Shadow not enabled on particle effects: Vote for it :P

[Raidar 1]

I remembered the shadow detail in particle effects of Armed Assault, which was great but not present in ArmA2 so i reportet it on the Issue Tracker.

Visuals aren't the most important thing, but these shadows would get the particle effects more connected to the environement and give much more detail and contrast to them. I think it would be an easy way to enhance the beauty of ArmA2.

So please vote if you like and don't if you don't :P

Grtz Ra!dar

[dmarkwick 261]

Do you mean casting shadows or receiving shadows? You're right in that in ArmA1 particles would receive shadows, and to tell the truth I have not noticed it in ArmA2 so you may be right about that.

I made some experiments with particles casting shadows, but it wasn't very hopeful. I spawned shaped shadow objects where the particles were, they had no visible or collision geometry just shadow geometry. But shadows cannot be seen over a certain distance anyway and so a lot of the time it was wasted effort. And the shadows you could see were a little odd because of the sharpness of ingame shadows.

[Raidar 1]

Well i ment recieving shadows, but casting shadows would be the extra (but maybe it would get too hardware intensive).

The main reason i'm interested in that topic is because the only lighting particle effects have, is the static light of day and in the night they can allso be lighted by light sources. Makes it feel strangely disconnected to the rest of the environement.

Edit: Check out how it looks if you throw some smoke grenades at night and light parts of it with a carlight, fire, muzzle flash, explosion etc. It would be a nice and easier way to darken the particles in shadow at day (like i described it @ issue tracker)

---------- Post added at 06:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:06 PM ----------

I searched my old armed assault movies to show of in motion pictures, how it looks. Here's the first one, second following:

Edit: Here is the second

Edited January 25, 2010 by Ra!dar

[Chunk3ym4n 10]

I would like for this to be in too. It looks pretty cool.

[Raidar 1]

Well if you vote for it, the possibility of it's comeback in ArmA2 might rise :P

Only shadow makes you to see the shape of objects and generates a deeper 3D world (because you can kinda see how the form of the object is trough it's shadow on other things). I hate to have shadow disabled in games, it makes the games feel so flat and gives them a lack of contrast.

Without no shadow, there's no light ;) so give the smoke some yin-yang :yin-yang: :D

DMarkwick got me about thinking of columns of smoke etc. Casting shadow. It would definetly look great. Would give you an aid to read the dimensions of it and give a deeper environement impression.

I know that the graphics is not the most important thing, but i think it would enhance the graphics alot.

I think that the beauty of the ArmA2 game (and it's predecessors) are the quantity of all the littel details which interact with each other. But smoke doesn't react very much, it's just there.

Smoke reaction to heli downwash and interaction with objects would be great too (now i'm going to far :p)