Irrlicht Engine

So they have a really low poly, 1500, model and a really high poly model, 500,000, and are using the high poly version for processing bump map and shadow data and the low poly version for the actual mesh and the texture? That is either a really stupid or absolutly genius way of doing it, depending on how much memory it eats. We shall see

brother sorry,,.... that was taken from an old forum by some of the developers..i dunno whether it is true ?

what are u thinkin ..is it consist of low polygon

Well, they DO claim to have found a way of creating graphics that look very high poly whilst actually being very low, I wonder if this is what they meant? It sounds plasable but I guess Niko/anyone who has worked on a graphics engine would know. Sounds like a developer had a slightly suspect ciggy by Cormack doesn't drive a Ferrari for nothing

As far as i know, Doom3 will use normal-mapping for reaching this amount of details. I think its almost the same as displacement; this is done the way you described it, and thats also the way the new unreal engine will do it. Its not a genius way though, because displacement mapping is a well known thing - i have been waiting for it to show up in realtime engines for a long time -.- And why should it be stupid? Its the only way today you can have details as in a scene with millions of polygons. Btw, i think Ogre supports that kind of normal mapping.

It could either be genius or stupid, the breaking point being whether it eats up processor cycles on the GPU.

Displacement mapping does have that effect but isn't the same effect as they described. Displacement mapping is simular to bump mapping but it doesn't just modify the surface normal, it modifies the whole surface. It has been around for a while AFAIK and can be made with the CG shader language. I am pretty sure OGRE has displacement mapping too.

What they are talking about doing is calculating bump map and shadow data from an extremely high poly model that is never rendered and using it on a low poly model.

I'll wait for HL2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. before making statements who's the winner. But at this point, for me, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the leader.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 's engine the "X-Ray Engine" looks very nice and I see why you like it so much.

cool looking game too never saw this one before.

Yes, graphics is great. But what i realy wait for is gameplay and STALKER promises most of it

Think u are talking about this effect ...
http://www.soclab.bth.se/practices/orb.html

I think what they meant is that they make the bump map calculations on the fly for the high poly model and use it for the low poly model. Ditto for shadows. Whether this is just an idea they floated up there and gave up on I don't know. I don't even know if it's possible.

No, bumpmaps and textures are prerendered. There's no need to render them in real time.

I don't know the in's and out's of it but I know they are loaded from a height map. Presumably there is a step between the height map and being applied to the model, from what they said whatever is applied to the model must have something to do with the number of actual polys on the model ( or at least the smoothness and shape ).