openmw.org

A bit late to the party, but I generally approve of the changes that are being made. For inspiration on really great looking water, I've always loved the Anno 1404 water. It's a bit of a different use case than OpenMW, but I think the transparency near shore in that game is pretty spot on. I think the key is the caustics and reflection that allows us to tell there is water somewhere rather than an actual function of the water volume (murkiness). Part of what makes it difficult to make realistic water effects in games is the universality of the water shader. While sticking to one shader, we have to have something that looks good in lakes as well as oceans, which to my mind is impossible. With more than one water type, the water boundaries will be far more difficult, but hopefully simply blending the two will help until we have a more rigorous water system.

I personally think it would be best if we didn't focus too much on getting all the shader settings "just right". Modders are used to having control over so much, that they're really going to just want to mess around themselves once things are dehardcoded. For those who are able, I suggest checking out the Oblivion Reloaded water shader options, you can mess around with color, attenuation, caustics, and a few other things from within the game, which really makes it a lot easier to adjust settings.

Dynamic textures/normal maps would be amazing for things beyond water as well! Imagine having the Ghostfence be some kind of cool Gungan shield-esque barrier that undulated and rippled when you run into it! (A mod for this would also get rid of that awful flickering bug, sooooo...)

Anyway, very excited for where this all goes!

Ruarl wrote: ↑18 Jul 2018, 10:21 On the topic of games that does water well, I think I will add my two cents and link this from my favorite game Path of Exile:

This post explains what they did to get their water rendering like they did. The technical details are over my head, but maybe you guys will understand some of it.

Here is a clip showcasing an early version of the water waves: Video

CMAugust wrote: ↑18 Jul 2018, 14:16 I just remembered that at least part of the ripple shader effect (or a reasonable facsimile) was implemented in pre-OSG versions: https://youtu.be/QhdSOGlHjqc?t=90
Examining its implementation could be useful to any future takers - or maybe not, given the engine changes since then.

Ravenwing wrote: ↑19 Jul 2018, 06:10 I think on top of what has already been discussed, the foam would make the single biggest difference, but I can see how it would be super difficult.

Ruarl wrote: ↑20 Jul 2018, 07:24 Adding the foam would be great, but if the project ever gets to that stage it should somehow differentiate cells that are ocean water and cells that are river water. Difficult indeed. Probably will have to flag cells what type of water it contains or something similar.