Water shaders, OpenMW vs MGEXE

[psi29a]

I really dislike normal map for OpenMW version, waves look better in MGEXE.

Help us make it better.

[CMAugust]

I think OpenMW's water normals compare favorably to the default MGEXE, but the latter swaps out the water plane for an undulating mesh so looks more impressive overall. It also has underwater caustics and light shafts which make it more lively. All of these things (and more besides) were listed as future developments on Scrawl's OpenMW Trello, now deleted.

To be honest, if we're going to compare water shaders, even vanilla holds up beautifully depending on the weather. I don't think even MGEXE beats scenes like this during inclement weather, even if it's less technically sophisticated. I do hope we'll still see a vanilla-style effect in OpenMW - which was also on Scrawl agenda, alas. Someone else will have to take it up if it's going to happen now.

[drummyfish]

Just from the screenshots my impression was MGEXE is actually ugly. I had to look up a video and that one looked much better - I think it's the animation and the caustics that do it for me.

[psi29a]

If we can replace the water plain with an undulating mesh... that could go a long way to improving our water. Quick.. someone file an issue on GitLab!

[Ace (SWE)]

A bit off-topic maybe, but I love the phrase "undulating mesh", makes water rendering sound much more heavy-metal.

There is actually a nVidia talk about how the water rendering in Morrowind is done, apparently it's one of the very first games with hardware-accelerated water rendering using generated textures / normal maps.
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/as ... reAnim.pdf in case anyone's interested.

[lysol]

A bit off-topic maybe, but I love the phrase "undulating mesh", makes water rendering sound much more heavy-metal.

Well, haven't you heard Undulating Mesh by Meshuggah?

[CMAugust]

There are actually a nVidia talk about how the water rendering in Morrowind is done, apparently it's one of the very first games with hardware-accelerated water rendering using generated textures / normal maps.
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/as ... reAnim.pdf in case anyone's interested.

Very interesting. Is this of more than just casual interest to OpenMW? It looks like there's several things in Morrowind's approach that OpenMW simply doesn't do, without necessarily having an equivalent or better in place. The dynamic normal map creation for water rippling for example is sorely missed.

[psi29a]

Very interesting. Is this of more than just casual interest to OpenMW?

How do you mean? Anything that helps improve OpenMW is appreciated.

[wareya]

Yeah I was under the impression that dynamic normal map ripples were on the roadmap.

[CMAugust]

How do you mean? Anything that helps improve OpenMW is appreciated.

Yeah, I mean, it sure looks good to me. But given this is a document from 2002, I have no idea how applicable the ideas discussed in the nVidia talk are to the modern OpenMW. I was just curious to know whether something that looks impressive to a layman such as myself might look quaint and old-fashioned to our resident graphics developer(s). I'd like to think there is still relevant information here, and will help to improve OpenMW's water effects in the near future.