Half Life 2 "Lost Coast" HDR Preview

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Brent_Justice

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http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/09/14/lost_coast_screens/1.html

Following the release of Half-Life 2 worldwide on 16th November 2004, a group of programmers and artists at Valve sat down to create the ultimate level, incorporating ultra high resolution textures, models and adding High Dynamic Range Rendering (HDR) to the Source engine. Their aim was to create a technology showcase: a no-holds barred level that would set new standards in image quality and realism; something to really push even the highest of today's high-end systems.

Let's be clear: Lost Coast isn't just about HDR. It's also about those other things - the amazing textures and the high quality models.
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We'll probably be seeing more of these previews today or in the following days, you can post links here.


Another One, has video - http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/ValveHDR/index.htm
 
Sweet,

What the article missed and I wish it had focused some attention too, was that besides the 15 minutes "tech level", Lost Coast would add some HDR effects to the whole HL2 experience.

Not the same level of polygonal detail as currently mentioned for the new "old fisherman" character, but blooming and other types to the other levels as well. It'll be interesting to play again just to see the impact.
 
Looks like the only thing in HL2 getting HDR right now is Lost Coast, I'd imagine they'd have to re-code every single level with HDR if they wanted to add it to every level.

But Day of Defeat looks like it will have it, and it's coming out on the 26th. Aftermath, the expansion for HL2 will also have it.
 
I've held my tongue on this long enough:

I'm just not seeing it.

Yeah, hdr is purty, but beyond the "bloom" effect it doesn't seem to do much.

And as for this crap about "No limits", the textures and surfaces in the lost coast look pretty ordinary to me, it still looks like Half Life 2, just with blurry lights.

In fact, some of the ground textures are just plain primitive looking by modern standards.

The tech is out there, Doom3 went mental with the shaders, and looked spectacular (when you could see it), but the overall aesthetic was sort of cartoonish, HL2 had the starker, more realistic aesthetic, but a pretty last gen approach to most textures (I though FarCry did the best job of cleverly mixing techniques).

Sooner or later, someone needs to combine the two, lots of shaders (but used more subtly than in d3) AND realistic textures/design , that'll be really amazing.
 
GFreeman9 said:
This is one of the reasons to buy a 6800 series/7800 series card. :cool:
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Except the HDR Half-Life 2 is using will run just fine on ATI's X800 cards.

Anyway - the method they are using - DOES work with multi-sample anti-aliasing. And, if you read the article, it mentions that it even has acceptable performance on a Radeon 9600!

Article said:
To clarify, then: the HDR works on Shader Model 2 and Shader Model 3 hardware, and you can run it with anti-aliasing on.
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Woohoo for a better method of HDR than nVidia is making devs use!

But...really...who cares? It's only a 15 minute 'tech demo' level - the rest of the game will be untouched by this (in a Q&A, Gabe had commented that the rest of the game levels were really not designed with HDR in mind, and it would take significant code changes and level redesigns to make it work).

I guess we'll see how it looks in the add-ons coming, but, still....
 
tornadotsunamilife said:
When was this announced???
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From the article I linked above:

HDR will feature in all future Valve games, the first of which will be Day of Defeat: Source, to be released on 26th September. Yes, you read that correctly: Lost Coast will not be the first HDR release from Valve. Granted, this goes against earlier statements from the company, but according to Marketing Director, Doug Lombardi, the two releases are so close together that they are essentially considered as one, internally. No official release date has been set for Lost Coast, but you can expect it to closely follow DoD: Source's release at the end of this month.
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I think articles like this are just WAY off.

They make it sound like valve are pioneers in technology like HDR and mention things like - "Half-Life 2: Lost Coast is Valve's reply to a series of What If questions: what if there were no limits? What if we didn't have to make sure people with mid-range systems could enjoy our games? What if the system requirements knew no bounds?" etc etc, its just a load of rubbish!

We've seen HDR in games like FarCry and thats been around for a while, they're not the first to use it and they didn't invent it so whats the big deal?

Not to mention the HL2's engine serious imbalance in texture quality/shader quality to geomeric detail ratio, a lot of the buildings in HL2 were practically nothing more than squares with a really high detialed texture on it which looks good in a screenshot but when you can adjust your angle around and look at the thing its just poor.

Most of the new engines around the corner do away with BSP and try and push a bit harder in the poly department, something engines like the unreal engine are really good at..

Not to mention I distinctly remember valve boasting about their new technology practically a full year before HL2 was released by then it wasn't anything really new, I wonder if history will repeat itself with their upcoming stuff, i mean DOD will come first but how long for the expansion.

Anyways not trying to moan here just that article seems to make valve sound like the forefathers of gaming and technology and I just dont see it like that.
 
MartinX said:
I've held my tongue on this long enough:

I'm just not seeing it.

Yeah, hdr is purty, but beyond the "bloom" effect it doesn't seem to do much.

And as for this crap about "No limits", the textures and surfaces in the lost coast look pretty ordinary to me, it still looks like Half Life 2, just with blurry lights.

In fact, some of the ground textures are just plain primitive looking by modern standards.

The tech is out there, Doom3 went mental with the shaders, and looked spectacular (when you could see it), but the overall aesthetic was sort of cartoonish, HL2 had the starker, more realistic aesthetic, but a pretty last gen approach to most textures (I though FarCry did the best job of cleverly mixing techniques).

Sooner or later, someone needs to combine the two, lots of shaders (but used more subtly than in d3) AND realistic textures/design , that'll be really amazing.
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I completely agree. You can't do it all with tons of shaders or high res textures. Put more polys on those models!
 
^^^ HDR isn't the only thing added. The textures and polys have been improved as well. I think the article is giving valve props (that they deserve) for pushing the envelope and giving us what is essentially a playable mini-expansion and tech demo in one. If id released some sort of download that showcased some new and innovative graphics tech, or simply just pushed the limits of current hardware by expanding the textures and ploy counts, we would all be drooling over that also.
 
Sidenote: did you see what game is in Gabe's stack on his desk?

Not that we should be surprised, it's just interesting to think about is all.
 
jebo_4jc said:
Sidenote: did you see what game is in Gabe's stack on his desk?

Not that we should be surprised, it's just interesting to think about is all.
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Are you talking about Doom3?

I'm guessing nobody overlooked his ginormous 30" ACD.
 
dderidex said:
Except the HDR Half-Life 2 is using will run just fine on ATI's X800 cards.
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Yeah they can run it on low quality due to the lack of Shadel Model 3.0 on the cards... I'm not saying it's bad and I'm not trying to flame because personally I think it is going to look amazing on the x1800xt. :D :cool:
 
jebo_4jc said:
Sidenote: did you see what game is in Gabe's stack on his desk?

Not that we should be surprised, it's just interesting to think about is all.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the game I thought beat HL2 last year. :D
 
So does SM3 support on 6800 and 7800 series cards do ANYTHING here? Or is it the same HDR for all cards, just some will run it shitty and some better. Does the 6800/7800 series 3.0 support provide ANY improvement over cards w/o it?
 
Dillusion said:
So does SM3 support on 6800 and 7800 series cards do ANYTHING here? Or is it the same HDR for all cards, just some will run it shitty and some better. Does the 6800/7800 series 3.0 support provide ANY improvement over cards w/o it?
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In a word, no.
the article said:
it worked on all DX9 hardware, with reasonable performance on even a Radeon 9600....To clarify, then: the HDR works on Shader Model 2 and Shader Model 3 hardware, and you can run it with anti-aliasing on
Click to expand...
 
Frosteh said:
We've seen HDR in games like FarCry and thats been around for a while, they're not the first to use it and they didn't invent it so whats the big deal?at.
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Read the article as they do more with thier HDR than what Frycry does with its HDR...
Pluse they dont rely on a ceritan level of PS and allow AA which is not found with todays HDR...
 
MartinX said:
II'm just not seeing it.

Yeah, hdr is purty, but beyond the "bloom" effect it doesn't seem to do much.
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When you've been playing HDR games for a couple years, go back and play today's games. I'm sure you'll find them to be bland and ugly.
 
GFreeman9 said:
Yeah they can run it on low quality due to the lack of Shadel Model 3.0 on the cards... I'm not saying it's bad and I'm not trying to flame because personally I think it is going to look amazing on the x1800xt. :D :cool:
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I dunno, per the article, they considered SEVERAL different methods of doing HDR (presumably Far Cry's format, as well) and decided that the method they chose was the best looking.

Remember - the FP16-precision HDR *cannot* be anti-aliased at the moment. Apparently, Valve thought (correctly) that anti-aliasing is an important part of the image quality, so they chose the best method of HDR that would still work with FSAA.

And it just so happens that r300 and better cards from ATI can jump in the game just as easily - a testament to the forward-thinking ATI did (in regards to Direct3d, anyway). LOL - it seems it actually worked OUT this time! (Thinking back to the 2x3 architecture and pre-spec Pixel Shader support on the original Radeon...neither of which EVER got used)
 
jebo_4jc said:
Sidenote: did you see what game is in Gabe's stack on his desk?

Not that we should be surprised, it's just interesting to think about is all.
Click to expand...

LOL is that B&W? more specifically B&W2 that isn't released yet?
 
PikachuMan said:
Doesn't the "Luna" demo from nvidia do this?
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Yes it does, but it's not hardware accelerated. The AA there is shader based. I'm betting that any HDR enabled TWIMTBP titles will be following this route - I'm also basing this on Kirk's comments on the topic. It will be very interesting to see what happens with UT2007 HDR/AA.
 
Check out the grammar errors in the article:

"Valve are looking to use the Source engine as the solid foundation onto which new technology can be added."

Valve "are"? I don't know why there is this new trend of (insert company name) + are + action, but it is really grating on my nerves. There's this little thing called corporate personhood, which means you treat corporations as if they are singular entities.

It would be correct as so:

"Valve is looking to use the Source engine as the solid foundation onto which new technology can be added."

Sorry, but if it weren't for half the gaming related forums and articles on the net pulling this shit, I wouldn't have said anything.

BTW: Why is the writer claiming that FarCry had bloom and not HDR?
 
BTW: Why is the writer claiming that FarCry had bloom and not HDR?
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I think his point was that while Far Cry had HDR, all it used was the blooming effect, while Valve is using "Blooming, HDR Skyboxes, HDR Cube maps, HDR light reflection and refractions and many more" in Lost Coast.
 
Those images look like crap--I *hate* JPEGs!! Looks like the HDR effects are quite nice, esp with AA. Wonder if it'll run at 1920x1200 max IQ on my system. :confused:
 
Ozymandias said:
I think his point was that while Far Cry had HDR, all it used was the blooming effect, while Valve is using "Blooming, HDR Skyboxes, HDR Cube maps, HDR light reflection and refractions and many more" in Lost Coast.
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The FarCry HDR wasn't just bloom. Exposure effects were in, as was glare. Basically it was true HDR just like rthdribl. Valve is tossing in more features, but it isn't much to brag about as it didn't take Crytek nearly 3 years to put their implementation in.
 
trinibwoy said:
When you've been playing HDR games for a couple years, go back and play today's games. I'm sure you'll find them to be bland and ugly.
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Well that happens anyway.

Maybe I'll change my tune when I actually see it in play, but right now it just seems like another "thing" that people are talking about/hyping as if it's the second coming of 3d, and it just doesn't seem "all that" to me.
 
MartinX said:
I've held my tongue on this long enough:

I'm just not seeing it.

Yeah, hdr is purty, but beyond the "bloom" effect it doesn't seem to do much.

And as for this crap about "No limits", the textures and surfaces in the lost coast look pretty ordinary to me, it still looks like Half Life 2, just with blurry lights.

In fact, some of the ground textures are just plain primitive looking by modern standards.

The tech is out there, Doom3 went mental with the shaders, and looked spectacular (when you could see it), but the overall aesthetic was sort of cartoonish, HL2 had the starker, more realistic aesthetic, but a pretty last gen approach to most textures (I though FarCry did the best job of cleverly mixing techniques).

Sooner or later, someone needs to combine the two, lots of shaders (but used more subtly than in d3) AND realistic textures/design , that'll be really amazing.
Click to expand...

DOOM 3 went crazy with Normal Maps. I'd say SCCT went crazy with shaders.

HDR is is how we see the world. We can perceive high and low intensities of light, much greater than what we've been use to in the past with computer 3D rendered games on current displays. The real world is in "HDR" so to speak.

It's one step closer to realism if we now include that in games. No, it isn't perfect, but neither was AA or AF or any other feature when it was first introduced. Give it time and it will mature, there will be different methods of doing it, and developers will use it differently in games.

I do not consider FarCry to be a good example of HDR, simply it was the FIRST example.

I do consider SCCT to use it well.

If you've seen the Alan Wake demo videos from E3 you will see good HDR put to use. It is all up to the developers how to use it. Using it correctly can add a great deal of immersion and depth to a game. It sets a mood and atmosphere in a game, it is a great tool.

Yes, I like HDR and look forward to see more use of it in future games.
 
Jonsey said:
I completely agree. You can't do it all with tons of shaders or high res textures. Put more polys on those models!
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I agree with that, but with conditions. If you can simulate a high poly object or character with less polys, then do that. Basically that is what normal mapping is.
 
GFreeman9 said:
Yeah they can run it on low quality due to the lack of Shadel Model 3.0 on the cards... I'm not saying it's bad and I'm not trying to flame because personally I think it is going to look amazing on the x1800xt. :D :cool:
Click to expand...

No, it is using pixel shader integer based HDR because the ATI DX9 series lacks FP16 blending in the framebuffer, not because of lack of SM 3.0.
 
Dillusion said:
So does SM3 support on 6800 and 7800 series cards do ANYTHING here? Or is it the same HDR for all cards, just some will run it shitty and some better. Does the 6800/7800 series 3.0 support provide ANY improvement over cards w/o it?
Click to expand...

The higher HDR is due to the support of a FP16 framebuffer.
 
dderidex said:
Remember - the FP16-precision HDR *cannot* be anti-aliased at the moment. Apparently, Valve thought (correctly) that anti-aliasing is an important part of the image quality, so they chose the best method of HDR that would still work with FSAA.
Click to expand...

correction, it is a hardware problem, not a software problem of using FP16 format

so find a piece of hardware that can do MSAA with FP16 blend in the framebuffer, and there ya go, anti-aliased FP16 HDR
 
Ether said:
Those images look like crap--I *hate* JPEGs!! Looks like the HDR effects are quite nice, esp with AA. Wonder if it'll run at 1920x1200 max IQ on my system. :confused:
Click to expand...

I noticed those screenshots did not have AA or AF enabled, kinda ulgy lookin IMO without them.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I noticed those screenshots did not have AA or AF enabled, kinda ulgy lookin IMO without them.
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They said in the article the screenshots were using 2xAA on a FireGL card.
 
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