- Homeboyd903
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- Exalted Legendary Member
Posted by: Rune Hunter
Posted by: Irongam3r
Reflections work by a process called raytracing, which takes HUGE amounts of processing power as far as I know. There is no such thing as a true reflection in Halo; have someone put on Security helmet and look into the visor. You will see an empty map.
HOWEVER, Microsoft and bungie are successful because they are smart. So, if a simple raytracing method does exist, and bungie can implement it, epic win.
Incorrect. There are three primary types of reflection: Plane, Cube Map, and Ray Trace. Ray traced mirrors are only used in ray traced environments (I think that makes sense on it's own). According to your statements Halo 3 is not a ray traced engine which you are correct, it is a rasterized engine because direct x is a rasterized.
The reflection you see in the security helmet is called a cube map reflection. They only work on curved surfaces (tricks must be deployed to use them on plane surfaces). They use a pre-generated cube map which consists of 6 images to create a cube. That is why you see an empty map.
The reflections Halo 3 or Halo Reach would use are plane reflections. They require you to create a render target and render part (or all) of the world into that render target from the perspective of the mirror. Often times this render target is a fraction of the real render target used to render the game to. (Yes, Halo 3 all ready renders the main game to a render target for post processing effects. You can see this in a certain areas in campaign). You can use stencil buffers and other techniques to make them less plane like.
Here is the thing: Halo 3 does this! Ever look into the ocean and see the terrain reflected... that's a mirror and it's implemented in the same way as a real mirror.
There is your rundown of basic video game concepts and theories. Oh yea and also the more mirrors you have, the worse performance will be. Also mirrors usually can not reflect other mirrors which all ready creates problems for allowing players to arrange their own mirrors. The best way to use multiple mirrors in such a complex game is to make sure each mirror can not reflect the other and make sure only one mirror can be visible to the user at a time. Very restrictive.
Interesting.. Well couldnt you just have a "one-reflection" mirror so that even if players put mirrors next to each other you wont see multiple images bouncing from one mirror reflecting off of the other? What I mean is, if you had a mirror pointing at another mirror, and a space in between, and you walked in between that space and looked into one of the mirrors, you would only see your front reflection and not your back from the mirror behind you?
Wow does that even make sense?
And to the ricochet idea, unfortunately thats not what I mean. Mirrors are made of glass (which should be breakable, but if not then ok) and only images reflect, not weapon shots. Now, I know sniper rifles ricochet off of walls already and that would be fine if it worked off of the mirrors as well in that same sense, but you should not be able to bounce bullets off of the mirror in the reflective matter you are talking about. Lasers... hmm.. maybe? Since lasers actually do reflect.. it could work. You could bounce them around corners and such.
[Edited on 08.18.2009 12:48 PM PDT]