(Mostly) modern effects doable in GZDoom?

[TDRR]

With all these new additions to GZDoom, i have been thinking, what effects from modern games can be recreated in GZDoom?

As an example i would like to use Modern Warfare 2, which is a very beautiful looking game that isn't too new. What effects from it could be done in GZDoom without too much hackery?

[Nash]

Things that are already do-able:

- Materials (diffuse/specular/normal, or PBR)
- Fake environment map reflections for water or shiny/metallic surfaces (this can be done in user materials)
- Simple fullscreen post processing like underwater warp or wet camera), also the monochrome view from the sniper zoom (minus the live actor heatmapping)
- SSAO, bloom, chromatic aberration

Things that are not available based on what I see from that COD video:

- Full world lighting and shadowmaps
- Full lighting on water surfaces (requires full world lighting)
- Depth-based water fade (requires depth buffer on material shaders)
- Screen space reflections on water
- Material depth fade AKA soft sprites
- Localized distortion (rotating submarine blades): requires access to scene buffer in material shaders

Goes without saying that all of this stuff requires modern graphics cards, so don't expect it to run on toasters.

That said, these kinds of visuals are better on actual modern engines like Unreal Engine 4, where these effects would scale extremely efficiently because the renderer is made to pump out high volumes of modern graphic effects at high frame rates.

[TDRR]

This is mostly curiosity (and to see how much can i do with the engine before it chugs) just to see how close has GZDoom gotten to being a fairly modern and powerful engine.

Still, i feel like some of the things you mentioned can be recreated to some extent. The full world lighting could be faked by extensive use of dynamic lights and lightmapping (I mean, they can't move but that's surely enough for many cases) the screen space reflections can be somewhat faked via shaders + Sector_SetPlaneReflection, but not as fancy.

[furyweb]

Things that are already do-able:

- Materials (diffuse/specular/normal, or PBR)
- Fake environment map reflections for water or shiny/metallic surfaces (this can be done in user materials)
- Simple fullscreen post processing like underwater warp or wet camera), also the monochrome view from the sniper zoom (minus the live actor heatmapping)
- SSAO, bloom, chromatic aberration

Things that are not available based on what I see from that COD video:

- Full world lighting and shadowmaps
- Full lighting on water surfaces (requires full world lighting)
- Depth-based water fade (requires depth buffer on material shaders)
- Screen space reflections on water
- Material depth fade AKA soft sprites
- Localized distortion (rotating submarine blades): requires access to scene buffer in material shaders

Goes without saying that all of this stuff requires modern graphics cards, so don't expect it to run on toasters.

That said, these kinds of visuals are better on actual modern engines like Unreal Engine 4, where these effects would scale extremely efficiently because the renderer is made to pump out high volumes of modern graphic effects at high frame rates.

You mention:

- Fake environment map reflections for water or shiny/metallic surfaces (this can be done in user materials)

How does one go about doing this?.

Thanks!.

[Matt]

I kinda question the value of doing all this stuff though if it makes things so confusing that actually relevant gameplay objects end up having to be labelled at all times...

[TDRR]

I kinda question the value of doing all this stuff though if it makes things so confusing that actually relevant gameplay objects end up having to be labelled at all times...

That's just you, i don't see anything confusing in any of the effects shown in the video. I suppose you mean the amount of decorative objects, and yeah that can get annoying but it makes more sense than having the entire thing mostly empty besides the things you absolutely need to grab.