 09:20:22 PM »

Crap... wrong forum.. what the hell was I thinking...

.:F3ar0n:. · « **Reply #2 on:** February 19, 2007, 09:24:51 PM »

Wow thas pretty sweet..Had no clue what u were talking bout till I watched the video. Now they need to combined crysis's new engine with radiosity. I wanna see the comp though that could handle it

It appeared until now that both Nvidia and Ati were gonna be so far ahead in hardware that software wasn't gonna be able 2 keep up (name a game that actually uses a single 8800 card) With something like this though, it'd cripple cards and process power (makes me leery about DX10, u'd think a lighting process like this would require a whole new directx engine if it'd be used anytime soon)

Thoughts?

Agent4054 · « **Reply #3 on:** February 20, 2007, 07:24:26 AM »

They mentioned on their site that they found a way to get this technology to run fairly well on "current consumer graphics cards". So I imagine top of the line cards could handle it(not sure to what degree).

The Shoctor · « **Reply #4 on:** February 20, 2007, 07:46:12 AM »

Not only is is SUPER sexy, but it would fix my biggest issue with flashlights in CS. Not saying it would ever make it into the current iteration of the game, it is just something I look forward to in the future.

Mr.Tibbs · « **Reply #5 on:** February 20, 2007, 01:23:35 PM »

Quote from: "ShadoHawk"

Not only is is SUPER sexy, but it would fix my biggest issue with flashlights in CS. Not saying it would ever make it into the current iteration of the game, it is just something I look forward to in the future.

That is what HDR is for. :bigsmile:

The Shoctor · « **Reply #6 on:** February 25, 2007, 08:04:18 PM »

Negative. HDR is NOT Real-Time Radiosity!!! To have a light source with infinite bounce would make it more useful. In same maps depending how it's compiled and how the leafs are made make the flashlight light the walls, but not the models properly.

Real-Time Radiosity makes HDR look like childs play.

Agent4054 · « **Reply #7 on:** February 26, 2007, 01:55:12 AM »

Hence the whole hubbub around it. This is quite a huge breakthrough in game graphics technology....