I remember back when BeamNG first arose that the in-game PostFx settings for ToneMapping worked. It hasnt done that for some time now (years) and ive always wondered why? Does it require a 'tonemap' texture for each material? I do remember in-game PostFx having problems some years back, maybe its never got fix when the other things did? Also, ive read on and off in the Torque3D game engine update notes thats there been both small and big changes to the shaders themselves, bloom getting a fix some 5 years back or something and the water shader being recoded? Might even have read that the lighting system itself had some work done.
I don't know about tone-mapping or texturing, but post-fx should've been fixed recently. Also, the engine BeamNG uses split off from torque3D years ago, and has been almost completely rewritten by the devs. It's the Torque engine in name only by now, so you'd be better off asking the Beam devs, rather than the Torque3D devs.
Yes i am very much aware of that, as i wrote it has had some sort of fix recently but the Tone Mapping doesnt work and the bloom seems to be lacking alot since tends to be squaring when setup high. Post Fx or graphics overall lacks 'alot' imho but that deosnt keep me away since BeamNG is awesome nonetheless. Been digging around alot in the post fx of both and it does seem like not that much has changed in that apartment between T3d And BeamNG, compared to the rest of the game engine which has seen crazy amounts of rework. My guess is that the PostFx has merely recieved a fix or minor attention, to work somewhat since its ofcourse not the main focus, but that also means its not that different from what came out of the T3d engine to start with, meaning the fixes and updates done for the T3d engine might work with alittle work, for BeamNG. True, the devs are the ones that know more. --- Post updated --- Had an idea; since i know the TechDemo hasnt been updated for a while then maybe it could still work in there.. And it did! Tone Mapping Contrast works, Bloom is (in my opinion) way better too, easier to get looking natural also isnt squared as soon as you crank it up. I get a feeling that PostFx overall is.. dare i say.. better in the tech demo? Couldnt take screenshots for some reason though but it does work.
So, i recorded a short vid to demonstrate the PostFx from the techdemo; tonemapping enabled and bloom too. Havent put any time in finetuning the settings, just raised the values more or less, to exagerate the effects. Personally i think Tonemapping (basicly taking LDR input and making it look HDR so that it can fit a wider spectrum of tones in the pic) does ALOT for the looks, and the bloom feels much more crisp? Take a look:
Does the issues with HDR / PostFx have to do with the d3d9 to d3d11 update? Im not good enough with these stuff to try and get the PostFx from the techdemo which i assume is d3d9, to work with what we have today but could that be the solution, did something happen there? EDIT: Was over at the T3d forums and got alittle input: https://forums.torque3d.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1546
A few examples why im pursuing this, tonemapping set quite high but thats in order to show the difference Shot 1 No tonemapping - That spmewhat bland and washed out look that atleast i feel BNG has right now Shot 2 Moderate tonemapping (still abit to high but to get the idea), allows for a higher spectrum across the screen, gives a more modern look, used in basicly every damn car game out there that hasnt implemented real HDR yet Shot 3 Extreme tonemapping, looks like crap but compare this to the first to get a grip of what happens on screen
I remember reading something way in the past about the lighting being totally redone because it was broken or not correctly being done before, and this was around tech demo time. Since then the game has looked different, but i think there's some sort of plans on improving the graphical part of this game, now with DX10 being deprecated, it really allows for more to be done.
Yeah i found something 2 or 3 years back about it being redone cause HDR was broken. Also found that a dev found a few of the problems, saving/loading a preset but also he/she fixed Color Correction whitch is part of the HDR (i think....) but thats the latest ive found. Talked to a guy at the T3d forums that said that as long as its not a problem in the beamng engine itself, just in the shaders/postfx its shouldnt be a big thing at all. Shouldnt apparently even be a big thing if it was due to adding dx11 support some years ago. He also said that t3d has been running dx11 for some time and looking at the BNG compared to the T3D files theres not much of a difference so 'shouldnt' be a big deal to mod the DX11 t3d PostFx and shaders to work in BNG. Im a novice though so for me it probably is. Just feels like that if we had fixes for save/load and colot correction and nothing has happened since such as a huge gfx change then maybe we could have the last thing that isnt working; ToneMapping (although im sure something is different with the bloom too )
Thing is the Torque3d engine has been worked on so much by the devs its nothing like it used to be. Also the color corrections seem to work for me, im using one of the brighter ones now and have made it so the game darkens the shaded areas more using SSAO. We just need to see whats in store for the future of this engine
Yeah it might be something in the engine code itself and not the postfx, shaders and rendermanager files. Comparing the latest t3d postfx, shaders and rendermanager files with the current beamng ones theyre almost identical. The t3d and techdemo are more or less identical. Found a difference with shadergen where t3d and the techdemo uses Torque_shadergen.... whereas the latest beamng uses BGE_shadergen.... but thats literally one single line. Theres ofcourse small changes here and there, using reflectpass=true whereas t3d uses =false. Also a few values are different and opengl support is gone.
Yep is a know issue HDR was broken some years ago, but no one realized until was a bit too late. Fix it will make all the content look different and is something i want to avoid as artists invest a lot of time trying to get the most from the engine Is in my ToDo to check what are our alternatives in the next months, but i cant promise anything.
Thank you for clearing things up Yeah wouldnt want alot of time and money put into resources, being completely down the drain. Ill bide my time and if it shows up in any way, shape or form ill be a happy camper, if not, then ill still be a happy camper since BeamNG is still the only thing i play due to it being awesome
@LuisAntonRebollo I got it working, also got the HDR On/Off to work in the process Obviously i havent adjusted anything for it in the vid so things arent looking their best, but still
Makes a hella difference tbh, thats why ive spent some much brain trying to get it working. Can definitely create blown out gta 5 naturalvision style graphics, or Dirt 2s high bloom+contrast stuff. Really happy.
Mate I don't want to bother you much, but can you announce at least something about alternative lighting, should we wait for something or just forget, thanks