I've been fiddling arround with the latest Far Cry patch which finally support SM3 (shader Model 3) and HDR rendering. Well the Sm3 seems a tad better than 2 but no real biggy in the game IMO...BUT the HDR rendering is kickarse. It would be a great feature if it could be enabled with a patcyh in Doom 3 thats for sure. The game just looks fantastic, so 'cinematic' in fact. The rendering does a pretty good job of simulating the effects of light and its sources. Coming from a dark area into light is pretty well done and vice versa. Anyway, I'm not the best screenshot captain but here are a few before and after shots with \r_hdrrendering 7 set as the option. You can fidle with its various settings between 0-9 but 7 seems to be the sweet spot.

http://www.users.on.net/~dwegner/Pics/FarCry1.jpg

http://www.users.on.net/~dwegner/Pics/FarCry2.jpg
http://www.users.on.net/~dwegner/Pics/FarCry3.jpg
http://www.users.on.net/~dwegner/Pics/FarCry4.jpg

It really does give the game experience a whole new 'feel' IMO and atmospheric games like Doom 3 would seriously rock with it enabled.

which is which?

looks really good, what video card are you running?

Asus 6800 Ultra deluxe.

screenies dont really do it justice..its awesome in real time sneaking round with the rendering...makes it very spooky in places. The outdoor shots look awesome as well, the shadows from trees and sunlight looks very good. You can tone it down a bit if its too 'bloomy' but it certainly is a great feature.

I hear STALKER will support all this stuff and if thats correct its going to look awesome.

which is which?

Screen shot 1: Before
After


Screen shot 2: Before
After


Disregard if you were merely being a tawt.

looks fukin awesum, wish i had a awesum vid card like yourself :(

would be nice if it worked with my 9700 pro :(

Asus 6800 Ultra deluxe.

sup expensive video card krew

I'll have to get the patch to check out the improvements now

farrkkkk , very nice ^_^

is sm3 enabled automatically if u have a fx6800 etc? or is it an option (and if so, do all those screenies have it on?)

Asus 6800 Ultra deluxe

they are awsum...been thinking of geting a x800 pro myslef tho

do u get that on a standard 6800 ?

do u get that on a standard 6800

yes, the entire 6800 (NV40) range supports SM3.0

last edited by scuzzy at 19:36:57 30/Oct/04

hmm so 9700pro's dont do this? if not what about the ati x800?

none of the x800s do sm3.0 yet, so no, none of their cards before then will either

im not too sure what the whole HDR Rendering stuff is yet, or whether both lots of cards can do it, but if its something from sm3.0 then obviously ati cant do it

hdr isnt from sm3.0 because its in hl2 and the ati cards can do it afaik

last edited by dangles at 21:10:53 30/Oct/04

is sm3 enabled automatically if u have a fx6800 etc? or is it an option (and if so, do all those screenies have it on?)

From what I have learnt, the SM3 shader modelling is done by default on Nvidia 6800+ class cards. I dont think that ATI cards can do hdr rendering either, a couple of people on some forums have tried to turn it on in the console with ATI cards and its not supported AFAIK.

Ill grab some outside shots and post them in a bit.

Ill grab some outside shots and post them in a bit.

and chance you could upload a full sized PNG of your outside shot aswell?

Isn't that MY copy of Far Cry ?!?!

;)

There's some sorta explanation in the patch readme that they did their own HDR algorithm and it needs a full floating point path (or something, heck i don't know this stuff) that only new nvidia cards have.

Whatever they (Crytek) did they did pretty good, the effect can get a bit crazy in some spots, where you might turn on your flashlight etc..but there are other commands I havent checked out yet where you can adjust the HDR level of rendering, light sourcing etc...

Couple more inside jobbies..

http://www.users.on.net/~dwegner/Pics/FarCry6.jpg

http://www.users.on.net/~dwegner/Pics/FarCry7.jpg
And a (1.5m) PNG of an outside shot..over here

Hope I did that right cause I never even knew about PNG images until today!


:P

Bottom line on the tech is that it looks most certainly able to add a great deal of depth to the 'immersion' factor...Like I said before I would so love Doom 3 to get this enabled (or a mod maybe) down the track.

Anyone know if this feature will be supported in HL2?

*ps if you are trying this out on your card and the effect is too oversaturated or bright, try setting the rendering method in Far Cry video options to 'cold'..seems to tone it down a bit and looks just a tad more natural as well. Also you have to have AA turned off, every other setting set to 'very high'in the game menu, and enter "\r_hdrrendering 7" in the console.

last edited by Psycho! at 22:49:34 30/Oct/04

last edited by Psycho! at 23:28:49 30/Oct/04

last edited by Psycho! at 01:13:11 31/Oct/04

Not sure that I like the HDR effects in Far Cry actually. Some of the before shots look better to me.

Anyway, HDR is "High Dynamic Range" and basically it refers to using higher precision when calculating lighting effects. The Radeons have been capable of that since the 9700 series were introduced (9500 and up). Basically the hardware just needs to be capable of higher precision (24 or 32 bit floating point). There are a couple lovely HDR demos ATI did oh... about 2 years ago :P

Like the Real Natural Light demo here: http://www.ati.com/developer/demos/r9700.html
Or this one here:
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

As for SM3.0 I believe it's possible to produce the same effects with the Radeons (again 9500+) it's just a bit more expensive because there is more software word being done.

ywh the pics I took are straight up activating the HDR so they might look overdone a bit....they can be tweaked in saturation, colour etc..etc.. Even in Far Cry setting the render type to 'cold' produces a more natural balanced look..once you had it tweaked nicely it is definately and good feature to be able to turn on or off in your games.