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Blastfrog

Water and mirrors

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I've noticed something about a lot of recent games; they completely lack waters and mirrors (especially the latter). Games from the late 90's and early 2000's were full of them (especially Unreal engine games). Unreal 1, Deus Ex 1 and Postal 2 had many mirrors (Deus Ex 1 was especially full of mirrors) (though Postal 2 lacked water for some weird reason, it only had fake decorative water). Half-Life 2, inbetween these two eras, even had full world reflection in water surfaces. In Deus Ex 3, bathroom mirrors in public bathrooms are replaced with huge screens for some weird reason, and Jensen's apartment mirror is too broken to truly reflect game geometry. Mirrors in Rage are just so damn dirty that it doesn't even have a shine to it, and obviously has no world reflection either. The only time water is ever seen in Deus Ex 3 is in the Upper Hangshai labs, and even then, it's only decorative and unaccessible.

So, despite graphics technology being more advanced than it ever was (and according to Carmack, not much left to go), apparently some simple true reflections of world geometry is just too hard for them, despite being very common and doable in games long before such realism was possible. Why is this?

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I imagine as the 3D worlds become more complex it takes a lot more power to draw a reflection, as you are essentially rendering the same area twice? If you have to cut corners to get the game running smoothly, I guess you have to sacrifice non-essential things such as mirrors. Ironically, Duke Nukem Forever has a nice smashed mirror effect.

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I'm rather waiting for the day when fluids get successfully simulated in real-time computer rendering...

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The water in Battlefield 3 looks pretty awesome. I find myself pausing to admire a mud puddle only to be shot in the head.

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Captain Toenail said:

I imagine as the 3D worlds become more complex it takes a lot more power to draw a reflection, as you are essentially rendering the same area twice?

I figured this is what's happening, but I don't see it as a very good excuse. What's wrong with having complex areas with mirrors? Just tell people to get better video hardware to keep up, or just put up with slowdown every now and then. I'm sure that's what the attitude was back when they added reflections to older games.

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Sodaholic said:

Just tell people to get better video hardware to keep up, or just put up with slowdown every now and then. I'm sure that's what the attitude was back when they added reflections to older games.

Remember, they're making today's games around consoles that are ridiculously out of date. Plus it's not good to eliminate possible customers with minor details.

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Well back then, water was popular to have in games, and I thought it was cool at the time.

As for mirrors, I don't see much of those in the newer or older games. The only two games I recall seeing mirrors are Duke Nukem: Time To Kill and Tomb Raider 4: The Last Revelation for the PS1.

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printz said:

I'm rather waiting for the day when fluids get successfully simulated in real-time computer rendering...


Whatever happened to that whole PhysX stuff? Years ago they promised kick-ass and cheap accelerators that would do exactly that. Then the acceleration was demoted to GPGPU, and from then on it seems that PhysX has become more of an API requirement, than a measurable benefit, somehow.

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Maes said:

Whatever happened to that whole PhysX stuff? Years ago they promised kick-ass and cheap accelerators that would do exactly that. Then the acceleration was demoted to GPGPU, and from then on it seems that PhysX has become more of an API requirement, than a measurable benefit, somehow.


The PhysX type stuff is mainly being used to handle large amounts of clutter flying around from explosions and wind in certain games. See: Alice: Madness Returns or Arkham City. There aren't really games out that utilize it more fully just because the market doesn't seem to care right now. I certainly don't.

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printz said:

I'm rather waiting for the day when fluids get successfully simulated in real-time computer rendering...


1:35 in this video:

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There was that game with the girl that was trapped in a sinking ship that used water and physics.

Oh and when I read the water and mirrors as a topic I thought of Donnie Darko.

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Maes said:

Whatever happened to that whole PhysX stuff? Years ago they promised kick-ass and cheap accelerators that would do exactly that. Then the acceleration was demoted to GPGPU, and from then on it seems that PhysX has become more of an API requirement, than a measurable benefit, somehow.

From what I understand most of the early on-GPU PhysX stuff doesn't send info back to the engine (either it can't or it's too slow) so it's limited to graphical fluff that doesn't impact gameplay like extra debris. There's also the issue that a super-awesome physics engine doesn't scale very well - graphics are easy to scale (lower the resolutions, turn off some effects, etc), but if the physics are truly part of the gameplay, you can't just "turn them down" to get it working on slower machines.

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printz said:

I'm rather waiting for the day when fluids get successfully simulated in real-time computer rendering...


Hydrophobia did this. But they tried to make some kind of gameplay mechanic out of it and it wasn't great.

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david_a said:

There's also the issue that a super-awesome physics engine doesn't scale very well - graphics are easy to scale (lower the resolutions, turn off some effects, etc), but if the physics are truly part of the gameplay, you can't just "turn them down" to get it working on slower machines.

Some games use it only as a cosmetic change. Like Mirror's Edge.

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I feel like I've been seeing a lot of games with more realistic water and reflections ever since half-life 2. Not so much with mirrors I guess, but lots of strange glass shapes that distort the image behind it, like prisms, magnifying glasses, etc.

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How about Portal 2? Lots of gels there. And portals can be used as mirrors. And there are the cool redirection cubes.

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I think mirrors were mostly used in the earlier days as a "HEY COOL LOOK AT WE CAN DO." Duke3d was probably the most obvious. Probably the main reason they're not really included lately is because they're not necessary and developers aren't allowed to have fun anymore.

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But also because I don't think very many people would recognize the technology behind it, especially in an otherwise nigh-photorealistic world. Mirrors just aren't that cool anymore. Even when I see mirrors in ZDoom wads it just looks like a copy paste room to me. The last mirror i saw that looked cool was the broken mirror in the subway station of Action Doom 2.

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As somebody who has actually given it a go, I can safely say that using PhysX to provide the physics for the game play is actually quite hard. Part of the problem is that weights and things don't really work as you'd expect (even their demos seems to have incredibly high masses or strong gravity). It's also still WIP, with some things going to be improved massively in the near-ish future, if the docs are anything to go by.

I know that my final year university project isn't exactly a AAA game being worked on by a dedicated, highly professional team, but the difficulties I had with it were enough to make me decide to take a much simpler way out. Even the lecturer, who has worked on a range of released games (most famous probably being the Worms series) says that you jsut use physics engines to tell you when something has collided and then code in the reactions and behaviour yourself.


As for water and mirrors - I see a lot of nice water effects these days, but DNF (which is a bit of a time capsule, to be fair) is the only FPS I've seen that recently really made use of either. Games like GTA IV also do quite a lot with both and a lot of modern racing games have great water effects and wonderful reflections (particularly on the car bodies). I think this stuff is still in use, it's just not always as prominent as back when it was major new technology.

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Sodaholic said:

Mirrors in Rage are just so damn dirty that it doesn't even have a shine to it, and obviously has no world reflection either.

Rage has some nice looking areas and a good art direction, but technically it feels like a huge step backwards in so many ways. Especially for an id game.

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No one puts water in games anymore because everyone hates water levels.

Mirrors were really cool in the mid-late 90s back when it was something new and flashy to put in games, and for whatever reason Id never bothered with it (until Doom 3, I think) so it was a bit less mainstream. Duke Nukem 3D was the first to try this with a very hacky system (the water they used was also a giant hack, speaking of which), and later games like Deus Ex and others pulled it off well. I remember a mirror in the old Sin demo (before it was shelved for years) caused a big stir. These days its not that exciting, and probably takes a lot of effort to render (like people were saying before).

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DoomUK said:

Rage has some nice looking areas and a good art direction, but technically it feels like a huge step backwards in so many ways. Especially for an id game.

Should've gone farther back; I still don't understand why Rage had a jump key.

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So that you could bump into the invisible walls that are above every 20-centimeter-tall obstacles.

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