Half-Life 2 Panoramics

rgovostes writes "VRMag, an online panoramic magazine, has QuickTime VR scenes from Half-Life 2. The corresponding article, Half Life 2: A Panoramic Approach, explains how the images were made and relates photographic elements with the game's rendering engine."

Comments

What's the point?

[borawjm]

Why not just buy the game and get a better perspective? These "panoramic" screen shots don't do any justice to the game. The player's interation with the environment and its objects is what made the game stand out.

Unless his intention was to tease the users that can't afford the system required to play this game, it seems like a lot of work for nothing.

Re:What's the point?

[xfact0r]

At this point in time, yes, these images don't serve much of a purpose with the game being available and all.

However if they were released before the game, they would have given a much better overall environment that screenshots provide.

These would have been great teaser shots. I think Prince of Persia released some, but they were pretty low quality to be any good.

Re:What's the point?

[Solder Fumes]

The funny part is that in order to view these things smoothly, you almost need a system powerful enough to play HL2 anyway.

Re:What's the point?

[jimi the hippie]

It's great for modders to show off their latest map to the community too.

Re:What's the point?

[MWoody]

Well, if Valve ever shuts down Steam, we'll need these images to remember the game that was Half Life 2.

First Story In A Game Ever!

[Blackwulf]

From TFA:

In 1998, when Half Life was first published, it was the first storytelling game of the entertainment history;

Apparently nobody ever tried to tell a story in a game before 1998!

Re:First Story In A Game Ever!

[Hast]

He's not particularly clued in on game engines neither:

Valve implemented dynamic lights, vertex lighting and light maps, and even High Dynamic Range lighting, an advanced feature in digital photography. There are a few professional cameras able to capture HDR images, and you can imagine the difficulty in reproducing it. (see Greg Downing, see HDR SHOP).

1) All non-POS cameras can produce HDR images. You just need to take multiple images.

2) Adding HDR to a game is quite trivial (it's pretty much like changing the definition of a pixel from uint8 to float). Making it run well is harder, but that's the job of the gfx card. In reality HDR in games is a lot easier than in reality as you are generating the data yourself. You just have to decide which dynamic range you want.

Currently "HDR" in games mean "a lot of bloom". I haven't seen a game that uses tonal mapping in order to make the effect "better" for the gamer.

Virtual Panoramic

[ZephyrXero]

This is the best panoramic stuff I've seen sadly enough... Now what I mean is that no matter where you turn the camera, everything stays in pretty good perspective, but if you've ever looked at real world ones they're always warped and awkward looking. If we can do this in a game, then how come we can't make a camera do the same thing? Oh well...

Re:Virtual Panoramic

[GoRK]

I don't know what you're talking about. With a proper pano head and some decent stitching effort you can create 'perfect' panoramas without distortion. It helps to have the right equipment and knowledge though. Most panoramas out on the web are unfortunately shot on a regular tripod (which does not pivot around the right point) or worse, handheld, and stiched using some low quality automatic stitching software (Ulead 360, etc)...

Using something that actually *works* like panotools and good wide angle lenses, you can whip up good looking shots with minimal effort.

Here's one of my first 360's made with two shots and a lens with a 183 degree FOV. There are some problems with the horizon due to it being in the extremeties of the picture, but aside from the lack of resolution, it is pretty much seamless except for one small area by the sailboat where I simply could not get panotools to bend things right. If I'd have had more altitude with the kite, it would have been perfect. Next time I shoot one, it will be :) My shot was inspired by Scott Haefner's work on the same subject; however he has far more experience at it than I do (I have only made one shot).. If you really want to see some awesome stuff, check out his site.

Re:Virtual Panoramic

[GoRK]

On second thought, I think I might know what you are referring to... It's not a stitching or composition problem, but it boils down to this: When you pan around a QTVR the high default field of view can make things look out of perspective.. IE 90 degree corners look sharper on the edge vs in the center of the picture. If you click the "+" to zoom in you can sort of make this problem go away at the expense of a reduced field of view.

The other minor problem is the way QTVR maps panoramas. QTVR uses a cubic map which essentially draws the panorama onto the inside faces of a cube. Sphere mapping looks marginally better and has finer detail, but remember QTVR was designed back in the days of the 68k macs and thus speed was of greater importance than consistent image resolution.

As an aside most FPS games set the FOV a little higher than it ought to be for a 3:4 display, so maybe these scenes look normal because you are used to seeing them with a high FOV in the games... Or maybe the default FOV for the QTVR is something more appropriate than QTVR's default (like 120 degrees or so)

More HL2 Panoramas

[bigbigbison]

While not as big as these, David Johnston has some of his own HL2 Panoramas that I think are a little better.