Here, the HDR screenshot looks more alive than the normal one, though less detailed. It make the world look like you're watching it through night vision goggles, getting blinded at every single decent light source. Right now, this technique is just show-off it lacks realism, moderation and precision.
(Actually, the scene when you are staring at the sun looks really good in HDR).Īnd that's really the only thing HDR does in this game, except for lowering your framerate. You never see that in real life except if you stare at the sun. The light is way too pure, too intense, the contrasts between light and darkness are ridicoulsy exagerated. If you want to see for yourself, watch the "Half-Life 2 High-Dynamic Range Rendering Demonstration" at gamespot. How ridiculous is that? Switching to normal lighting, the light was much more diffuse, soft and realistic. And of course, there was a patch of blinding, intense and pure white light on the opposite brick wall, and you had to stare at it for about 6 seconds before you could see any detail and even then, it had that radioactive-retina-burn-green shade. For example, as we (Gordon and Alyx) were crawling in a basement, we discovered a little computer room with a small vertical neon on the wall. My biggest concern with HL2EO HDR is that every light source becomes a 2000W projector that can set you on fire from a respectable distance. Yes, they now added it on top of everything.
Valve had already designed original HL2 with only normal lighting, and tried their best to make it look realistic: and HL2 looks actually very good even though it doesn't have HDR. (I could only try normal and bloom, and definitly settled for bloom). In fact, I was happy to go back to normal lighting, gain a few precious fps back and also a much more natural, realistic lighting.įrom what I've seen on screenshots, HDR seems to do a fantastic job in Oblivion, whereas normal lighting looks pale, static, and not convincing. Finally, I could see with my own eyes, in real-time, how it looked like! I was also amazed to find out that unlike Oblivion, HL2EO used an HDR technique that my video card could do. Source delivers everything even through a low-end system, and that blows. It was the graphics, or the framerate, but never both. Yes, that was a refreshing experience, because after having tried The Elders Scrolls: Oblivion on my system, I thought I would eternally be stuck with older games: it just wouldn't run decently. As a matter of fact, I still settled for medium textures, low shaders and shadows, trilinear filtering and AA2X as the only effect I could perceive was an amelioration of performance. I was able to play at a very acceptable framerate with models, textures, shaders, shadows on high, 1024x768 w/AA4X (looks awesome) and AF16X. First, I must say I was amazed, positively amazed to discover how well the Source Engine runs and looks on a mediocre configuration such as mine (Radeon 9600SE, 512MB Ram, PIV 2.8Ghz).