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Half Life 2 - Lost Coast HDR Explained

Posted by Zonk on from the you've-got-to-love-bloom dept.

An Anonymous Reader writes: "Valve has released some amazing new screenshots of Half Life 2: Lost Coast, showing off the new-found technical wizardry called High-Dynamic Range rendering. It is the same advanced lighting that makes Unreal 3.0 look so good, except it will be available very soon for Half Life 2. Bit-tech has written a guide to all the new stuff like Blooming and HDR Cube Maps which explains everything you can expect to see when Lost Coast comes out."

2 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Laff-Hife for sure by ignatz72 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Granted, the gameplay in HL2 seemed repetitive - but isn't that what FPS' are? Don't get me wrong, almost all I play are FPS'... BUT I was expecting these kind of graphics with HL2 out of the box. Doom3 also for that matter.

    Either way, I play them because I can shut my brain off and see the pretty things blow up and splatter!

    These new pics look A LOT like early shots and descriptions of STALKER:Oblivion Lost or :Shadows of Chernobyl or :vaporware, whatever they are calling it now. Now this game has been described as having a 24-hour persistent environtment with realtime sun, rain, etc... Much of what HDR provides seems to be exactly what the developers of STALKER have been selling. Could this be the reason it's taken forever to hit the shelves? Will it ever?

    And I guess my 9800 pro sux0rs now. :(

  2. HDR HL2 Renderings by LordStraun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A month or so ago, someone took some HL2 models and rendered them with HDL. Then he put those renderings into his back-yard.

    You can see them here

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