Virtualbattlefieldsystem.com

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afaik arma will support bumps

but i dont care cuz it makes things appear like wrapped in plastic    

vbs1 has high res textures and taht looks even better then any stupid bump or normal map...

I have to agree, all those bump, normal, specular whatever dont look real or sharp enough for OPF's/VBS engine, a sharp photorealistic texture will always have a more authentic and natural feel and look imo. I cant imagine the amount of work applying several layers of textures on a huge game like flashpoint just to make it look cartoonish and run like an old dog, some improvements on metal surfaces maybe but for the most VBS1 textures look amazing to me. Adding improved/better lighting should make it look amazing .

[hellfish6 7]

Uh... please keep the chatter limited to VBS, not graphical standards or ArAs graphics.

[Heatseeker 0]

I just noticed that not only BIA has put a special offer available including the core plus some packs but that some addon pack prices have dropped considerably.

VBS1 module pack online store

People can get the Special offer VBS1 core (including special forces, animal pack, terrain1 and observer3), both ADF packs, terrain2, opfor and marine packs for 346.07€. I might have considered it if this was its price when it came out .

Ofcourse the price will still climb with future packs such has convoy thingy, US army, terrain3 and others when these are released plus a VBS2 anouncement is sort of.. expected .

Still, seems like a good time to buy it, i wonder if it suffers from the same HW/SW compatbility and performance problems found in current flashpoint game   .

edit: i might ask these questions at the VBS1 forums to prevent further off topic discussion and forum violence here..

[gandalf the white 0]

I wonder if VBS1 users get a new engine (that supports DirectX / fixes "ofp bugs" or will have to pay another $200 dollars to improve an engine that can be surpassed in terms of complexity with an Xbox

afaik arma will support bumps

but i dont care cuz it makes things appear like wrapped in plastic

vbs1 has high res textures and taht looks even better then any stupid bump or normal map...

I have to agree, all those bump, normal, specular whatever dont look real or sharp enough for OPF's/VBS engine, a sharp photorealistic texture will always have a more authentic and natural feel and look imo. I cant imagine the amount of work applying several layers of textures on a huge game like flashpoint just to make it look cartoonish and run like an old dog, some improvements on metal surfaces maybe but for the most VBS1 textures look amazing to me. Adding improved/better lighting should make it look amazing .

@Jennifer:

With all respect to your knowledge in modelling, wich part of this looks plastified?

Technology is advancing, bumpmappings are rendered differently for each engine.

@Heatseeker:

Bumpmappings makes you see detail that is not modelled into the model, it is a way to save your videocard from rendering X thousand polygons. to compare:

I wonder what you could like to see, the left model (wich double the texture quality and tripple the polygon count to match the right one) , or the cartoonish GPU-unfriendly right model. (enhanced only by a extra texture layer)

<span style='font-size:27pt;line-height:100%'>FIRST ONE TO CALL BUMPMAPPING OILY GETS IT IN THE REAR FROM ME!</span>

( /\ Go for it Jennifer, make my day )

[ShuyaNanahara 0]

now now deniz, you aint gonna get that lucky ..at least not today...maybe not even in this life time, and i like bump mapping it really does make things look alot nicer..wrapped in plastic?..dont know about that jen, i mean it would entirely depend on the engine vs the skill of the texture artists

[chipper 0]

bump mapping looks "oily"

[gandalf the white 0]

bump mapping looks "oily"

Holy schmuck that was rough, I guess the bumpmaps I used for lubrication weren't as oily as I was told they were .

Either way, it depends on the engine, and I hope there will be some examples on how bumpmaps look in VBS1

EDIT: removed Arma from above sentence

[kegetys 2]

I do not find the lighting on that Doom 3 shot to be realistic at all, and even in most of the Game2 shots the lighting looks quite wrong. In real life materials reflect light, so when a light ray hits a surface it lits other surfaces around it. This "radiosity" effect is missing from those fancy bumpmapping effects game developers seem to love today, which creates the unrealistic "plastic" look. Also, for example with skin light tends to pass through the skin and make the skin "glow" which removes strong highlights and shadows.

The only solution to this (imo.) is to tone down those fancy effects, add static ambient lighting and do better textures. The video cards today are nowhere near the capability to render realistic lighting in real time so its better to be done statically in the textures.

[Heatseeker 0]

Quote[/b] ]Bumpmappings makes you see detail that is not modelled into the model, it is a way to save your videocard from rendering X thousand polygons.

I prefer having my videocard rendering x thousand poligons and photorealistic textures on a game engine that is so remarcable that it can do it on open, complex environments with a decent amount of units interacting simultaniously and all this while maintaining decent performance. This is the reality of the BIS engine, performance doesnt drop when 5 units apear on the screen inside a squary/boxy level, bumpmapping and normal mapping wont save your memory of loading all those textures either .

Technicaly VBS1 may not be considered has advanced but it does provides realistic, sharp looking visuals, higher amounts of detail in both quality and quantity while new gen games relly more on textures and efects, if you look closely all modeling work in these games (units, environments, decorations, etc) look quite low on poly count (squary) and are more demanding.

Fact is VBS1 stuff looks much more "real", problably runs alot better, is less demanding and draws alot more than any other game engine out there, thats why it was adopted by the military .

[Colossus 2]

When I think oily/plastic looking bumpmapping I'm thinking at the first mission in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

I have never seen worse bumpmapping then that!

Even when the AIs are inside (it's raining on the mission) there skin looks like they are actionfigures, it's so oily and plastic look-a-like that it is horrible.

I mean look at this!

PS: This is getting WAAAYY off topic, maybe the mods can split the topic and add all post about bumpmapping to a topic for it's self?

[brataccas 0]

riddick has some good bumpmapping in some of the levels ever seen the shower room?

[Ironsight 1]

Why are you guys still talking about bumpmapping after explicit moderators instructions? I don't wanna see this topic getting locked

[gandalf the white 0]

Why are you guys still talking about bumpmapping after explicit moderators instructions? I don't wanna see this topic getting locked

that was comparing Arma with VBS1, I do not see a problem with discussing the use of bumpmapping (or polling the opinion about it) in VBS1 .

Quote[/b] ] Technicaly VBS1 may not be considered has advanced but it does provides realistic, sharp looking visuals, higher amounts of detail in both quality and quantity while new gen games relly more on textures and efects, if you look closely all modeling work in these games (units, environments, decorations, etc) look quite low on poly count (squary) and are more demanding.

Fact is VBS1 stuff looks much more "real", problably runs alot better, is less demanding and draws alot more than any other game engine out there, thats why it was adopted by the military

"it looks real"

depends on your viewpoint, the lack of proper shadowing and the fact you can count the polygons kind of destroys the effect for me.

"Is less demanding"

true, very true.

"draws allot more than any other game engine out there"

Not neccisary, but it also calculates allot of stuff you can't see (trajectory for each bullet) , however,

Kegety's, about the light deflecting bit, you mean as shown here ? or on this render? . I am not the expert here, but my common sense tells me that that, on a Game2 scale, will be a b*tch to accomplish. Then again, I have heard rumors about DirectX10 coming up, so... maybe I am wrong (and I certainly hope I am *drool ^.^)

Either way, Kegety's, I'd like to hear your (affordable) solution to realistic rendering, I heard something about Glide?

[kegetys 2]

Kegety's, about the light deflecting bit, you mean as shown here ?  or on this render?

I see nothing like that in the first screenshot, and the second link is not about real time rendering (Did you even read it yourself?).

Quote[/b] ]Either way, Kegety's, I'd like to hear your (affordable) solution to realistic rendering, I heard something about Glide?

What do you mean by "affordable realistic rendering"? Forward raytracing would be "realistic rendering", but you're going to have to wait until 2500 or something to be able to do that in real time (if ever).

[gandalf the white 0]

Kegety's, about the light deflecting bit, you mean as shown here ? or on this render?

I see nothing like that in the first screenshot, and the second link is not about real time rendering (Did you even read it yourself?).

The second link is about Radiosity Afaik, i'm not the expert here but it revolves around making the light scatter from a surface to illuminate other surfaces (I had the idea that was what you meant. ( " In real life materials reflect light, so when a light ray hits a surface it lits other surfaces around it. This "radiosity" effect is missing from those fancy bumpmapping effects game developers seem to love today" )

The article I liked was not about real time rendering, but go here , I think Nvidia tries to make it real-time renderable. </quote>

<quote>

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Either way, Kegety's, I'd like to hear your (affordable) solution to realistic rendering, I heard something about Glide?

What do you mean by "affordable realistic rendering"? Forward raytracing would be "realistic rendering", but you're going to have to wait until 2500 or something to be able to do that in real time (if ever)

exactly! Bumpmapping, shaders, filters, and all that stuff is aiming to make lifelike scenes with minimal calculating time! the first generation of this technology might be a bit cartoony, but in the end the goal is thesame. <quote>

Oh, and please go easy on me, it's hard to talk about stuff you have to learn on the fly .

On another note: you got my PM?

[kegetys 2]

The second link is about Radiosity Afaik

Yes it is but its not rendered in real time. Sure, you could do radiosity rendering even with a calculator and a piece of paper but that doesnt mean you could do it at acceptable framerates in a decent resolution.

You can try this for an example what is possible in real-time using raytracing now. With radiosity and all the other fancy stuff enabled I mostly get less than 1FPS in that with my 3,1GHz P4 in 640x480 resolution.

Quote[/b] ]exactly! Bumpmapping, shaders, filters, and all that stuff is aiming to make lifelike scenes with minimal calculating time! the first generation of this technology might be a bit cartoony, but in the end the goal is thesame.

I'd rather look at something that looks realistic instead of something that attempts to do something realistically but fails miserably and looks like everything is made of plastic. Stalker for example looks good (imo.), and that is mostly thanks to the excelent textures. In fact I find the older screenshots of it looking much better than some newer video where they had added the "fancy" plastic stuff everywhere.

And yes I got your pm.

[Heatseeker 0]

I'd rather look at something that looks realistic instead of something that attempts to do something realistically but fails miserably and looks like everything is made of plastic. Stalker for example looks good (imo.), and that is mostly thanks to the excelent textures. In fact I find the older screenshots of it looking much better than some newer video where they had added the "fancy" plastic stuff everywhere.

Agree 100% , Far Cry is a good example of a game featuring new technology and still looking rather squary and cartoonish, Suma once said they got it right the first time regarding BIS real virtuality engine, we have seen how it can handle quite a huge amount of photorealistic detail in VBS1, we have also seen lighting and other improvements in the xbox game.

I think this engines future versions will kick some major ass but people used to smaller games featuring all new DX stuff will complain about the graphics even if they look more realistic, smoother and sharper, most bump mapped textures give a good "fake" efect from the distance but look rather blurry if you look closely, that doom pic is a good example, i prefer the art seen in VBS1 footage, that kind of detail on a future improved engine version (lighting, etc) would be alot more impressive to me   .

[Heatseeker 0]

VBS2

Guess this is why the price of some vbs1 modules has dropped significantly and they come up with the special offer package, im wondering now when will the civilian/public version come out, if it comes out before ARMA and the price isnt ridiculously high (it problably will) it would be something to consider but then its the all new improved engine so i seriously doubt it will be made available to the public anytime soon .

[Guest major gandhi]

would like to know more about vbs2

[Heatseeker 0]

VBS1 = Specific OPF engine based app licensed and developed for military, law enforcement agencies blahblah.

VBS2 = Specific OPF improved engine based app (1.5?/ARMA?) licensed for etc...

Not much to know about it .

Its unfortunate BI is so secretive about it but if they are presenting VBS2 it could be good news for us. Atleast the improved graphics engine will be seen in action.. by someone...

[WhoCares 0]

I guess the conference is not open for the public

So do we have someone that can apply for a job in the Cantina of the Florida Convention Center in Orlando?!

[rainbow 0]

VBS2 = probably something how ArmA - Game2

[Heatseeker 0]

Found coalescent booth for the event, now we just need to find a comunity spy from Orlando. FL to infiltrate the place and take pics, maybe the opfmaniac map will reveal the spy's identity   . Booth 2304 hall C.

Also got a list of service providers for the event, shouldnt be hard to infiltrate.

[cozza 24]

Winters Dosnt he come from Orlando

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Winters    Dosnt he come from Orlando

shhhh, he's supposed to be undercover .

Doubt we will get much out of this exposition, still good luck to BIA .