Doom III's Explosions

[Disorder]

I've been playing through the alpha a lot and everything looks great. No doubt about that. But when a new FPS-game like this one comes out, there is always something I worry about. Explosions.. Yes, explosions. Usually, in my opinion, they don't fit in games. Too flat, too bright, too dark, too small, way too big, too little sparks coming off, etc.

How do you think ID Software will handle the explosions?
Will this engine create new ways to make better looking explosions? Will we finally get rid of the damn clippingproblem?

[DOOM Anomaly]

They'll make explosions so real, it'll blow up ur monitor! :D

[Jared]

Blow my monitor up? Pff, id like to see that.

[Mordeth]

Volumetric explosions... I'd really like that :)

[The_Tonx]

Didn't Carmack said that he want's to remove all sprite-like behavior from sprites(?).. from flames and smoke and.. I belive it happens with explosions as well.. I expect to see a realistic looking explosions..

[Fredrik]

No matter how much you hate using sprites - when it comes to fire and explosions, it might be the best solution. I come to think of the Balrog in FOTR, they made several unsuccessful attempts at getting its fire right, in the end they decided to use a particle system where every particle was a sprite captured from footage of real fire and explosions.

[DooMer 4ever]

The best explosion I've seen is in Aliens vs Predator. It's simple yet effective-looking.

[GazzaQ]

and the best fire is the hotel level in max payne

[AirRaid]

The_Tonx said:

Didn't Carmack said that he want's to remove all sprite-like behavior from sprites(?)

In the alpha the sprites for the Imps fireball 'summoning' still clip around its hand. Although when the fireballs are on the floor, they look nice.

There's also nothing implemented with the rocket explosions yet except a light.

[Radea`]

hence the "alpha" status :)

I wouldnt judge the game much at all by the alpha, as so much will be changed it will be unbeleivable, and lets just limit what I said to content, because the engine will change even more :).

[DooMer 4ever]

GazzaQ said:

and the best fire is the hotel level in max payne

That's true too

[Dima]

Perhaps a bit offtopic. but still a rathing interesting comment from Epic's top guy Tim Sweeney that might answer some questions...

“The advent of 32-bit floating-point pixel precision makes it possible to create high-quality images. Efficient volumetric effects—ground fog, spherical fog, sprites that fade out smoothly rather than getting clipped by world geometry—can be based on buffering and reusing per-pixel 32-bit floating point z. Precise per-pixel lighting attenuation formulas can be based on passing in light-source positions in 32-bit floating-point vector registers. And much higher-quality bump-mapping is possible with 16- and 32-bit floating point. With just 8 bits per component, there were noticeable artifacts and un-normalized bump maps.”