IMO if you're replaying HL-2 in 2021 MMOD is an absolute must. Brings HL2s weakest points (Gunplay and enemy ai) mostly up to snuff. Also it works with fakefactorys "graphical update". Just remember to go into the setting and actually turn on all the feature (and turn off the lens and bloom).
Is there a cinematic mod without so much green foliage? It makes the game feel like the combine prevented global warming and world is in full recovery, rather than the opposite
I was under the impression that was pretty much true. They brought their advanced materials and dark matter power sources with them and made most of our carbon-releasing processes obsolete overnight.
Hey Philip! I saw you in a dream of mine and you were reading the Quran in perfect pronunciation, Caught me off guard... I remember that you made a video about seeing a celebrity in one of your dreams so I wanted to inform you about my dream.
i had a dream i was 3kliksphilip too dont remember what the dream was about but i remember having it and then texing my friend "just dreampt i was 2kliks philhop" or something like that
I believe the existence of the FULLY MODELLED Alyx mod is a result of the achievement of Alyx's writing in HL2, as well as a result Valve's goals to appeal to as many people as possible without undermining their values or making their games for the "unwashed masses". Alyx is a lovely, real character that near everyone who plays will feel a connection to, no matter their tastes, politics, or prior experience with female characters in games. I'd say that she's so realistically written and designed that almost anyone playing it won't even think how odd it is that she isn't sexualized, unless they were actively thinking about that, which is an achievement for not only the time it was made, but for both games, film, and TV. Genuine applause for the all male writing team of Valve in 2004. Not that there's anything wrong with sexualizing women or men in media, it's just nice to see a wide array of characters, especially when it fits within the theming and tone of the game like with Half Life 2.
@@user-xo9ig8kc3u The man fought zombies and military forces in his former workplace and won, defeated an alien gargantuan being of which has the capability to grasp a fiber of reality, then returned unharmed through unworldly means after a few decades, and then fought the combine just to get to eli's lab.
Well RT is still a trick. Path Tracing is also still a trick a highly complex trick. To render a game with 60fps on a unbiased path tracer we still have a loooong way to go there. And even a unbiased path tracer is still a trick because at a certain point we have to cut off the number of bounces.
@@AngryApple the point is that traditional approaches are tricks in that they are "hacky" when compared to how reality works, or in other words, raytracing is a closer model to reality than how it has usually been modeled in videogames because it's less "hacky." you could argue any model is a trick because unless you're literally simulating the universe you'll have arbitrary limitations to the model, or "tricks"
I went through a similarish thing, when I started making interiors in hammer I was so dissatisfied with the lighting that I went through many experiments. And these included: -Precalculated AO overlays (it's static yes, but it helps) -Boosting bounce lighting in vrad -Finally, straight up precalculating everything with blender. Sadly precalculating with blender has many downsides, I wouldn't recommend it outside of experiments.
Would love to see something about that too. I was thinking if there could be a way to replace vrad with something more robust, but I haven't experimented with that at all. I'm assuming you'd just bake lighting in blender and import it as textures?
Back in my gmod mapping days, I hacked all the checks and bounds out of vbsp so it could compile every model in the game as a prop_static and I manually tried out with every model if it would throw an error or not. Then I cranked vrad up to it's limit with all those -final commands et voila: decent interior lighting. it also technically would have made the map run very smooth if I hadn't had the opinion that vvis was for loosers.
I was just playing through HL2 like this, enjoyed it overall as well. Yes, in some scenes the SSRT (or whatever) isn't terribly life-like, but it makes for fantastic screenshots and is a really cool proof of concept. I sincerely hope that many groundbreaking "old" games like HL2 (and HL) get proper RT upgrades at some point in the future, the real-time bounced lighting does so much.
The reason why CM has horny character models: Basically, CM was made as a test for Fakefactory to see how well he can model....models, for different genres. Guns for more action-oriented stuff, women probably for adult content, etc etc.
You get more butt views from Father Grigori when he leads you to the Ravenholm graveyard. Every time he climbs up a ramp you feel like saying, "Bless me father..."
I always wonder with these screen space effects if you could increase the field of view so the whole world around you (or at least what is in direct line of sight) is rendered, but then just zoom in on a normal portion of the screen that you want to play with. that way the screen-space rendering techniques could use this extra space to render their special effects like this and they wouldn't come flashing in and out of existence once they leave the screen. it still wouldn't solve the bits where bright surfaces are occluded or obscured entirely from your view, like at 4:06. also while most PCs could probably handle the extra FoV at stock settings, with this ray tracing it might actually be too big a performance hit.
Blender real time rendering engine, EEVEE, has an option for that called overscan, but it only lets you go up to 10 or 15% and it doesn't to full SSGI just sharp reflections (SSR) and bloom. I wonder if SSGI and SSR could be used to update an irradiance cache, keeping the lighting for when stuff blocks the view of the scene.
@@ChrisD__ I was thinking the same thing, but I don't think it would work because I think screen space effects literally need something to be showing up on screen, meaning you have to see a bright light for there to be a bright light calculated. but then again, maybe you could feed the ray tracer plugin a completely different view of the game, one with nothing culled and nothing occluded, where everything is rendered at once and every light is visible through every wall or behind every surface - and then do another pass over the top of that with the real view with culling turned back on so lights don't radiate through walls, or a depth pass to test walls that are behind a light so they don't get incorrectly lit
You could technically use a 360° view or multiple cameras, but that would require a much deeper engine integration, and I haven't ever seen anyone do those effects that way, maybe beside reflections.
5:50 You don't need to open the menu and disable it all the time! You can go to the settings and bind an "Effect Toggle" key which automatically disables all effects for you in real time! I also recommend turning on "MXAO" for more defined/exaggerated ambient occlusion/cool shadows (it doesn't seem to be in your current reshade setup but it's included in the installation process, it's also one of marty mcfly's effects) Keep doing RTGI vids, it's really interesting, me likey.
I thought the colour blending was way overkill, I'd have toned it down to half if not less, but it's still a super impressive bit of kit considering all it can work with. Although with modern hardware, we should be able to render everything in a 360 degree radius without much of a framerate hit, letting us have better illumination. It still won't be perfect, but it'll be better.
Honestly, if Fakefactory's cinematic mod didn't come with the new character models, I think it would have been received far better back in the day. The person who made it was a great designer, the maps really look like they're out of a movie. I guess that's on them for including them with the main download. Also never understood that whole "I want to get the full experience of the mod" thing. A big reason why some mods come with so many options is entirely because people's preferences are different. The full experience is tailoring it to how you want the game to be, if there was some huge intended vision, you'd think they wouldn't make it optional then.
Please keep putting "waifu" in the title of every video related to making things look better than normal. Clickbait accusations have nothing on the sweaty weeb rage it generates
I was very close to not clicking on it until I noticed that Eli was staring at the upscaled wall in the thumbnail. Waifus are for boys, Wallfus are for men.
8:38 I don't think it calculates holes there, fences are generally just flat planes with an alpha texture on top of them, it sees the fence as a wall because there aren't technically any holes there.
If I remember correctly there is a spawnflag for prop_static that makes the fences cast shadown accurately from the alpha channel of the texture but sadly it is not set in some fences in the game
I also thought that at first, until I finally realized that Source engine supports so called alphatest, which makes the opacity only 1 or 0, so there's no parts of the texture that are only like, half transparent or something. This way, it can actually be applied to the depth buffer, but of course other transparency effects like fire don't use this.
It's been a few years since I've seen your videos, the last ones I watched being the videos on your clickteam fusion games. Naturally with such quality, it didn't take long to go from 2,000 subs to 602,000 subs, and that quality hasn't seemed to have degraded since. Happy you're over half a mil, thank you for the always enjoyable content!
With the most realistic settings configured for every part of the game, I think it would amplify half lifes existing atmosphere. I don't even think there would be a need for texture upscaling if the lighting could look good and life like throughout the whole game.
In some way global illumination is nothing else than reflections, just very, very rough ones, in modern 3d renderers this approach is also sometimes used to simulate bounce lighting
I was wondering the same thing :D but i guess most people regard bounced light as a reflection only if the rougness is under a certain limit. I wonder what that value is. :P
I can see your perspective now, I previously didn't understand it quite as much, but understood the enthusiasm on some level. But I think seeing this video, which was essentially seeing your perspective twice, actually drove home the point. I have a similar view with visual mods in skyrim - A lot of them add effects that just aren't real or look terrible outside of a purely artistic context, like absurdly high depth of field, or exceedingly reflective surfaces in a world where everything is drab and grey.
I think that using simpler ReShade effects like color correction, sharpening, or stuff like Clarity will do a better job at improving the graphics without glaring technical limitations than just blasting RTGI will do. And simpler effects will be more uniform and less invasive in a lot of games compared to RTGI, MXAO or RadiantGI.
I found that if you combine eye adaptation or one of the bloom shaders that have eye adaptation with RTGI you can fix most of the issues with dark areas being too dark and bright areas being too bright like you mentioned at 7:40
It looks so natural when it doesn't mess with smooth shading on low-polyish objects, like how the game looks in your head but then you switch back and it's just "oh.."
I'm going to treat the last question as completely serious and give a proper explanation. Waifu culture usually gets misunderstood by those looking in from the outside as its semi-ironic and self referential at it's core. A waifu, in essence, is a character you like a lot; to the point where you say that you'd like to be with them if they were real. Most don't actually think of them as real life-partners and those that do are rightfully treated as weirdos by the wider community. When people get angry and argue about waifus and how the other's waifu is "trash", it's an inherently jokey argument. Weebs know that it doesn't actually matter at all, but we still enjoy it because it's amusing to exaggerate our feelings of endearment or annoyance about certain characters as if they were matters of grave importance.
It’s in the same fieldplay as nerds arguing over what game/movie/book characters may be ‘superior’ compared to another. You wouldn’t mindfully harass them for…arguing over fictional people
This is honestly a pretty impressive demo, given its limitations. I think it also helps to highlight Half-Life 2's fine-tuned artistry. I think I still prefer the vanilla lighting because everything there was hand-crafted, but this raytracing mod provides a surprisingly good result. It's really neat that it can manage such an effect from screenspace information and shaders alone. I'd definitely be interested in seeing a full raytracing mod for Half-Life 2. It might even be interesting to see how that kind of raytracing would impact other Source games, like Portal or Counter-Strike. Either way, I'm interested to see where this experiment goes.
I've seen all your vids on this mod and while I think it's interesting I don't think I like it that much honestly. I think the effect really works well in enclosed spaces but in open areas or even areas effected by "sunlight" it looks a bit odd and too bright (at least in the videos). I know it's lighting on lighting and it does a good job for the Source engine (and a 2004 game).
I also like RTGI even it's many times wrong. I tried it in many games, some games looked stunning (like really old games or with bad lighting), some with good lighting really bad, but still I was enjoying it. The same is for upscaling images with ESRGAN. Sometimes it's off because the model is not perfect, but I was just enjoyed by the results made without complicated human touch.
RTGI still isn't real raytracing. It also adds too much of that fakish ambient occlusion on the corners, an interesting effect but not something that exists in real life. We need real raytracer renderer for Source. There is one WIP for Half-Life 1 but it's not the best game for RTX, at least because maps lose light information after compiling.
Oh yt comments isn't great place for that but I'll try. You see, while this shader does indeed have rays thrown at game scene but it does against depth buffer. Thus it's called raymarching. Programs like ReShade are just postprocessing and they don't know nothing about light sources, therefore shader thinks that bright pixels are sources in fact amplifying their brightness. That's why Philip called it HDR in reverse. :) What I called "real" RT, is throwing rays against geometry and searching for light sources. Well, the RT that we do now is not calculated from light sources to screen but does it in reverse. The light sources are baked into the map, it probably should still have information about it. But again, ReShade doesn't know about them and if you want to make an RT renderer, you must pass this information to shader.
@@a1batross_ Well, raymarching is something else entirely, where you use distance fields/equations rather then intersection equations. I do know that some implementations of Parallax Occlusion Mapping do use raymarching, so it should be possible to raymarch against a depth map, but I don't think that's what this shader is using. As for it being screenspace only, it is still tracing rays so technically it is still raytracing, even if it is just using pixel brightness values instead of actual light sources. There's lots of ways you can use raytracing for shadows, reflections, refractions, AO, global illumination, and I do believe the method this shader uses is a valid way to calculate global illumination in real time, it just has its downsides, like all other methods.
@@araghon007 to me biggest downside is that it's just a generic postprocess shader. It tries to be good but it's very limited. Well, that's what Philip tried to tell us in this video. Maybe it's just my point of view is limited.
Cool video! you gave interesting points about how this injected ray tracing works and how it will be a good thing to aim for implement it in games for the accurate, real-life look :) And yeah, some mods are made with the objective to share your point of view or/and preferences about something, is a fact, like or not. We have to be greatful that they included, in some form, to keep some things as vanilla or with small improvements. Also don't forget that in HL2EP2, you were "promised" by Eli V. that you will be the one to give him a grandchild ;) (Valve making sure that you (or some horny person) will buy HL2EP 3 haha). Pls, FF devs or team, have a chat or interview with Philip! We want to hear about the mod!
That Judith Mossman model looks more alien than the Vortigaunts do. Also, when I get my sleep paralysis, FakeFactory Eli appears in my room. Good video by the way.
Me and Several devs are already hard at work at fixing alot of the Fakefactory's work. Including removing all sexual imagery, Lore friendly textures and environments and alot of new assets including stuff from HLA. We also added new elements like the HEV Helmet, HLA Alyx Pistol, and much more Feel free to check out our work www.moddb.com/mods/hl2-amalgam-zenith
Funny to see an upload by you of half life. I just played Half life 1 for the first time a couple days ago and have since finished and started the second...
I think I get the point. Yeah, the result doesn't look perfect, but neither did base HL2. It really does have an allure to it, and it's pretty cool that it can be done at all. Imagine if HL2 was made today and used proper ray tracing; would look stunning, I think.
I don't know. When it works it looks pretty good, but when it doesn't it looks really bad. The highs aren't high enough and the lows are too low. It's really interesting technically though, I'd love to see how this might be improved if proper raytracing is out of the question.
was fun! I would not have the patience to install those mods and to play with the settings, but I see the interest, and enjoy watching the results. Thanks for sharing!
Good characters with depth and sexy/attractive characters are not mutually exclusive. I’d take issue with the notion that a character with a sexy design is being reduced to something or that they’re not being respected, they can still have the same personality and mannerisms/dialog/acting performance/backstory and what have you with jiggle physics and/or a sexy character design. A sexy character design might be a bad character, but they would still be a bad character without their looks. A good example I can think of where you've got both a sexy character design with great character as a person is Keira from Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. Great character with useful skills who’s very intelligent, was well acted, and comes across like their own admirable person while also having a sexy character design. It's just really weird how I frequently see this notion that for female characters to be any good they can't have a sexy design. Are Batman or Kratos worse characters because of their looks? Nah
8:36 it isn't that "rays can't pass thrugh such small holes", it probably is that rays can't pass through png textures, because that fence is actually a solid wall but with holes in the texture
I see Philip using RTGI now like how Episode One used HDR. It's overt and glaringly obvious no, but later down the line it might get a bit muted and no one will even bat an eye.
I wonder if you could recalculate the baked lighting for Half Life maps with more generous raytracing and end up with a similar effect. You wouldn't have the real time effects like the flickering fire or a dynamic prop's color bleeding onto the surfaces, but if it's possible at all, you could get more vibrant world lighting and wouldn't take any hit to framerates since it would all still be prebaked into the map. Missing out on that flickering fire would be sad, but I wouldn't shed a tear about loosing the crowbar of darkness or the constant on/off fade of lighting at the edge of the screen. It would be nice to spruce up the base game's lighting without enduring some of FakeFactory's more... exotic improvements.
Well I don't get the hassle with the Cinematic mod. You always were able to customize the characters and also keep the original valve models so the drama for me was always not needed
"I might have to start upscaling antlions next"
Oh no. He's going to create regularlions
Don't forget the first step of crushing them into mitelions!
Fuck you, take my thumbs up and get out of my sight.
Soon enough they'll become elephantlions
Elephantlions
GiAntlions.
>Talks about losing views and underperforming videos
>Puts "Waifu" in several video titles
Genius mastermind plan
Philip is truly a strategic genius.
The worst part about this is that it's working
@@enriquemp3424 that's the best part though
i was going to watch anyways, but seeing waifu in the title makes me a bit more eager >_>
@@repker same, except the waifu part
"Somebody blows that polygon budget on a virtual nipple"
Masterclass in writing
Dog is the only Half Life waifu you’d want.
Lamar!
Nah, I'd have to disagree, Dr. Walter Bennet is the best waifu
dog as an actual dog is the best mod ever.
No, those thicc headcrabs from Half-Life's beta.
nah its gus, no really, he is a G O D
IMO if you're replaying HL-2 in 2021 MMOD is an absolute must. Brings HL2s weakest points (Gunplay and enemy ai) mostly up to snuff. Also it works with fakefactorys "graphical update".
Just remember to go into the setting and actually turn on all the feature (and turn off the lens and bloom).
Oh My Didn't Expect You Here
Make More Swearing And Laughing Half Life 2 Video Please
IMO, MMOD make HL2 atmosphere, gunplay and enemy ai into Call of Duty game, no thanks.
@@Sierra19204 maybe a little bit but it's very fun
Now we know u also watch this. Chat will soon demand u to play the "upscaled stuff". Here monkey, peanuts. Now entertain us!
There is just one thing tho, "No Waifu" which would give mr philip here no views. which is bad, money wise.
i think phillip is going through an anime phase
Being stuck inside it's almost an inevitability
He has assimilated into the collective.
good that its only a phase not mentally ill peapole get out after around a year
@@Iron_Soil *people?
COVID probably got us all screwed up in some way to the point where Phil now owns femboy manga and went to Japan, so...
...yeah...
So how long until he upscales 90s hentai?
Give him another week
Bible black in 8k
bump
i mean it would be really interesting to see what upscallers do with pc-engine graphics
Edit: context pc-engine was famous for hentai games
If there's one person who is willing to upscale 90s hentai, that's me.
2:39 it looks like eli is talking about waifus and his love for raytracing
That's brilliant
I feel like we're going to get a video on kliksphilip talking about the "waifu experiment" and how it did or didn't improve views.
Hahaha
Can I get Megumin in Half Life 2?
@@CaveyMoth yes
@@coalstocking Are you asking who the character is or for the sauce of the specific art?
@@coalstocking it's made by dr.beeeee (also called apoidea) on gelbooru
"Today I'm going to be staring at walls at harassing the citizens of City 17" what an opener!
ok
philip really has a way with words gosh darn it
I feel like he has started many videos in a similiar way. Signature style I guess?
valve believed in tomboy supremacy much before the internet worked on it at full throttle. such avant-gardist aspect of hl2 is indeed very underrated.
tomboys ftw
Damn they covered her up and everything but you still... hdidlaoaxnudk
I know the thumbnail is drowned in irony, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting.
The red arrows of disgrace, aye.
It really looks like one of those articles hahaha
@@Hugmir the red arrows are on the wall instead of alex
Is there a cinematic mod without so much green foliage? It makes the game feel like the combine prevented global warming and world is in full recovery, rather than the opposite
I would love a "cinematic mod" that was lore friendly
A hotter world is a much greener world.
The other way around. The Carboniferous rainforest happened when mean CO2 ppm was double of what it is today.
I was under the impression that was pretty much true. They brought their advanced materials and dark matter power sources with them and made most of our carbon-releasing processes obsolete overnight.
You get what I mean. The oceans are being drained and so on.
The cinematic mod models are so funny that it’s just downright hilarious
Hilarious through and through. You can't forget about the FULLY. RENDERED. CERVIX.
THEY ARE OPTIONAL
@@JimoftheSlim Fully rendered WHAT?
@@Iron_SoilIs bad level design also optional?
Hey Philip! I saw you in a dream of mine and you were reading the Quran in perfect pronunciation, Caught me off guard... I remember that you made a video about seeing a celebrity in one of your dreams so I wanted to inform you about my dream.
Muslim Phillip 😳🙏
Nightmare huh
i had a dream i was 3kliksphilip too
dont remember what the dream was about but i remember having it and then texing my friend "just dreampt i was 2kliks philhop" or something like that
Holy shit, I wonder how it will be like if philip read quran with perfect pronunciation now
@@Dapplication In the dream it sounded extremely soothing
I believe the existence of the FULLY MODELLED Alyx mod is a result of the achievement of Alyx's writing in HL2, as well as a result Valve's goals to appeal to as many people as possible without undermining their values or making their games for the "unwashed masses". Alyx is a lovely, real character that near everyone who plays will feel a connection to, no matter their tastes, politics, or prior experience with female characters in games. I'd say that she's so realistically written and designed that almost anyone playing it won't even think how odd it is that she isn't sexualized, unless they were actively thinking about that, which is an achievement for not only the time it was made, but for both games, film, and TV. Genuine applause for the all male writing team of Valve in 2004.
Not that there's anything wrong with sexualizing women or men in media, it's just nice to see a wide array of characters, especially when it fits within the theming and tone of the game like with Half Life 2.
It's still rather weird how she seems to worship a man who never even talks. Her and every person in City17.
@@user-xo9ig8kc3u The man fought zombies and military forces in his former workplace and won, defeated an alien gargantuan being of which has the capability to grasp a fiber of reality, then returned unharmed through unworldly means after a few decades, and then fought the combine just to get to eli's lab.
@@Todija And several Gargantuas!...because that is the name of those big blue things...not a very good joke.
@@Todija Dude is quite literally living god in the Half-Life series. and Gordon has survived it all, I question what he cant survive
"clever tricks like raytracing" It's kinda funny calling "raytracing" a trick when the traditional approach is actually using tricks
When weird becomes the new normal, normal becomes the new weird
Especially old games
The traditional approach IS the trick.
Well RT is still a trick.
Path Tracing is also still a trick a highly complex trick.
To render a game with 60fps on a unbiased path tracer we still have a loooong way to go there.
And even a unbiased path tracer is still a trick because at a certain point we have to cut off the number of bounces.
@@AngryApple the point is that traditional approaches are tricks in that they are "hacky" when compared to how reality works, or in other words, raytracing is a closer model to reality than how it has usually been modeled in videogames because it's less "hacky." you could argue any model is a trick because unless you're literally simulating the universe you'll have arbitrary limitations to the model, or "tricks"
"Another no-no for the glo-glo" LMAO this is gold. I hope phillip's proud of it
I went through a similarish thing, when I started making interiors in hammer I was so dissatisfied with the lighting that I went through many experiments. And these included:
-Precalculated AO overlays (it's static yes, but it helps)
-Boosting bounce lighting in vrad
-Finally, straight up precalculating everything with blender.
Sadly precalculating with blender has many downsides, I wouldn't recommend it outside of experiments.
Would love to see something about that too. I was thinking if there could be a way to replace vrad with something more robust, but I haven't experimented with that at all. I'm assuming you'd just bake lighting in blender and import it as textures?
Back in my gmod mapping days, I hacked all the checks and bounds out of vbsp so it could compile every model in the game as a prop_static and I manually tried out with every model if it would throw an error or not. Then I cranked vrad up to it's limit with all those -final commands et voila: decent interior lighting. it also technically would have made the map run very smooth if I hadn't had the opinion that vvis was for loosers.
@@tp6335 water doesn't work without vvis
I was just playing through HL2 like this, enjoyed it overall as well. Yes, in some scenes the SSRT (or whatever) isn't terribly life-like, but it makes for fantastic screenshots and is a really cool proof of concept. I sincerely hope that many groundbreaking "old" games like HL2 (and HL) get proper RT upgrades at some point in the future, the real-time bounced lighting does so much.
C'mon Philip, we're nearly, fully out of lockdown, you can mentally hold it together for a bit longer
Dont worry, lockdown will be back at full scale in few months.
@@AutumnWind92 not months, weeks may be, with a cyberattack and black outs here and there... Life is brilliant XD.
"That's my girl". I laughed so hard 🤣
who cares about ray tracing lets talk about that sick grenade rebound at 4:20 no less
"I feel like if I'm going to experience a mod I want to experience the full thing."
Uh-huh.
The *F U L L* thing
The reason why CM has horny character models:
Basically, CM was made as a test for Fakefactory to see how well he can model....models, for different genres. Guns for more action-oriented stuff, women probably for adult content, etc etc.
Guys only want one thing and it’s fucking beautiful
It’s called RTX for clarification
Yeah, a 733 colt model full auto would look great.
12:51 I absolutely adore how good the couch and the table with the lamp on it look with raytracing on, thanks for showcasing this mod!
I'm impatient to listen the kliksphilip channel video explaining his Waifu strategy that is 5 move ahead of the whole earth
Also, great video
You get more butt views from Father Grigori when he leads you to the Ravenholm graveyard. Every time he climbs up a ramp you feel like saying, "Bless me father..."
Sheesh
I always wonder with these screen space effects if you could increase the field of view so the whole world around you (or at least what is in direct line of sight) is rendered, but then just zoom in on a normal portion of the screen that you want to play with. that way the screen-space rendering techniques could use this extra space to render their special effects like this and they wouldn't come flashing in and out of existence once they leave the screen. it still wouldn't solve the bits where bright surfaces are occluded or obscured entirely from your view, like at 4:06. also while most PCs could probably handle the extra FoV at stock settings, with this ray tracing it might actually be too big a performance hit.
Blender real time rendering engine, EEVEE, has an option for that called overscan, but it only lets you go up to 10 or 15% and it doesn't to full SSGI just sharp reflections (SSR) and bloom. I wonder if SSGI and SSR could be used to update an irradiance cache, keeping the lighting for when stuff blocks the view of the scene.
@@ChrisD__ I was thinking the same thing, but I don't think it would work because I think screen space effects literally need something to be showing up on screen, meaning you have to see a bright light for there to be a bright light calculated. but then again, maybe you could feed the ray tracer plugin a completely different view of the game, one with nothing culled and nothing occluded, where everything is rendered at once and every light is visible through every wall or behind every surface - and then do another pass over the top of that with the real view with culling turned back on so lights don't radiate through walls, or a depth pass to test walls that are behind a light so they don't get incorrectly lit
You could technically use a 360° view or multiple cameras, but that would require a much deeper engine integration, and I haven't ever seen anyone do those effects that way, maybe beside reflections.
5:50 You don't need to open the menu and disable it all the time! You can go to the settings and bind an "Effect Toggle" key which automatically disables all effects for you in real time!
I also recommend turning on "MXAO" for more defined/exaggerated ambient occlusion/cool shadows (it doesn't seem to be in your current reshade setup but it's included in the installation process, it's also one of marty mcfly's effects)
Keep doing RTGI vids, it's really interesting, me likey.
"virtual nipple" made me laugh so hard for some reason
bro just wait until you hear that the fake factory Alyx model has EVERYTHING modeled, and I mean EVERYTHING
I thought the colour blending was way overkill, I'd have toned it down to half if not less, but it's still a super impressive bit of kit considering all it can work with. Although with modern hardware, we should be able to render everything in a 360 degree radius without much of a framerate hit, letting us have better illumination. It still won't be perfect, but it'll be better.
Alyx: Come on, Gordon...Let's go have some fun ;)
Hehe
**suppression field left the chat**
Honestly, if Fakefactory's cinematic mod didn't come with the new character models, I think it would have been received far better back in the day. The person who made it was a great designer, the maps really look like they're out of a movie. I guess that's on them for including them with the main download.
Also never understood that whole "I want to get the full experience of the mod" thing. A big reason why some mods come with so many options is entirely because people's preferences are different. The full experience is tailoring it to how you want the game to be, if there was some huge intended vision, you'd think they wouldn't make it optional then.
That was unexpected...but awesome! Keep adding "Waifu" to the titles, maybe it will bring more views hehehe
I bet he put that mod in this video just so he could use the title that he used XD
@@introvertplays6162 Perhaps hehehhe
Won't lie, it got me to watch the video.
@@Pawn2e4 lol
The way you tied the “fuck off” with the narration was expertly done
Please keep putting "waifu" in the title of every video related to making things look better than normal. Clickbait accusations have nothing on the sweaty weeb rage it generates
I was very close to not clicking on it until I noticed that Eli was staring at the upscaled wall in the thumbnail.
Waifus are for boys, Wallfus are for men.
8:38 I don't think it calculates holes there, fences are generally just flat planes with an alpha texture on top of them, it sees the fence as a wall because there aren't technically any holes there.
If I remember correctly there is a spawnflag for prop_static that makes the fences cast shadown accurately from the alpha channel of the texture but sadly it is not set in some fences in the game
I also thought that at first, until I finally realized that Source engine supports so called alphatest, which makes the opacity only 1 or 0, so there's no parts of the texture that are only like, half transparent or something. This way, it can actually be applied to the depth buffer, but of course other transparency effects like fire don't use this.
It's been a few years since I've seen your videos, the last ones I watched being the videos on your clickteam fusion games. Naturally with such quality, it didn't take long to go from 2,000 subs to 602,000 subs, and that quality hasn't seemed to have degraded since. Happy you're over half a mil, thank you for the always enjoyable content!
With the most realistic settings configured for every part of the game, I think it would amplify half lifes existing atmosphere. I don't even think there would be a need for texture upscaling if the lighting could look good and life like throughout the whole game.
Ah Fakefactory. The Twin Snakes of graphical mods.
between the title and thumbnail i would have NEVER guessed this was a video on the pros and cons of hl2 ray tracing
RTGI being limited by screenspace kind of reminds me of those "VR glasses" for your phone
What's wrong with some good ol' Google Cardboard?
Third video in a row with Waifu in the title
More the merrier
In some way global illumination is nothing else than reflections, just very, very rough ones, in modern 3d renderers this approach is also sometimes used to simulate bounce lighting
I was wondering the same thing :D but i guess most people regard bounced light as a reflection only if the rougness is under a certain limit. I wonder what that value is. :P
12:18 amazing! can't even see the train when raytracing gets turned off!
Cinematic mod Alyx is frickin double cheeked up, in a thursday afternoon
I can see your perspective now, I previously didn't understand it quite as much, but understood the enthusiasm on some level. But I think seeing this video, which was essentially seeing your perspective twice, actually drove home the point. I have a similar view with visual mods in skyrim - A lot of them add effects that just aren't real or look terrible outside of a purely artistic context, like absurdly high depth of field, or exceedingly reflective surfaces in a world where everything is drab and grey.
I think that using simpler ReShade effects like color correction, sharpening, or stuff like Clarity will do a better job at improving the graphics without glaring technical limitations than just blasting RTGI will do. And simpler effects will be more uniform and less invasive in a lot of games compared to RTGI, MXAO or RadiantGI.
I found that if you combine eye adaptation or one of the bloom shaders that have eye adaptation with RTGI you can fix most of the issues with dark areas being too dark and bright areas being too bright like you mentioned at 7:40
It looks so natural when it doesn't mess with smooth shading on low-polyish objects, like how the game looks in your head but then you switch back and it's just "oh.."
Half Life 2 still is beautiful even without screenspace raytracing.
Came for the thumbnail, stayed for the raytracing
The intro made me think Half-life 2 Source 2 came out and i didn't know.
that raytraced flashlight actually looks amazing
I'm going to treat the last question as completely serious and give a proper explanation. Waifu culture usually gets misunderstood by those looking in from the outside as its semi-ironic and self referential at it's core.
A waifu, in essence, is a character you like a lot; to the point where you say that you'd like to be with them if they were real. Most don't actually think of them as real life-partners and those that do are rightfully treated as weirdos by the wider community.
When people get angry and argue about waifus and how the other's waifu is "trash", it's an inherently jokey argument. Weebs know that it doesn't actually matter at all, but we still enjoy it because it's amusing to exaggerate our feelings of endearment or annoyance about certain characters as if they were matters of grave importance.
That’s actually pretty interesting
why dont i get tax advantages for marrying my waifu tho? kinda shitty policy no?
It’s in the same fieldplay as nerds arguing over what game/movie/book characters may be ‘superior’ compared to another. You wouldn’t mindfully harass them for…arguing over fictional people
@@repker Liberals.
1:48 that was AMAZING
Dude I thought from the thumbnal that we discovered another gman sighting from where the npc looks during cutscene
This is honestly a pretty impressive demo, given its limitations. I think it also helps to highlight Half-Life 2's fine-tuned artistry. I think I still prefer the vanilla lighting because everything there was hand-crafted, but this raytracing mod provides a surprisingly good result. It's really neat that it can manage such an effect from screenspace information and shaders alone.
I'd definitely be interested in seeing a full raytracing mod for Half-Life 2. It might even be interesting to see how that kind of raytracing would impact other Source games, like Portal or Counter-Strike. Either way, I'm interested to see where this experiment goes.
Oh my god I just look at the thumbnail and its awesome
Dr kleiner: It starts with
I saw this guy in the credits of a BDSM themed Half life 2 machinima from 13 years ago. This man's been at it for a long, long time.
I've seen all your vids on this mod and while I think it's interesting I don't think I like it that much honestly. I think the effect really works well in enclosed spaces but in open areas or even areas effected by "sunlight" it looks a bit odd and too bright (at least in the videos). I know it's lighting on lighting and it does a good job for the Source engine (and a 2004 game).
Phillip "tested" the ray tracing mod because he is "interested" in the technology ;)
Looking at the graphical "improvements" in this video nearly gave me a headache... Not complaining about that Alyx though.
Stop it Philip... now you're just making me yearn for a Source 2 remaster of HL2
"you know what i like about half life 2? little kids." whoaa, slow down there, phil
What do you mean "it doesn't look great nowdays"? Man, still better than starfield!
I also like RTGI even it's many times wrong. I tried it in many games, some games looked stunning (like really old games or with bad lighting), some with good lighting really bad, but still I was enjoying it. The same is for upscaling images with ESRGAN. Sometimes it's off because the model is not perfect, but I was just enjoyed by the results made without complicated human touch.
RTGI still isn't real raytracing. It also adds too much of that fakish ambient occlusion on the corners, an interesting effect but not something that exists in real life.
We need real raytracer renderer for Source. There is one WIP for Half-Life 1 but it's not the best game for RTX, at least because maps lose light information after compiling.
Define real raytracing
Oh yt comments isn't great place for that but I'll try.
You see, while this shader does indeed have rays thrown at game scene but it does against depth buffer. Thus it's called raymarching. Programs like ReShade are just postprocessing and they don't know nothing about light sources, therefore shader thinks that bright pixels are sources in fact amplifying their brightness. That's why Philip called it HDR in reverse. :)
What I called "real" RT, is throwing rays against geometry and searching for light sources. Well, the RT that we do now is not calculated from light sources to screen but does it in reverse. The light sources are baked into the map, it probably should still have information about it. But again, ReShade doesn't know about them and if you want to make an RT renderer, you must pass this information to shader.
Can't edit on phone for some reason, sorry for mistypes.
@@a1batross_ Well, raymarching is something else entirely, where you use distance fields/equations rather then intersection equations. I do know that some implementations of Parallax Occlusion Mapping do use raymarching, so it should be possible to raymarch against a depth map, but I don't think that's what this shader is using. As for it being screenspace only, it is still tracing rays so technically it is still raytracing, even if it is just using pixel brightness values instead of actual light sources. There's lots of ways you can use raytracing for shadows, reflections, refractions, AO, global illumination, and I do believe the method this shader uses is a valid way to calculate global illumination in real time, it just has its downsides, like all other methods.
@@araghon007 to me biggest downside is that it's just a generic postprocess shader. It tries to be good but it's very limited. Well, that's what Philip tried to tell us in this video.
Maybe it's just my point of view is limited.
RTGI is the future, been following it for a year.
The FF models switching how old Eli and Mossman look is very funny lol, bit of a tell to the mindset.
Cool video! you gave interesting points about how this injected ray tracing works and how it will be a good thing to aim for implement it in games for the accurate, real-life look :)
And yeah, some mods are made with the objective to share your point of view or/and preferences about something, is a fact, like or not. We have to be greatful that they included, in some form, to keep some things as vanilla or with small improvements. Also don't forget that in HL2EP2, you were "promised" by Eli V. that you will be the one to give him a grandchild ;) (Valve making sure that you (or some horny person) will buy HL2EP 3 haha).
Pls, FF devs or team, have a chat or interview with Philip! We want to hear about the mod!
That Judith Mossman model looks more alien than the Vortigaunts do. Also, when I get my sleep paralysis, FakeFactory Eli appears in my room. Good video by the way.
Me and Several devs are already hard at work at fixing alot of the Fakefactory's work. Including removing all sexual imagery, Lore friendly textures and environments and alot of new assets including stuff from HLA. We also added new elements like the HEV Helmet, HLA Alyx Pistol, and much more
Feel free to check out our work
www.moddb.com/mods/hl2-amalgam-zenith
that ambient occlusion is very heavy handed
im 8 minutes in and i had to pause it to give my eyes some rest, god damn.
Ah man... Mostly People Don't Talk About Day Of Defeat.
Funny to see an upload by you of half life. I just played Half life 1 for the first time a couple days ago and have since finished and started the second...
I expected this video to be about upscaling HL2's textures, not a RTGI spiel
I think I get the point. Yeah, the result doesn't look perfect, but neither did base HL2. It really does have an allure to it, and it's pretty cool that it can be done at all. Imagine if HL2 was made today and used proper ray tracing; would look stunning, I think.
Yay! I've always wanted you to cover this mod!
I don't know. When it works it looks pretty good, but when it doesn't it looks really bad. The highs aren't high enough and the lows are too low. It's really interesting technically though, I'd love to see how this might be improved if proper raytracing is out of the question.
It's awesome to see how much did Reshade RT has developed since you put up this video.
Is nobody gonna mention that epic grade catch at 4:18
5:22 OHHHH FFIIIIEEEEE
was fun! I would not have the patience to install those mods and to play with the settings, but I see the interest, and enjoy watching the results.
Thanks for sharing!
This video is amazing Philip! Loved every second of it and I definitely share your enthusiasm for the sometimes poorly implemented RTGI
Good characters with depth and sexy/attractive characters are not mutually exclusive.
I’d take issue with the notion that a character with a sexy design is being reduced to something or that they’re not being respected, they can still have the same personality and mannerisms/dialog/acting performance/backstory and what have you with jiggle physics and/or a sexy character design. A sexy character design might be a bad character, but they would still be a bad character without their looks.
A good example I can think of where you've got both a sexy character design with great character as a person is Keira from Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. Great character with useful skills who’s very intelligent, was well acted, and comes across like their own admirable person while also having a sexy character design. It's just really weird how I frequently see this notion that for female characters to be any good they can't have a sexy design.
Are Batman or Kratos worse characters because of their looks? Nah
4:16 that was impressive
8:36 it isn't that "rays can't pass thrugh such small holes", it probably is that rays can't pass through png textures, because that fence is actually a solid wall but with holes in the texture
I see Philip using RTGI now like how Episode One used HDR. It's overt and glaringly obvious no, but later down the line it might get a bit muted and no one will even bat an eye.
8:35 Have you tried checking what the fence looks like in the depth/normal buffer?
@@2kliksphilip I finally checked, and the fences do actually show up properly in the depth buffer. So your initial theory is probably right
I wonder if you could recalculate the baked lighting for Half Life maps with more generous raytracing and end up with a similar effect. You wouldn't have the real time effects like the flickering fire or a dynamic prop's color bleeding onto the surfaces, but if it's possible at all, you could get more vibrant world lighting and wouldn't take any hit to framerates since it would all still be prebaked into the map.
Missing out on that flickering fire would be sad, but I wouldn't shed a tear about loosing the crowbar of darkness or the constant on/off fade of lighting at the edge of the screen. It would be nice to spruce up the base game's lighting without enduring some of FakeFactory's more... exotic improvements.
There was one comment by someone talking about how they experimented with better light baking using Blender
the apartments look like half life alyx with rtgi on
4:18 that nade throw tho
"someone blows that polygon budget on a virtual nipple"
not to mention the _fully modelled cervix_
Well I don't get the hassle with the Cinematic mod. You always were able to customize the characters and also keep the original valve models so the drama for me was always not needed
i love the intro XD ending with CM alyx