Thread: UT2007 - Screenshots

There's a little conversation about them over at the Americas Army forum if you want to read it.
http://forum.americasarmy.com/viewtopic.php?t=163853

Apparently the people over at AA do not understand anything about graphics programming. It's impossible to tell how many dynamic lights are used in any of those screenshots because dynamic means that they move and react with the environment in real time. Since it is only one shot of one frame of the game, you cannot say whether they are dynamic or not.

I would contradict them in stating that the engine probably has a much better static lighting system implemented to create the effects you see. Dynamic lighting can be accomplished quite well on newer GPUs using Cg or PS/VS in DirectX, but there is still a cost to computing more and more per pixel. In fact you still cannot compute it for every pixel on the screen, much less every pixel on the polygon.

Just to compute generic DOT3 lighting on a polygon for every pixel in the polygon is still demaning a lot from the card. Most of the effects are probably achieved by a mix of dynamic and static lighting.

The screenshots look very good however and notice the newer trees. They are most certainly a result of pixel shaders and go far beyond their billboard cousins. And I think they are using a pixel shader or vertex shader for the whole screen to achieve the grainy, misty, dirty look that most games leave out. Most games are too clear in that no environment on earth is w/o some type of air pollution and/or contaminants. These contaminants cause the light to scatter and bounce around in odd directions. Thus some of the light rays never hit their target and end up being refracted and bounced around into diffuse lighting. It looks as though the engine is doing this simulation quite well. Very nice screenies.