Half Life 2 - Lost Coast

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Welcome to bit-tech

 

i hope they stick HDR onto Counter Strike Source and HL2, that would be amazing. I am definetly getting DoD now

 

Welcome!!

 

nice article guys!

i'm looking forward to this regardless of how long it takes to play through it, but i'll be honest, i had always thought that HDR required Share Model 3.0, so being an ATi card owner im stoked that i can play it with SM2.0

 

There are a few different types of HDR - the method that I think Valve are using is a fixed range 16-bit integer, rather than a 16-bit floating point (potentially unlimited range of colour values).

Current ATI hardware cannot do a 16-bit floating point blend, but I understand that R520 will be able to do this.

 

CS: Source HDR is a possibility, but Valve haven't said anything about that. However, they *have* said that they will NOT be retrofitting the Half Life 2 single-player game with HDR. In the briefing, they were very specific in saying that to get decent HDR results, it needs to be part of the game design from the beginning, like Lost Coast is.

When you tack it on as an afterthought, you don't get the most out of it. So the short version is that they won't be retrofitting to HL2, but it will be included in all future releases: DoD: Source, Aftermath and beyond.

 

Looks good

Whats all this about no limits to what they are allowed to do with the graphics, they should be doing that anway

Surely you can add an ubber high quality mode above high and ultra high

Can one of the Bit-Tech boyees please ransom a kitty for some high res screenies/backgrounds please

Please...

Hmmm I like that idea of a an fps shooter in a flipbook, you have to get someone to draw real quick tho, and how would control it?

 

No developer can afford to do that Fibre+ because otherwise a) development time would've been EVEN LONGER, but primarily because of their target customer base. Through the system surveys conducted via Steam, Valve know exactly what everyone is running.

If you make a game that is stupidly high-end, you won't sell enough copies to make back your investment. Half-Life 2 runs great on low-end systems, which was also true of the original Half-Life / Counter-Strike, which led to some 8-10m units sold.

As for high-res screenies, what would you like? I have access to a decent PC today / tomorrow (as opposed to my notebook) so I can run it as high as you like baby

 

I've done a little poking around in some 3d apps. I was looking at HDRI. Basically you take an HDRI image (like those photos of the sun being underexposed to overexposed) and combine them into a dymanic range image. The 3d app will then use that to collectively light the whole 3d scene including any objects.

Pretty much observe the following link
http://www.hdrimaps.com/images/gallery/terminator/index.html

If we could see games based on that HDRI technology,..,,, wow. Even so, Lost Coast looks f00king amazing.

 

So after installing Lost Coast is their a way to enable HDR for normal HL 2?

 

Nope - if you read the thread the HDR is something that has to be designed with something from the ground up

 

Now, if they were to completly recode HL2 and CS to enable HDR...that would be sweet.

But Valve won't do it.

 

Hahaha...sure, they spend 4 years building it the FIRST time...now you want them to spend another 4?

 

very nice write-up, good pics & good tidbits from the makers, congrats!

now.

did you forget about the existence of FarCry which has introduced HDR several months ago?

also the commentary system is not unique; finish The Chronicles of Riddick - Escape From Butcher Bay and you can replay the game with commentary from the makers. very cool feature.

 

Hi there
Very nice article guys,hope you had fun at the Valve visit and maybe you saw some pics or demos TFC:S or TF2?
Thanks for the picture of Gabe and my homemade TF flag

 

If you read through again, the article points out that Lost Coast uses many more features of HDR, not just the limited HDR effects used with FarCry.

 

Chaos Theory executes HDR very nicely, though.

 

Man... I think this thread has set a new record for the most first posts!

With DoD:S having HDR (said in the article) will it be an option or are we going to be stuck with it? My machine couldn't handle a 10-15% performance drop and it will make DoD:S unplayable for me... and i shall cry on that day too.

 

Wow, ok - let me try and clear a few things up for you guys.

1) FarCry HDR is mostly just Blooming. While there is currently no standard of what features "HDR" encompasses, Valve have half a dozen while Far Cry only really features one

2) Chaos Theory - tbh, I don't know much about what Ubi has done there, but now that I know SO much more about HDR, I need to take a look at SC:CT in detail.

3) Bloodcar: it should be obvious, but since you asked the question, I can answer it for you. On the assuming that since they are both Source powered, the graphics options in DoD: Source should be the same as for Lost Coast. In that case, there will be three options for the HDR:

- None
- Blooming only
- Full

So if your machine can't hack it, then you *can* turn it off. But from a visual point of view, once you've experienced HDR, you'll want to leave it on.