Improving the Light Engine| What and How

[purepassion 22]

A problem with A2's renderer is how it does bloom.

Yes you are right. The system itself is not that bad, I think. However there are issues in it's implementation. It is often used too heavily and only takes an objects RGB(colour) value in count and not so much different materials ( comp. with glowing cows :D)

[kuokenken 1]

Well,I think who open this article meaning about light engine are diffrent with those who respone

And sure,I dont wanna change at first when I saw this article

Yet,BF3 and Crysis got impressive image that ARMA 2 can't make

But arma2's viusal is much more realistic than BF3 & Crysis

but when I keep watchinh the post,I agreed with those who want to add more light sources

but remenber,this is just a candy coating

The most I was worried about is BI might let the color become BF3 type

I think ARMA 3 is a little bit become like that

[nodunit 397]

Multiple light sources are more..well they CAN be candy coating or they can be a game feature depending on how you use it.

Imagine you say enter a bunker, right now unless you make a sky light for the sun, there is no light source and HDR goes apeshit. However if HDR were fixed that would still only be half the problem.

With multiple light sources the focus can be on things other than simply outdoors, imagine going through some underground bunker with dim hanging lights that cast just enough light to see, this serves to add the feature of the bunker itself and also great immersion as it makes things more dreary since now not only would they cast actual light rather than being a 'light particle'.

Edited November 12, 2011 by NodUnit

[purepassion 22]

I just remembered that it was said to be likely that there will be underground structures (as already in VBS2) present in Arma 3. This would almost require drastic changes.

So scenarios as Nod described them, would be possible :)

[Paronomasia12 1]

I was playing STALKER Call of Pripyat yesterday, and was amazed by the lighting effects, especially inside buildings even with my old XP PC and high framerates. I was wondering how well a similar engine could be implemented into ARMA 3.

[dragon01 902]

I just remembered that it was said to be likely that there will be underground structures (as already in VBS2) present in Arma 3. This would almost require drastic changes.

So scenarios as Nod described them, would be possible :)

Try Nightstalkers: Shadows of Namalsk. Underground structures are already possible in ArmAII, though a bit tricky to work with. Stock islands don't contain them, but Namalsk does.

[purepassion 22]

Here is a nice find:

pureLIGHT engine

hfCoXVLSsIE

pureLIGHT features:

• Deferred Lighting
• Screen-Space Directional Occlusion
  
• Volumetric Light Scattering (Godrays)
  
• dynamic colored shadows (also compatible with particles)

Programmable via C, C++, and Lua script.

As we speak about it:

Do you guys know of any open source Light-engine or similar the team could use (I imagine something like they did it with the Volumetric clouds, the flightmodel etc ?) :)

Let's make a change

Edited November 14, 2011 by PurePassion

[Minoza 11]

1:10 kinda reminds of Chernarus. :D

[Flash Thunder 10]

1:10 kinda reminds of Chernarus. :D

except with better textures :p

Edited November 13, 2011 by Flash Thunder

[Clarkey1 10]

I think this should be relevant to lighting improvements for A3. Hopefully we'll see this and other improvements to the lighting but i think AI imrovement and PhysX should be much higher priority.

Some of you might have seen this already but for those who havn't check 2:39:

ps5plyX8B2A

[Cripsis 10]

I drool like a Saint Bernard dog everytime I watch that video.

[nodunit 397]

Oh god I hope environmental objects get FLIR like at 5:15... it's fine on Takistan but on maps like Chernarus it is a royal pain to be in air or armor, don't you dare think about NOE flight in a forest. Not to mention armor engagement, especially for a map like Limnos would be far far different when you have to distinguish heat signatures of infantry and vehicles from the environment, giving FLIR it's edge and fault.

The lighting sure was impressive (in count and all and the fact that they were white not this dim yellow we have now) though I have to say I was more enthralled with the vehicle handling and whatnots, oh I sure hope that is physX at work..

Edited November 13, 2011 by NodUnit

[dmarkwick 261]

I like the vehicle position enhancements from that video.

[Minoza 11]

I think this should be relevant to lighting improvements for A3...

Some of you might have seen this already but for those who havn't check 2:39:

Now, that isn't really improvement at all, let me explain.

I was talking about lighting engine improvement (rewrite? :D). In that video, you can only see a "cheap" trick to make it look better. From my point of view, they simply disabled any diffuse features... Those are simple "lighter" places on the terrain. They do not act or look like a real source of light but they are looking good when observed from distance and you can virtually have unlimited amount of them since they are rather simple to render. For a comparison, look at the lights on the left, they actually light up the objects around them (they affect diffuse of the objects around), but have limited render distance, the ones on the right do not affect anything, they just "appear" on the terrain. I guess they have probably blended those with the old system - at some render distance they probably start to affect diffuse of the surrounding objects. But within current engine, you still can't have them cast any shadows, can't have them appear in specular highlights or reflections.

So far IMO differed lighting seems as best approach, although it would probably require a lot of work, it would be a good "investment" in the future development.

Edited November 13, 2011 by Minoza

[purepassion 22]

Oh god I hope environmental objects get FLIR

Nod, why do we always think the same!? :D

This has always been an important wish of mine, especially because it could be solved easily by just giving those objects a propper heatmap.

you can see that the team recognized the problem aswell and started to change it so you actually see more of yor environment.

However, and thats the point, trees and the rest still don't have a heatmap as you can see

Here you can see how clearly you can actually see the environment

the same in moving pictures:

Yz7B2e8_XOE

notice how similar it looks in general witht the picture in Arma 3. The only thing tha'ts missing are more dominant heatmaps for environment objects

ps, I love the picture you linked! :p ( getting closer, huh? ;))

[dragon01 902]

Well,I think who open this article meaning about light engine are diffrent with those who respone

And sure,I dont wanna change at first when I saw this article

Yet,BF3 and Crysis got impressive image that ARMA 2 can't make

But arma2's viusal is much more realistic than BF3 & Crysis

but when I keep watchinh the post,I agreed with those who want to add more light sources

but remenber,this is just a candy coating

The most I was worried about is BI might let the color become BF3 type

I think ARMA 3 is a little bit become like that

I don't know about BF3, but the first Crysis actually looked fairly realistic, if a bit too saturated (the second one, though, is completely unrealistic, from what I've heard).

AII graphics seem less impressive and less realistic than Crysis. Poland isn't that different from Chernarus when it comes to environment, so I know how it's supposed to look like. ArmA does capture the "feeling" well, but it seems somewhat undetailed. Though Crysis didn't really offer environment to compare with AII (it was set in a jungle) and I don't think comparing it to community-created jungle maps would really be indicative, I think that it's graphics were more realistic.

Another factor (unrelated to lighting system) could also be that Crysis had a lot of junk lying around, which did add to the feel of realism. Though if Chernarus is similar to Poland in any way, junk most likely don't lie around for long around there. :)

[purepassion 22]

The most I was worried about is BI might let the color become BF3 type

Remember that the light engine and post-procession effects such as colour correction (look at currently available moduls like "movie-day" etc)

are two different shoes ;)

An advanced light engine opens endless possibilities for artist so they can change the values and post-processing to create certain atmospheres and work with it as stylistic device, create schemes for different times of day. How they actually look like is completely up to the artist himself.

Realistic Lighting is in my opinion the only thing that stops Arma 3 from breaking through all masses and setting a new milestone. We can create something that people will remember for a long time here. Arma 3 is a game designed to be played for years and as we already see it, CPU and GPU power is quickly increasing. We all know this is connected to work, money and ressources but the results that could be achieved with this speak above and reward all the effort. :)

I think outsourcing as already seen with the volumetric clouds would be the best option if someone actually decides to take a look at this.

Do you know of any light engine solutions that could be used by the team for Arma 3 ?

I saw an engine called "Leadwerks" using the pureLight's global illumination lightmapping system as already presented here maybe the team could make use of it?

It is programmed in C++ like trueSky, the system used for the volumetric clouds.

Edited November 13, 2011 by PurePassion

[pathetic_berserker 4]

An advanced light engine opens endless possibilities for artist so they can change the values and post-processing to create certain atmospheres and work with it as stylistic device, create schemes for different times of day. How they actually look like is completely up to the artist himself......

To be fair it seems most artists at the mo' seem to have some nasty c@^t looking over thier shoulder screaming ORANGETEAL! ORANGETEAL! ORANGETEAL!. Not seeing any breadth of choice in mainstream visual arts these days.

But thats another matter. Point is PurePAssion is absolutely right, we would not be constained to making a new modern mil sim look much like BF3 even if we used the same engines (not that we would). And BIS doesn't work with nasty c...folks that way, YAY!

[djfluffwug 10]

Lighting like this please :D

J_fbvW0RNjw

kthanksbye

No but in all seriousness, this engines lighting looks pretty nice compared to other engines. I don't know how the engine would handle outside lighting but it's inside lighting is awesome :D

(Getting ready for lighting fanboys to throw stones at me)

[Cripsis 10]

(Getting ready for lighting fanboys to throw stones at me)

This is worst post in history, even worst than post #17

I hate it when people steal my thunder. :bigsmile:

[djfluffwug 10]

Apologies to you. I didn't realise you had posted it already :D

Didn't have time to read through every post.

But you have to agree the lighting is amazing in that engine.

[Bee8190 10]

I openly admit i know next to nothing about light sources or HDR but something always seemed odd to me, be it smoke from fire, shadows or lights at night.

(how well is JTD fire and smoke addon done compare to default smoke and fire?

looks miles better to me even without touching up the engine i believe)

+1 to this

[Cripsis 10]

But you have to agree the lighting is amazing in that engine.

Yes the lighting is absolutely beautiful, hopefully some time in the future real-time computer generated game environments will be photorealistic.

[djfluffwug 10]

It will happen eventually, look how far we have come with graphics.

But, we should just have a seperate processor for each part of the game. (eg. Lighting, Shadows, AI, Post Processing etc.) :D

I think though that lighting is a very important part in immersion. Sound and lighting. Not so much high poly counts.

[Minoza 11]

Lighting like this please :D

...vid...

kthanksbye

No but in all seriousness, this engines lighting looks pretty nice compared to other engines. I don't know how the engine would handle outside lighting but it's inside lighting is awesome :D

(Getting ready for lighting fanboys to throw stones at me)

Since it is able to handle interiors that well, exteriors would probably not present any issue at all. Illuminating exterior is much easier than doing real-time light bouncing for interiors.

In the open, pretty much everything is lit up by direct lighting, while on the inside, you need exterior light to bounce of the surfaces to create illumination, this is what makes it hard to calculate, at least real-time.

I am amazed with what few recent engines can do when it comes to real-time lighting. They achieve results similar to ray-trace renderers which is stunning.