Could Arma 3's lighting engine still be improved?

[CyclonicTuna 87]

I keep noticing that some lightsources, especially fires from explosions, do not cast shadows as one might expect. The light from fires shines straight thrue most buildings and objects and even hills. This greatly affects your visibility towards AI enemy's and other players. Is this something BI could still patch up?

Its one of the shortcomings that keeps this from being a truely great title in my opinion. It just feels silly when you blow up a tank at night during a special ops mission, and all of a sudden you're visible to all the enemy's eventhough you and your entire team are behind a hill and can't even see the fire itself.

Its not a drastic change in visibilty but just enough for the enemy to spot you. Ofcourse objects close to the fire would cast a more prominent shadow.

Also lightsources within buildings cast their light thrue walls and roofs. Generally one chemlight or toarch, can light up an entire house.

Edited May 20, 2014 by CyclonicTuna

[artisanal 22]

There was some talk about deferred lighting which could partially resolve the gamebreaking issues, like flashilights shining through walls etc... Also, some few tickets related to this subject on the feedback tracker, are marked as "assigned", but as you know this doesn't actually mean anything.

[Smurf 12]

It must!

[tpw 2315]

This is just another of those Arma3 things where improvements in one area highlight the deficits in another. The dynamic lighting in Arma is absolutely beautiful, but the shadowing lets the whole thing down.

[nomisum 129]

hope for improvements too in this area. current system doesnt seem contemporary.

Sent from mobile

[CyclonicTuna 87]

I just wonder how diffucult it would be to implement some basic mesh shadows, they don't even have to be dynamic. Just make sure that walls, objects and hills stop light.

[roberthammer 582]

I just wonder how diffucult it would be to implement some basic mesh shadows, they don't even have to be dynamic. Just make sure that walls, objects and hills stop light.

That would require a new renderer - recently there was a dayz topic about this and dean said that it needs new renderer and with current one it is not possible to stop the light

http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/25y1e5/i_just_received_some_incredibly_disappointing/

Edited May 21, 2014 by RobertHammer

[maddogx 13]

I just wonder how diffucult it would be to implement some basic mesh shadows, they don't even have to be dynamic. Just make sure that walls, objects and hills stop light.

Stopping light is - literally - the same thing as casting a shadow, and for dynamic light sources the calculation of the shadow volume logically has to be dynamic.

It is possible to split the game scene up into different parts, for example so that certain light sources outside of a building aren't applied to the interior (and vice versa), but then you run into trouble in cases where the light source should be shining through a window or doorway. There is no "trick" that would allow all possible light sources (potentially dozens in close proximity) in a forward-rendered game like Arma to cast dynamic shadows without a significant performance impact.

Deferred lighting would help, but that would require significant changes to the renderer and possibly even adjustments to all art assets. Interestingly, they're currently writing a whole new renderer for DayZ and considering adding dynamic shadows for flash lights etc., so I wouldn't be surprised if DayZ goes deferred.

[CyclonicTuna 87]

Stopping light is - literally - the same thing as casting a shadow, and for dynamic light sources the calculation of the shadow volume logically has to be dynamic.

It is possible to split the game scene up into different parts, for example so that certain light sources outside of a building aren't applied to the interior (and vice versa), but then you run into trouble in cases where the light source should be shining through a window or doorway. There is no "trick" that would allow all possible light sources (potentially dozens in close proximity) in a forward-rendered game like Arma to cast dynamic shadows without a significant performance impact.

Deferred lighting would help, but that would require significant changes to the renderer and possibly even adjustments to all art assets. Interestingly, they're currently writing a whole new renderer for DayZ and considering adding dynamic shadows for flash lights etc., so I wouldn't be surprised if DayZ goes deferred.

Well, I hope that the dev's will reconsider the lighting in Arma 3 regardless.