Doom 3's Lighting

I haven't read much information on Doom 3 but is the way the lighting is done supposed to be a new advancement in lighting technology ie real time lighting and is it something to do with per pixel shading?

D3 and HL2 both look great and im not trying to start a this is better than that war but to me unless its because of all the indoor setup but Doom 3s lighting looks much better than Half Life 2 which seems to just have the usual lighting effects you see in alot of current games.

Carp said:

I haven't read much information on Doom 3 but is the way the lighting is done supposed to be a new advancement in lighting technology ie real time lighting and is it something to do with per pixel shading?

some good info is the article from Zaldron.

And to answer your questions Yes and Yes.

Thanks for the link, was an interesting read.

Zoost said:

some good info is the article from Zaldron.

Ooh that thing's old. Ancient, in fact.

The basic thing about Doom 3's rendering is that for every pixel drawn to the screen, a set of complex lighting calculations are done based on a number of surface properties for that pixel (diffuse color, specular value, bump height). Opposed to most existing games in which only rough approximations or static lighting are used.

Cool, well however advanced it is, it looks damn sweet. :)

The new lighting technology is the big thing of the Doom3 engine, and many people who are used to stare at polygon numbers only don´t get it yet.

Meanwhile Epic started adapting (like they always do), as seen in the last UnrealEngine3 video.

ARGH WHO IS THIS PERSON USING MY AVATAR

Mini-Me!

It is an advancement in lighting, but it still has major holes. Most light only affects objects in close proximity (like within a few feet), with the exception of Doomguy's flashlight and maybe a couple of other things. Also, the shadows are all hard-edged, which is obviously far from reality.

There's still a long way to go.

one thing i noticed about d3's graphics that is considered revolutionary is that it is rendered in real-time. Some games with CG backrounds come a little bit close to d3's, but they are pre-rendered while d3's graphics are real-time. i always thought some areas of the Resident evil cg backrounds looked like d3 graphics.

Doom 3's lighting looks Great!