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I see that my examples are also a little "sensationalized" as well. I just like the narrative of TDM members coming up with miracles. It's a better story in my mind. For example, I like to think that Baddcog could make the worlds best looking low-poly objects. He has one of the best eye's for "economy of style". So it's legendary that he would help with LOD which needs that skill. (I would love to see Baddcog's really high-poly stuff too). See, it all makes for a good story when it's exaggerated a little.

Yeah, Edison wasn't an angel by any means, but I idealize Nikola so much that I like to portray him as "engineering inside his mind". Most of the European engineering establishment had written-off Nikola's ideas as well (or at least that is what is written in our sensationalized versions of the story ). Foolish corporate activity is definitely another wet-blanket. Maybe the idea that half-baked ideas can lead to cool new stuff is just comforting to me as I am always running around with partial understanding under my belt

I have always been fascinated by the rise of Thomas Edison and his nemesis(?) Nikola Tesla. While I believe that Nikola was clearly the superior of the two, Thomas Edison seemed to embody this naive sense of "Can do" that we associate with the golden era of American innovation. Edison was cranking out gadget after gadget that the engineering minds of Europe had deemed "impossible", he was too dumb to know that these things "shouldn't work". Now that America has mostly "grown-up", it seems that all the "impossible" innovations are coming from Pacific rim nations that still seem to have a sense of mysticism about what is within the realm of possible rather than a stern engineering mind-set. I think this concept of "just try it, even if it makes no sense" can be applied even here to this mod. For example, many of the better veteran mappers had concluded that Melan's "Return to the City" was simply a design that could never be made to visportal well, yet Bikerdude simply put some elbow-grease in and "trial 'n error"-ed his way to 60FPS. Until the Ground Zero mod, LOD was deemed a wash for any performance benefit by most of the smartest folks at Doom3world. Conversely, Rich_is_Bored pulled-off a more Nikola Tesla style innovation by carefully studying Vertex blending properties for his "Real Translucency" method. Are there any other examples that you know of where not knowing what's "impossible" has lead to a break-through? Would it be better all around if we encouraged more random trials for things that engineers and scientists have "written-off"?

My best friend was getting pretty good at the ole skateboard in his mid-twenties. He was always visiting skate parks and centers. One day, in a parking-lot near his apartment he went to grind a small curb and fell backwards to fracture his skull. He has been pretty shy about 'boarding ever since. Be careful. And Get well soon.

Clue found: The Normalization Cubemap is a mathematical structure used to help bypass hardware limits for normal vector angle calculations. (Therefore has no direct bearing on precomputed cubemap based "Image-Space Lighting" solution approaches... ...) More studying...

That's: www.thedarkmod.com Biker... "www.darkmod.com" is a nasty cyber-squatter site... (thank you FF noscript add-on). (although... the Domain Host may deserve the fallout from visiting the wrong site anyway... )

Thanks Biker! Title is still pending eh?

Now that I've gotten this silly hack idea out of my system, I have tried to fathom some of Rebb's work in the ambient fix. I see that the current implementation essentially looks for an RGB 01 value from any (?) projection image's alpha to essentally say "Don't paint ambient light here" (?) I see that an experimental build is sampling two "Light Normalization" cubemaps. Which means that each face of the cubemap is the average inbound light to the player position? Could this system be made to dynamically accept more detailed (pre-rendered) "scene" cubemaps that would be weighted against the normalization cubemap depending on the player position to the scene? All the mapper would then have to do is collect an envshot (with lights added to simulate bounces) and plug the cubemaps and positions into "the system". (Maybe you guys are already cooking-up something akin to this...) (Probably missing some clue here anyway )

HappyCheeze's "Internal Halloween FM" is slated for release to the public "Sometime in the future" and thus has been added to the Upcoming FM wiki.

Thanks for the info HC! I will place this on the "Upcoming Fan Mission" wiki with an "Unknown" arrival date !

I have a feeling that you are going to bring about some interesting changes grayman. Can't wait.

1) Springheel is waiting on vocals. 2) Horse is being fixed? 3) "Damagable" system SDK framework is being upgraded...? 4) The devs need to put a tiny unfathomable flaw into the code and let grayman try to fix it (for hazing purposes).

Heck, I'm just happy about the foliage. (Plus I see a Horse is being worked on... )

According to the wiki: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=LOD ... the LOD slated for v1.03 wont be applicable for AI. I suppose you could make an AI script that inherits distance checks from the Interleaved Thinking mechanism then re-skins the AI (If I've read my D3W threads correctly, a Skin can define a whole other model...), but the new "skin" would have to be rig-able with AI animations so I'm not sure how much you could pare-down... Or spawn an AI in place of a statue? (just silly talk... I hope no Holy-War comes of this... )

You have a great mind for details. I can see how the other (early) Doom 3 modders that tried and failed to get LOD to work would have been stumped by these issues. Kudos and Great Job!

Can you create a dummy doom 3 directory with definition files and assets and "crank it up"? (If so, I will be installing DR on my work PC for my Sunday "slow days" )

I believe that DR uses the Doom 3 executable to parse for assets. If that was not the case, I believe DR would have been granted the ability for parse the whole OS file-system "explorer-style" long ago. I see that GTKRadiant supports HL1 but not HL2, I believe that is pretty telling about how far Source has verged from it's Quake roots... Just a guess...

Awesome! (This means my caveman brain is starting to "get" material blend concepts in Doom 3 )

looks good... (I still want to tryout the blendlight idea cause it's just light strombine except foggy ) Edit: ... material with blendlight "in it" eh? I was thinking projecting the blendlight but that sounds better. (Youtube please)

Fog sparkle remover (post-process): http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17367&view=next ?

Maybe I'm over-simplifying but perhaps just a faint white blendlight with a soft-edged projection image shaped like the water and a steep falloff image that keeps it close to the surface? (more silly guesses)

I brought this up in another thread but still dont know the relevance: http://www.doom3worl...7750&highlight= (haven't played with it...) (oh it's real_fog ! ... already covered ) Edit: Hrmm The D3W description seems to indicate that they are trying to achieve the same effect with swamp_glare ...

Make that dude an honorary member wontcha ! (you know Biker has the goods...)