Since I haven’t seen anyone post this, I thought I’d share the new Star Engine demo video from Cloud Imperium Games.

  • I like the person casually walking into the fire at 19:05. I also noticed reflections in the water near the edges of the screen don’t show properly, most noticeably at the end of the video.

    Amazing tech demo, but I wonder if they’re focusing on the right things. Physics-based nosebleeds are cool, but not as noticeable as getting reflections right.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I also noticed reflections in the water near the edges of the screen don’t show properly,

      It’s called screen-space reflections: Things that aren’t on screen don’t reflect because, well, they’re not rendered. The alternative is either not having reflections, having the “screen” not be a rectangle but the inside of a sphere, or, and that’s even more expensive, raytracing.

      It’s a bog-standard technique and generally people don’t notice, which is why it’s good enough. Remember the rule #1 of gamedev: Even if not in doubt, fake it. It’s all smoke and mirrors and you want it like that because the alternative is 1fps.

      • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        You can also do overscan, but that’s costly since you’re rendering a bigger picture (I am not a rendering engineer but have experience with offline rendering)

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Well yes I was answering under the assumption of “eradicate 100% of artefacts”, and as long as you don’t render all the perspectives there’s always going to be some angle somewhere that you’re missing.

          Practically everything in rendering is a terrible hack (including common raytracers as they’re not spectral) but realism is overrated, anyway.