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Can somebody explain to me what new shading effect is being used that makes all the shadows look so binary?(Black/or not shaded at all)
It's come up in Doom 3 and FEAR, but not HL2 since HL2 was not as technologically advanced shading wise.
Like take your hand and hold it over your keyboard, you can see the keys under the shadow of your hand. However in both FEAR and Doom 3 you can't, all light is completely blacked out by the shadow of your hand. Light would be diffused and bounced around the room so that even with something obstructing the light, you'd still get at least a little illumination on the shaded area. This is a bit much to expect from a game since all that bouncing is too much to calculate, but in other games you don't run into totally black shadows so much.
It just seems like the older engines with the more primitive shading techniques looked more realistic because shadows are more subtle than they're being represented now. Look around your room, if anything is casting a shadow, imagine if that shadow was pitch black. It looks ridiculous.
It's come up in Doom 3 and FEAR, but not HL2 since HL2 was not as technologically advanced shading wise.
Like take your hand and hold it over your keyboard, you can see the keys under the shadow of your hand. However in both FEAR and Doom 3 you can't, all light is completely blacked out by the shadow of your hand. Light would be diffused and bounced around the room so that even with something obstructing the light, you'd still get at least a little illumination on the shaded area. This is a bit much to expect from a game since all that bouncing is too much to calculate, but in other games you don't run into totally black shadows so much.
It just seems like the older engines with the more primitive shading techniques looked more realistic because shadows are more subtle than they're being represented now. Look around your room, if anything is casting a shadow, imagine if that shadow was pitch black. It looks ridiculous.