JOE2TIGER Posted April 12, 2002 Posted April 12, 2002 My specs: 1.4 GHz AMD Thunderbird 384MB RAM 266MHz Front Side Bus 45Gig Hard Disk nVidia GeForce3 Titanium with 64MB RAM My question on the graphics setting on shadows, I have made the default resolution for the images as 640x480 to load faster for you folks with dial-up, other people can still look at the 800x600 or 1024x768 resolutions.. Volumetric - Is it supposed to have jagged shapes like this with the shadows? Click here to see the Volumetric 800x600 Click here to see the Volumetric 1024x768 Simple - Simple looks better to me, but doesn't have the atmosphere volumetric has.. Click here to see the Simple 800x600 Click here to see the Simple 1024x768 Do you folks have this problem? On who's system does volumetric shadows looks very good?
Dvlos Posted April 12, 2002 Posted April 12, 2002 Those screens are kind of bad examples, on some maps your shadow on the floor looks hella more realistic.. but I like to play at higher resolutions...so I dont leave it on because of frame rate dropped
Patton Posted April 12, 2002 Posted April 12, 2002 It looks cool, but the performance with it on is reduced dramatically, and I have a GF4 Ti4600. I had em on for the first few levels, but when they started getting bigger, I turned it off.
Digital_Ronin Posted April 12, 2002 Posted April 12, 2002 I liked them as long as I didn't have the lightsaber - they get really annoying and twitchy in 3rd person with saber on. Going for 'simple' now, too. Digital_Ronin
JOE2TIGER Posted April 12, 2002 Author Posted April 12, 2002 I edited my post to give better examples, sorry for the bad ones
Dvlos Posted April 12, 2002 Posted April 12, 2002 Take some in outdoor environments or in the temple and you can see that Kyle's shadow on the ground looks like an elongated Kyle and the objects around you cast real shadows.. but on the polys of the characters faces it still screws up...maybe they can patch it so it only puts shadows on the ground.. I kind liked the look in outdoor levels.
JOE2TIGER Posted April 13, 2002 Author Posted April 13, 2002 Here is a different setting for the shadows..... Volumetric - Is it supposed to have jagged shapes like this with the shadows? It's ugly. Not only that, the shadows are not consistent when I have it on, it gets irratic.. Click here to see the Volumetric 800x600 Click here to see the Volumetric 1024x768 Simple - Simple looks better to me, but doesn't have the atmosphere volumetric has.. Click here to see the Simple 800x600 Click here to see the Simple 1024x768
Sapaca Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 I have a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 with 128mb of ram on the card and the shadows look lousy. I don't think Raven polished them enough.
Evil_Ferret Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 i kept volumatric shadows on because i never had any slow down with them. they do have the jaged eges and, but simple shadows dont have the shadow of the person on the ground.
Rancor Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 I think you meant to say that "the Carmack" didn't polish them enough as he was the one who put them into Q3 in the first place.
fingerprint Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 Where is this Volumetric Shadows option anyway? All I see is a Detailed Shaders option.
JOE2TIGER Posted April 13, 2002 Author Posted April 13, 2002 In the Main Menu..... Go into " SETUP " Then click on " MORE VIDEO " on the right there is an option for " Shadows " Click till you see " Shadows: Volumetric "
Zek Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 There should be an "Evil Satanic Character Teeth" option that allows you to make the cutscene characters not make faces like the one Luke is making there.
DayGlow Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 I find that the Q3 engine doesn't do shadows all that well. Both JKII and MOHAA have a detailed shadow option and both really slow down the system. I know I don't have the greatest comp out there but a 1ghz duron 512mb ram and gf4ti4400 isn't all that bad either. I don't play at super high resultions b/c I only have a 17' monitor so 1025x786 looks best. Now I've seen other games do projected shadows and not have the frame-rate hit that the Q3 engine seems to have. Maybe these shadows are more of a hack into the engine, not actually part of it. A shame though because I do believe they add atmosphere to the game. COLINMAN
Nibot Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 I'm not sure if anyone knows this, but there is another option for shadows other than the ones listed here. cg_shadows 3 gives a fake volumetric-type shadow, which is cast on the ground but not on the character models. Looks pretty good and doesn't have any of the performance hit & quirks of the true volumetric shadows. That's what I use.
NerfYoda Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 Aside from the shadows on the wall thing I kinda dig the volumetric shadows on the models.. looks kinda artsy IMHO.
Trienco Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 just imagine the performance impact if it would not only darken the whole polygon. you might be able to calculate the shadow for each vertex and interpolate but that would probably increase the work to more than three times. so let's call it a nice feature of a technology soon to come *g*
JOE2TIGER Posted April 13, 2002 Author Posted April 13, 2002 Maybe the upcoming DirectX 9 can do that... anyway, I'm gonna try that " cg_shadows 3 " command and check how it looks. BTW GeForce3 and GeForce4 use their own arch. for graphics and don't hog down the system memory.... But, aren't they both supposed to have the ability to draw per pixel to have it's own shadow and light characteristics and do it real-time?
Outlaw Posted April 13, 2002 Posted April 13, 2002 This type of shadowing, if done right, can look very impressive. The best i've seen is in Obi-Wan for Xbox. Obi himself has very detailed, smooth, and realistic self shadowing. I think Raven played Obi-Wan and liked the effect. They could have, last minute, attemped to add this special effect into Outcast and this is the result. A patch later on could improve the look and framerate drops.
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