Yeah, that game looked fairly sweet as well. Especially the vistas. Loved those high vantage points. ^_^MiracleOfSound said:
Half-Life 2 - "the best graphics ever"?
- Thread starter bartholen_v1legacy
- Start date
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The Source Engine has highly modular characteristics that allow it to retain a high level of detail and a competing edge against newer graphics engines. However the brush-based world creation and created-model basis for things such as high-complexity objects, flora and characters limits the abilities of the game entirely to artist or user-created objects; this operating method constrains the scope of the engine from ever doing anything procedurally generated, and possibly as well dynamic loading.
The whole brush-based world creation is also starting to show it's age; the engine is six years old already. In all likelihood Half Life 2 Episode 3 will be the last game for Source before Valve retires it and makes a new one. Although their capability for innovation astounds me, it would both surprise me and not surprise me if a new engine they make is still for 32-bit DirectX 9. Which is to say they'd be doing more with less, seeing as Half Life 2 Episode 2 stood on it's own in a fair round against the CryEngine, who optimally operates on 64-Bit DirectX 10.
The differences?
Left is HL2E2. Using Baked Ambient occlusion attached to the level gives more realistic lighting without putting a dent in the render budget. The trees are more efficently designed albeit static. HDRI is implemented on all lighting solutions.
Right is Crysis. All vegetation is procedurally generated with jigglebones and leaves have subsurface scattering and dynamic volumetric lighting and dynamic occluding shadows as well as high-pass motion blur. Depth of field illusorys add realism to the gun.
The biggest difference is that HL2E2 is going to have a far smaller file size on your hard drive because of more efficient textured and modeling methods. Apart from that the verdict is up to you.
The whole brush-based world creation is also starting to show it's age; the engine is six years old already. In all likelihood Half Life 2 Episode 3 will be the last game for Source before Valve retires it and makes a new one. Although their capability for innovation astounds me, it would both surprise me and not surprise me if a new engine they make is still for 32-bit DirectX 9. Which is to say they'd be doing more with less, seeing as Half Life 2 Episode 2 stood on it's own in a fair round against the CryEngine, who optimally operates on 64-Bit DirectX 10.
The differences?
Left is HL2E2. Using Baked Ambient occlusion attached to the level gives more realistic lighting without putting a dent in the render budget. The trees are more efficently designed albeit static. HDRI is implemented on all lighting solutions.
Right is Crysis. All vegetation is procedurally generated with jigglebones and leaves have subsurface scattering and dynamic volumetric lighting and dynamic occluding shadows as well as high-pass motion blur. Depth of field illusorys add realism to the gun.
The biggest difference is that HL2E2 is going to have a far smaller file size on your hard drive because of more efficient textured and modeling methods. Apart from that the verdict is up to you.
Not really.Hopeless Bastard said:
On topic, considering that Half Life 2 was released back 6 years ago... It's pretty damn good.
Source is very very good at indoor areas, and small outdoor ones (you can hack some stuff together to make em feel a bit bigger). Also, it really hasn't been beat in the facial animation department. The newer versions of the engine have pulled of some really nifty lighting things, translucency in tree's in episode two comes to mind. Valve is also just nuts on optimization, so their maps run silky smooth on darn near any machine. This has a lot to do with portals, and not so much to do with the beastlyness of source though.bartholen said:
On the other side of things, source is terrible at truly outdoors, sandboxy type stuff. Vehicles are also a bit iffy. Also, it never has the absolute latest in gimmicky effects: parallax mapping, ambient occlusion and tessellation are a few examples. They were one of the first to have HDR though.
Overall, you judge an engine by the games that run on it, and at the end of the day, there just isn't another engine with as much genius running on it.
The CryEngine and Frostbite engines both produce *far* more massive and better looking environments. Source is awesome, but it shows its age hard these days.
Where did you read that Crysis has separate physics for each leaf on every tree? I have both Crysis and Crysis Warhead and do not remember this.Baneat said:
Not really. I've played plenty of games that had better graphics and did a better job of immersion than Half-Life 2.
I wouldn't say it has the best but it didn't hold back that's for sure. It showed off and had every right to.
Yeah that was awesome... and the Monteriggioni Estate at night... wow. The textures were insanely detailed, it all looked so amazing.MiracleOfSound said:
I think the graphics were good at the time, but now I would call them mediocre at best.
The engine is really outdated, as modern games like Left 4 Dead 2 would show now. Graphics and physics are decent, but lightning is not that good, and animation is too clunky.
The engine is really outdated, as modern games like Left 4 Dead 2 would show now. Graphics and physics are decent, but lightning is not that good, and animation is too clunky.
Soviet Heavy said:
I just don't like Half-Life in general. It's never interested me, and probably never will. I played Half Life 2, and didn't like it at all, so I have no reason to play another.
I really like the efficiency of the source engine. Not every computer can play Crysis, but a vast majority of low end computers today can play HL2. I think with the newest update HL2 has amazing graphics that work efficiently. They also have a nice balance of all ingredients that should be a fps game. Some games have amazing graphics but bad gameplay.