I've been getting tired of having my scenes washed out by my bloom effect, so I spent yesterday getting HDR + Tonemapping implemented into the game. The HDR path of the game is still heavily in the works, but while messing with the HDR I came up with a new look for the game :-)

I'm having trouble keeping the contrast of the HDR in the same range, it seems the scenes get too bright once the tonemapping is applied. I'm going to be tweaking this a lot trying to get it right. Then I've got to get back to the traffic AI.

I'm trying to be satisfied with the graphics so I can focus on other areas...but I know I'd hate myself once the game is released if I didn't get as many features (both visual and gameplay wise) into the game as I can.

There is no HDR in this scene, if I could get my HDR to contrast like this I'd be a happy camper :-) I like the look...I had to tone down the skydome texture, it was washing out the scenes. I made a few other tweaks and here ya go...


The new menu GUI skin....


New Options menu...


Possible Video settings...I'll detail it below, let me know if you have any suggestions.


Low quality bloom, PS1.0


Early HDR lighting


Reaaaallly early HDR lighting


Early HDR with textures disabled


Here are the various options for the visual settings...

Quote:
Screen Resolution: 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1600x1200

Texture Resolution: Low ( 25% ) , Medium ( 50% ), High ( 100%% )

Shadow Map Size: None, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, 4096x4096

Shadow Map Filtering: None, 4x4 PCF

Texture Filtering: Linear, Bilinear, Trilinear, 2X Anisotropic, 4X Anisotropic, 8X Anisotropic

HDR / Bloom: None, Bloom Low Quality, Bloom High Quality, Full HDR Rendering

Water Quality: Low Quality Diffuse, High Quality Planar, High Quality Cube

Motion Blur Quality: None, Low Quality (6 Samples), High Quality (12 Samples)

Fullscreen Antialiasing: None, 2x FSAA, 4x FSAA, 8x FSAA

Reflections: None, Vehicles Only, Buildings Only, Vehicles and Buildings

Run in Fullscreen: Yes, No

Display FPS Counter: Yes, No

View Distance: 10% -> 100%

Motion Blur Amount: 5%->500%

I'm gonna get back to tweaking the HDR...hopefully I can have it lookin' good by tommorow...Any opinions on the darker style of the game would be appreciated :-)

- Dan