Realistic Water Reflections

[Shougun]

When they add swimimg if they dont revamp the water it will be a fairly dissapointing experience.

SE uses some fun techniques to create unique but yet low cpu/gpu costing water; however, their current water isnt going to cut it when you are swimming right in it. By the time they add swimming I think they will also have DX10/11 and so I hope they will take advantage of those features. Perhaps add some tessellation, including the water.

(the tessellation is what makes the objects stick out "literally" rather then adding shadows to a texture and making it appear to stick out, but not)
Crysis fun example :P
http://youtu.be/ShowM4P_lZ8

Obvious example:
http://youtu.be/XDlC6tAqc20

[Preypacer]

I love how so many suggestions are coming directly from GW2 all of a sudden lol.

Anyway... On topic... "realistic" reflective water is something that's been done by many games (MMO or otherwise) for a while now, and it doesn't "require" swimming to make it work or look good.

Right now, FFXIV is sorta "faking it" with something called cube-maps or reflection-maps, along with animated normal maps to simulate waves flowing across the surface. It's a total graphical short-cut, but usually does the job well enough, giving the sense of real reflections while maintaining better performance. Altana knows, FFXIV's current engine needs all the performance tweaks it can get lol.

Then you'll often see varying degrees of reflection detail in two different categories, one being reflection resolution (how sharp or blurry the reflections are) and the other being how much of the environment is reflected.. e.g. Sky Only; Sky and Scenery; Sky, Scenery and Characters, etc.

Some games present another option, such as reflection update frequency. EQ2 does this. You can have it update every frame (which is the most realistic, but slowest), or update every Nth frame so it's not as realistic, but with better performance, or "Once Only" which is exactly what it sounds like. It takes an initial "picture" of the environment, applies that as the environment/reflection map, and that's it. It looks really bad, though, because as you're running around, the reflection never updates in the water.

Point is, there's a number of ways SE can go with this, to varying levels of detail.
In all, though, they can implement all that well before, and even without swimming implemented. One does not require the other.

I agree, though, it would be nice to have more realistic water in the game. My favorite water so far is between Age of Conan and Lord of The Rings Online.

[Zantetsuken]

Accurate water reflections was one of the things I was most looking forward to in the ARR engine.

The environmental mapping technique in current water shaders is archaic by today's graphic standards, and ends up making the game seem last-gen.

I sincerely hope that the devs can give us realistic looking water when all is said and done (even if it is only available on high-end video cards).

Aside from lighting/shadows, water shaders may be the most direct way to impress upon your average viewer the sophistication and power of a new graphics engine.

[Shougun]

Accurate water reflections was one of the things I was most looking forward to in the ARR engine.

The environmental mapping technique in current water shaders is archaic by today's graphic standards, and ends up making the game seem last-gen.

I sincerely hope that the devs can give us realistic looking water when all is said and done (even if it is only available on high-end video cards).

Aside from lighting/shadows, water shaders may be the most direct way to impress upon your average viewer the sophistication and power of a new graphics engine.

When WoW updated its water engine it made a huge difference. I'm not a big fan of their graphic style but the water was pretty damn sexy and made screenshots that where bad look good.

@Preypacer: Age of Conan water was pretty cool :P

SE, tessellated reflected water plz!

Edit: want to mention that tessellation is very intensive so it wouldn't be good for everyone. You can make waves other ways that are less high end intensive, however you can also use tessellation to increase performance by reducing geometry (like far away items) rather then increasing.

[Kerath]

I am sure they will add realtime reflections when they add DX11 support.

[Rokien]

come on guys gameplay or graphics can't have both!

[Elexia]

I love how so many suggestions are coming directly from GW2 all of a sudden lol.

Know what I liked most? "Why do you do want realism in a video game?" Yet here we are wanting something to be realistic lol.

They had the right idea with 1.0's water, but like everything else, it wasn't fully realized.

[Rokien]

Know what I liked most? "Why do you do want realism in a video game?" Yet here we are wanting something to be realistic lol.

They had the right idea with 1.0's water, but like everything else, it wasn't fully realized.

ya, it's funny people were bashing us, than come here and be like YA THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!@

[Huginn]

I just want the water viscosity reduced so that it does not look like melted vaseline.

[Randelmire]

come on guys gameplay or graphics can't have both!

Actually we can.