I feel like I should excuse for the others, Foxfire. You did an amazing job with the research and your modern approach to rendering. This is probably just the wrong forum to appreciate this. Don't let you discourage of this! Someone has to be the first to research this.

And for the visuals: You should aim for something like the Offset-Engine or the Reality-Engine showed, nice lighting in combination with some good effects, visible, but not exaggerated, similar to fantasy movie productions.

@TechMuc: You're talking about CPU intensive stuff. They shouldn't really take away from the framerate if the load on the GPU is what's bringing it down.

Basically a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If the pressure on the CPU would bring it down to 20 fps, for example, regardless of what the GPU was doing, and the pressure that's on the GPU means it can only put out 15 fps, regardless of how much pressure is actually on the CPU, you'll get 15 fps. The CPU load would only put the game under 15 fps if whatever is being processed on the CPU alone would bring the CPU below 15 fps.

Physics is sometimes partially done on the GPU, but rarely in a released game.

@Enduriel: I'd also like to mention that Crysis, according to Wikipedia, was released in 2008 (March), so much closer to ONE year ago. And your 8800 runs it on VERY HIGH settings at around 30 fps, so you can probably get a solid 60 by tuning the graphics down a little (not minimum), and there we have 3 generations (8800, 9x00, 2xx or whatever) already able to run it no dramas. On minimum settings you get at least another older generation out of it. (Btw, sorry I haven't been able to get on MSN much, and our time-zone differences have been an issue).

Foxfire is a shader guru and he and whoever are working with him are producing some great work.

Jibb

yeah, as already said, the current version was very very slow and buggy on my computer (see posts of ChrisB, Ello and especially lostClimate).

As you promised, you know must of the bugs and will release a new beta in the next time. Therefore I'll not discuss about eventual FPS/Shader-Problems, but wait for the next demo, and check if it reached a new Quality (btw: the best way to solve the discussion about FPS would be to release a demo with heavy scripting usage (as already said - physics, maybe AI, or maybe only even a dumb function that blocks the main function for a short moment).. i think a video - with known system-settings - would be enough too).

But now, i'm looking foreward to a new demo with fixed bugs.

PS: At last: the screenshots are looking fantastic ofc (beside some odd effects), but nevertheless it has to look good in motion and on all computer-settings (ofc settings that support the irdium engine) - that's the most complicated part for any graphic-library

Ok, so I think that people here want a faster engine (which makes sense). If I add lightmapping and prt, then the engine won't be fully dynamic but it will ofcourse run MUCH faster. I think I'm going to take a few days to work on prt and lightmapping and see how I can combine what I have now with prt to increase framerate.

-Michael-

also, i think that most of these features can be enabled and disabled (am i right foxfire?)

so its not like just because his engine can use ray tracing, that you have to use that feature.

If you implement PRT, this engine will definately be used in my game.. just as long as it costs less than $1000!

@JulzMighty:




But yes, there have been 3 generations, though remember that the market you should be targeting doesn't upgrade their hardware every year =]

Foxfire: Any plans on using OpenCL =]?

"most of these features can be enabled and disabled"

yes. The 15 fps is with all settings set to maximum, with the lowest settings, Iridium doesn't render any shadows or SSAO and runs almost as fast as the regular A7 engine (still supports dynamic lights and hdr).

"If you implement PRT, this engine will definately be used in my game"

I will probably re-do part of the engine to support this. Most likely, I'll use lightmaps that only store light bounces (indirect) and use real-time direct illumination and SSAO. This should be a nice balance between dynamic quality and performance.

-Michael-

@Enduriel: Whoops! You're right. I was looking at the "version" release.

Jibb

hey,
I finished implementing the engine's particle system. Particle calculations are done entirely on the gpu which make it extremelly fast. You can render hundreds of thousands of particles with shaders and complex physics at high frame rates. You can also control particles through textures which are used as position, velocity, and acceleration so you can easily compose custom effects such as explosions, dust, clouds, water, etc. I'm also working on a particle editor to make this easier.

here are some screens (it looks MUCH better in motion, but you get the point):
http://www.groundtacticsgame.com/particles1.jpg
http://www.groundtacticsgame.com/particles2.jpg
http://www.groundtacticsgame.com/particles3.jpg

-Michael Auerbach-