Under water for Battlefield 3.

Hello,

Will Battlefield 3 have a map with an under water section ?

Call of Duty 7 will have at least one single player map with an under water
section ?!

So Battlefield 3 should at least have one too ! =D

So if you know of any good under water graphics algorithms post them here !
=D

Bye,
Skybuck =D

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:56:19 +0200
"Skybuck Flying" wrote:

So if you know of any good under water graphics algorithms post them
here ! =D

Sure, just render things as usual and apply an exponential fog
falloff. Seriously, rendering underwater scenes is boring.

What's interesting is rendering boundary surfaces between volumina of
different optical density. That's where things become
interesting, however it's not terribly difficult:

1. Render the underwater scene like usual (apply exponential fog for
absorption of light), but refract the viewing frustum boundary vectors
and use a texture as target.

2. Render the scene over water mirrored in the water surface, again
target a texture.

3. Create a boundary surface. In the case of water you'll want waves.
Simulating realistic looking waves is the hardest parts, but there are
several methods (Google "realtime low viscosity wave and ripple
simulation"). Usually you'll go for some fourier transform based method.

4. Use the wave normal map to distort the underwater and reflection
textures, today one does this using a fragment shader. Mix the textures
by applying a Fresnel term. If you want to spice things up apply a
slightly stronger distortion on the blue and a slightly weaker on the
red channel to account for chromatic abberation.

Really, totally boring stuff if you've done it often enough. It was new
around 2003 when programmable GPUs hit the market. I actually did this
kind of stuff using a fixed function pipeline GeForce2 some years
earlier, but it required several rendering passes.

What's a lot harder than water and refractions is realtime indirect
lighting. And good lighting is what makes a scene looking nonartificial.


Wolfgang

That's where the challenge is...

Try to make it look good, try to make it look interesting and full of
detail.

Like under water plants, fish, water bubbles, big water bubbles of
explosions.

There are probably no games out there that really do it well, so it might be
an under developed graphical thingie.

Though I do remember "future shock" or whatever the game was called, but it
was a fantasy game and there was just somewater going through corridors...
I never really played that game...

But for a game like Battlefield 3 there could/should be some more than just
"fog" and a flat ocean bottom or no surface at all...

Perhaps sea-creature-shells can be added to beach for extra beach details,
perhaps ocean/sea/beach bottom as well with more detail.

Soldiers could even get hurt by swimming to close to sea correl which might
cut them up.

There could also be maps with big builders in the beach sea or air/sea
tunnels which can be swim through.

Come to think of it Call of Duty 5 had a special "water splashes" effect
which was pretty cool and most rememberable.

Rumor has it that it only worked on nvidia cards and not ati.

In the far future say 15 years from now, devices might be so powerfull that
lightning and glass/water effect/reflection could even be calculated... and
water would be dripping between soldier fingers and over their heads when
they come out of the sea...

So there is still a lot to be done at that front !

Even rainbow effects of water splashing against the sides of a harbor might
be possible or so

Bye,
Skybuck.

For lakes entirely different situations/sceneria's and effects could exist.

Think of dirty populated lakes.

Or grounds but under water by rommel, to drown paratroopers.

Soldiers could fall into the water with parachutes and then need to struggle
to get out of it.

The lakes themselfes could have green water or populated water... there
could also be some ducks around which could be killed or fly away to signal
their presense to potential enemies or teammates.

There could be some yellow bamboe/high grass in some sections of the lake.

Trees drowning and growning out of the lake...

Under water tree roots and tree branches.

The soldiers could then ask themselfes:

Do I really wanna go into the dirty ****ty mess ?! The answer might be a
forced: yes ! The enemy is shooting at us with miniguns... we be safer under
water then out here in the open !

So lake could give a somewhat tactical advantage as a natural bullit
stopper.

Lake leaves/plants could be floating on top of the lake.

There could even be frogs, dead frogs or frog foam.

Perhaps dity yellow greenish foam from tiny water rivers/tiny water falls
flowing into the lake.

Perhaps even tree leaves falling and floating down and hitting the lake and
floating on top of the surface.

It's all about details details details details to make it look good,
realistic and interesting ! =D

Bye,
Skybuckd =D

"Skybuck Flying" wrote in message
b.home.nl...

"
For lakes entirely different situations/sceneria's and effects could exist.

Think of dirty populated lakes.
"

I ment polutted lakes

"
Or grounds but under water by rommel, to drown paratroopers.

Soldiers could fall into the water with parachutes and then need to struggle
to get out of it.

The lakes themselfes could have green water or populated water... there
could also be some ducks around which could be killed or fly away to signal
their presense to potential enemies or teammates.

There could be some yellow bamboe/high grass in some sections of the lake.

Trees drowning and growning out of the lake...

Under water tree roots and tree branches.

The soldiers could then ask themselfes:

Do I really wanna go into the dirty ****ty mess ?! The answer might be a
forced: yes ! The enemy is shooting at us with miniguns... we be safer under
water then out here in the open !

So lake could give a somewhat tactical advantage as a natural bullit
stopper.

Lake leaves/plants could be floating on top of the lake.

There could even be frogs, dead frogs or frog foam.

Perhaps dity yellow greenish foam from tiny water rivers/tiny water falls
flowing into the lake.

Perhaps even tree leaves falling and floating down and hitting the lake and
floating on top of the surface.

It's all about details details details details to make it look good,
realistic and interesting ! =D
"

Bye,
Skybuckd =D

Here some more idea's:

1. A gigant storm on the sea map. (day night map and night time map,
especially night time could be interesting.).

2. Eb and tide for beach. (And water splatter on the beach ).

Bye,
Skybuck.

However Battlefield 3 seems to be more about a game of sand/dessert.

I think they got that one down by now... I do wonder will there be more
grass ?

There does seem to be "paris" and "subway" stuff in the game.

Perhaps Paris has a lake which could be included

Bye,
Skybuck =D

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:36:51 +0200
"Skybuck Flying" wrote:

That's where the challenge is...

Try to make it look good, try to make it look interesting and full of
detail.

Like under water plants, fish, water bubbles, big water bubbles of
explosions.

This is not a algorithmic problem, at least not on the graphics front.
This is a artistic challange, and maybe a problem of proper physics
simulation.

And explosions under water, in reality they don't look like you think
they do: The key characteristic of an explosion is, that it creates a
shock wave, shock waves travel with the speed of sound (in water about
1000m/s). A shock wave consists of a high pressure front (shock front)
and a low pressure rear. If the pressure difference is large enough, on
the low pressure side the vapour temperature of water drops below 0°C
(this is called cavitation) and high pressure means a local rise of
temperature. So at the shock wave boundary the water is literally
boiling like in a kettle. But only at the shock wave boundary, which
radially expands with 1000m/s; behind it, it condensates immediately.
Due to the expansion of the shock wave, the pressure drops with 1/r²,
which means that in a few meters from the explosion the pressure
difference is too low to cause cavitation, which defines the limiting
radius for the bubble sphere shell an underwater explosion creates.

Fishes are just a challenge in NPC design, and texturing. Scales would
probably rendered using some tangent shading model. Plants are, well
plants, like on land, only they move differently; slower and more fluid.

There are probably no games out there that really do it well, so it
might be an under developed graphical thingie.

Well, it's not a matter of graphics algorithms; optics work quite the
same way under water, than they do outside. I mean, we (humans)
literally live in an ocean of an optical dense medium called air.

Perhaps sea-creature-shells can be added to beach for extra beach
details, perhaps ocean/sea/beach bottom as well with more detail.

Again an artistic challenge. And if you raise the amount of detail also
probably hitting the resource limits of current GPUs.

Soldiers could even get hurt by swimming to close to sea correl which
might cut them up.

That's game logic, totally off topic in all but one of the NGs you're
crossposting.

There could also be maps with big builders in the beach sea or
air/sea tunnels which can be swim through.

Well, if you're patient an are willing to wait for the game I'm
developing with some friends: There'll be a cave diving map.

In the far future say 15 years from now, devices might be so
powerfull that lightning and glass/water effect/reflection could even
be calculated... and water would be dripping between soldier fingers
and over their heads when they come out of the sea...

glass/water effects can be rendered already, they're just not very
accurate at the moment, because they work on an approximation of the
environment. Anything beyond that requires the use of realtime
raytracing. Technically our GPUs are already performant enough to do it
at low resolution (640x480 or so). So give it maybe 4 years only.

But the realtime refraction effects we have today are already good
enough, you'd have to study a single frame very carefully to make out
the errors of approximation.

So there is still a lot to be done at that front !

At the moment I see only one open front in game graphics development
and that is good looking dynamic indirect lighting.

Even rainbow effects of water splashing against the sides of a harbor
might be possible or so

Those are easy. The principle of diffraction of light in water mist is
well understood and so easy to emulate.

What modern game development really needs is a new challenge on
the gameplay frontier. FPSs, RPGs, racing games, combat games haven't
changed in years, they follow the same principle ever since. Invent
some new kind of gameplay, that's where we need to move on. I mean,
just look how popular Minecraft is, and it has ****ty graphics if you
compare it with modern standards.

Graphics, duh, a game doesn't get good only because it has kick ass
graphics. I still prefer good old DeusEx or System Shock over umm, I
don't even remember the names of the countless, soulless games I've
played in the last years. But create some innovative gameplay, like
Portal or Mirror's Edge, and you'll have a place in my heart forever.


Wolfgang

On 15/06/2011 21.19, Wolfgang Draxinger wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:56:19 +0200
"Skybuck wrote:

So if you know of any good under water graphics algorithms post them
here ! =D

Sure, just render things as usual and apply an exponential fog
falloff. Seriously, rendering underwater scenes is boring.

What's interesting is rendering boundary surfaces between volumina of
different optical density. That's where things become
interesting, however it's not terribly difficult:

1. Render the underwater scene like usual (apply exponential fog for
absorption of light), but refract the viewing frustum boundary vectors
[SNIP!]

Also light streaks and particles floating can help the realism imho...

--
rIO.sK

Am Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:38:46 +0200
schrieb rIO :

Also light streaks and particles floating can help the realism imho...

Well, that's practically the same as light scattering on dust. The
really interesting things happen at the interface between media of
different optical density: Caustics, total internal reflection,
refraction, diffraction, you name it. But simple underwater without a
surface of optical density change is kind of boring.


Wolfgang