DaveW wrote:
Aside from the fact they're two different games (why do you have to play one and not the other?) - the OBGEv3 renderer most likely does not exceed the Skyrim renderer and even if it does the output won't look any better. You can throw as many pixel shaders at Oblivion's art content as you like, it isn't getting any prettier.
OBGE does more then just pixel shaders, it hooks the entire render, higher levels of texture filtering can be set etc. the biggest problem is generating new content while using existing parameters as the ability to change the rest of the game system is limited.
To pick up a few points:
Physically correct skies? Who cares? Do you look up and go "that sky looks cool?" Yes. That's all that matters.
a game play purist could argue that with any graphic advancement, what makes dragon age 2 better then the 1994 effort of Darksun or ultima underworld? the sky actually adds quite a bit, Oblivion didn't have a real horizon they just covered it with fog (they did this with lots of render issues), it didn't have a real sun with a real sunrise or set.
Parallax mapping looks like shit no matter what engine you're in - that said, did you mean to write parallax occlusion mapping?
yes im dyslexic and rely heavily on spell checker..... sue me.
'Physically correct water' (no such thing in real-time, btw) - the water in your later screenshot doesn't really look any better than Skyrim's. There's a bit more detail to it, I guess.
thats because those where screenshots from alpha testing ( only ones i bothered putting up online), only the first one has the water mod (beta by the looks of it) and its deep water on a calm day. Go into anvil harbor or Cheydinhal where the water depth is low and the water effects have been tweaked for the environments.
Depending on the implenetation, SSII is basically a tweaked SSAO shader - which looks like shit. As does DOF - and to be fair, all post-process lens effects look pretty awful, even if you're working in video compositing apps.
http://obge.paradice-insight.us/wiki/Am ... Effects%29
there are a whole range of AO effects to choose from bad low quality fast effects, right through to high end very ALU intensive effects. oblivion's lighting system was quite primitive so SSII can actually add quite a bit particularly indoors.
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Anything above FXAA doesn't have noticeable benefits (but rapes performance),
this i have to completely disagree with you on and communities of developers will disagree with you
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=55634 the best bit is, you can try them all yourself(using the shader developer enable/compile/disable in realtime) and see that im right
SMAA exceeds 4x MSAA in most cases, FXAA is nowhere near that quality, it blurs textures badly as well. you cant run MSAA in OBGE because of the DX9 back buffer limitations.
and there's no point in pushing LOD to ramp up detail when you don't even want to see things at the kind of distance you showed. The maps were not designed with that kind of visibility in mind, and it shows - plus you have a floating island in the distance because the water shader isn't reflecting the terrain (and I wouldn't expect it to, either.)
a few points, one all the meshes and high maps have been redone,
two, that pic is not the render operating normally ( no fog , no other effects)
three, the water replacement itsn't operating in that pic and normally you wouldn't see that far.
ripped stright from the wiki this is what it does:
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It contains shaders which provide the following extra functionality:
LOD-meshes don't need UV-coordinates
the transition from local terrain to LOD-meshes has been smoothed
texture-filtering is taking more samples from the LOD-textures to provide seemingly higher resolution
a more sophisticated noise-scheme is used to add detail to the surface, it provides color- and normal-noise
it raises specularity for bright surfaces the higher the surface, this makes mountain-tops with snow shine in the sun
See, effects like
this sound impressive - but much like the ENB Series renderer in Deus Ex (which I hate), it looks tacked on and horrible. Having an assload of fancy shaders like SSII and DOF does
not make it a good rendering engine. Shaders like DOF can be thrown onto any renderer, what defines the render as good/bad is how efficient it is at handling them.
ENB has nothing on OBGE, ENB does nothing but post process, OBGE hooks the entire render pipeline, things like HDR are now implemented correctly in OBGE as compared to default oblivion.
The screenshots I've seen of MGSO look a lot better because the whole thing seems 'unified' rather than "THROW EVERY SINGLE PIXEL SHADER POSSIBLE AT THIS OLD ART CONTENT"
thats hardly fair because:
1. OBGE does way more then post process shaders, like Tessellation (AMD's DX10/xbox implementation) or that you have R/W access to every single pass within the oblivion render.
2. every shader is optional and every shader is highly tweak-able via user defined variables.
3. All the art has been redone, all re-textured, bodies remodled the LOD uses TWMP meshes for Tamriel.
4. i dont see anything in those screenshots that are particular better then OBGE, you should note that the scenshoot i linked are in various stages of Alpha or beta development ( it just what i have online at the time). if we want a pissing contest i can bring out the pretties
I see i have thrown the cat amongst the pigeons, maybe i should start talking about conspiracy theories
edit: i should also add that those post process effects aren't post process in OBGE they positioned in the render pipeline for best accuracy. you can force them to post via configuration if you wish to the see the difference.
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