The intention is not to start another rambling debate, nor do I think it's a feature request but while still early days concerning reloaded, I think it is perhaps time to pay some attention to the visuals, even just from a debate perspective at least.I think this will also help lee to see how the users feel about the visuals.Personally the visuals is nearly there it just needs to be finished off some how.

I have seen what lee has done with the contrast I am happy with the idea, I personally feel that it isn't enough, contrast needs background blur to soften up the sharpness a bit, it isn't visually appealing not in the least, and it doesn't work with certain ambiance moods as the post bloom doesn't compliment it actually just make the visuals worse.It is suppose to be adaptive bloom, but currently it's just a single bloom tone, the bloom does blur objects in the background but not nearly enough, it also affects the fog, don't like that effect either as you can't specifically set how thin or thick the fog should be.

You should honestly be able to set how thick or how thin the fog needs to be, with the current fog you can't really bring it too close to the camera before totally obscuring the view, perhaps a much larger fall off slider could be beneficial, meaning you can adjust where the fog start getting thicker and where it starts getting thinner.

That set I have played around with the full screen shaders, the old classic post process shaders do work in reloaded, however not all of them like the gasmask, rain, and night vision, reloaded doesn't have enough texture slots available, I also applied a blur shader as part of the test but the engine breaks the shader and you can set a realistic distance from the camera, so every thing is blurred also applied an older bloom shader which, needs to be tweaked a bit both I can already see it providing better results than the current bloom.

Any ways onto the screenshots, and some info about them.


This a grey scale shader, just did it for testing purposes.With some bloom you could have a really good scene going but alas one post shader at a time it is seems.





This is the normal bloom I loaded, needs to be tweaked a bit but does provide a fair sharper image this is where the sharp image could be offset with some blur, for a soft glow, which is impossible to get with the current set up





This I the current bloom, which I am not very fond of, it also make the scene darker, hence being suppose to be adaptive bloom but it is any but, there is some blur on object but you don't really get that sharp image with the soft glow.




This is the visuals that currently support me the best, no post bloom, much sharper visuals and the fog works better for me as well.Your also able to bring the fog in a fair bit closer.




In closing I don't understand why TGC chose to take the bloom route again when HDR is available and there to be used, TGC wants to release it on steam, visuals isn't there just yet, TGC needs to bring in some depth of field and HDR and I know the particle system is still a raw system, but I can say that the bullet impact decal doesn't feel or look right, it looks more like muzzle flash hitting the wall.
The other issue I notice now is the transparency of tree leave and fog, don't really work all to well right now.

on the train, shall we

I have to agree in a couple of areas, especially the shader part.

Currently what is called visuals is actually not more then
a rgb/fog slider and ooh yes the upcoming brightness/contrast slider.

See in a nutshell there is almost no shader action going on.
We do all understand the limitations with FPSCR but then again, in classic there where plenty of shaders and even user made ones.

What needs to change is not our attitude directed at the Dev Team, its the Dev Teams attitude regarding "We cant do that now, we have this and that to do"
Steam is knocking on the door and if there isnt at least standard shader stuff - that one is gonna fail.

Fail because the bigger part of possible users that will come from steam
will be young guns and those dont take a no. They burn you down for not giving them what they want.

What i would like to see is stuff like
- Vignette
- Dirt Lens
- Bokeh

and all that is possible

Hi all,

The question is: Would it be possible to use all these shaders map without resulting a drastic drop of frame rates(frames per second ); I mean, without a large loss in performance during the game play in FPSC-Reloaded at this time?

Cheers,

Northern

Most shaders would not even be active all the time.

For example dirtlens would only be active when looking at a light source or by using the sun. This would make it less performance hungry

A Vignette, is a simple circle that is being drawn on top of the view, it darkens thw edges and this effect is really not performance hungry.

The only shader that would result in performance loss is Bokeh but this could be fused into the dirtlens. This way it would be less performance hungry.

It depends on the shader used I guess simple full screen shader, not too much, other shaders like water, or reflection and refraction takes quite a big hit, Some thing like blur would not even notice it.

Some some thing like depth of field like below which I finally tweaked a bit is working great, could tweak a bit more.With contrast added this will result in slightly better visuals than contrast alone.

@J0linar and @Wizard of id:



Many thanks for take the time to clarify and answer to my question.



Greetings,



Northern

Some of these ideas like vignette and other post filters are going to be possible with my Omega Core plugin that I'm developing. I've actually got a post filter in place for my contest entry. Some things won't be possible, but a lot of things we currently don't have will be. I'm going to be experimenting with an animated fog overlay to see if I can get a close up fog look I'm going for. Color filters of various kinds are possible as well as scratchy or dirty lenses, etc. And Once I get the GUI opened up and released, you will be able to create your own effects like these and many more.

I wish I had some idea of what the development list looks like and what comes where, and when this will be done or that fixed ect.

Problem is unless you actually take the time out and really pay attention to the visuals, you don't really take much notice of it, and then unless you have a debate about the matter, the development team will go right ahead typing away at the code, without a second thought, I in retrospect decided time to bring up this debate and have a look at ideas and what the general consensus is on the visuals.

I already made my self vocal on how bad the particles look, that said I am not sure the particle system is fully implemented, if it is, it doesn't match up with the surrounding visuals, and looks pretty bad as a result.

Shaders is just one step in right direction to get the visuals better, however from a visuals aspect there is still plenty that can be done like for example the contrast system, but as explain it isn't really best to use on it's own, as shown a depth of field can really add some thing else to reduce the super sharp image.The contrast system will work very well with HDR, classic only allowed one post shader, I am not sure how lee is going to address the problem in reloaded, but here is hoping that we have at least two full screen HDR and depth of field or lower end systems normal bloom for example.

We also need to seriously consider some screen filtering, you will be surprise how much FSAA can do, considering you can now set graphics detail, you can either disable it on lower end or reduce the amount of FSAA.

As you said, playing a rudimentary visuals on steam upon release, is going to result in serious back lash from the users.

Until this option is available in-engine you can just set that on your video card settings yourself.