The Starry Expanse Community

I know you guys are trying to have or surpass the quality of the original Riven, but wasn't that done with ray tracing? And isn't real-time ray tracing pretty impractical these days? I wonder if it will look as real. I think, for example, about images like this, with lots of refraction and reflection, and what they will look like...

UE4 reflections are really impressive, and I think if they are subtle, the reflections will be simulated perfectly. For example, in this video you can see lots of relfections made with UE4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yk4Ab1i3vc

I tested some of UE4 refraction options and it was... strange, I expected more deformation, but I guess it must be custumized

https://www.imbuefx.com/forum-wp/#/disc ... tortion/p1

The hard one looks like it would be the kettle one, as the water has to float up to the top as well in real time. Having said that, I always feel that in the original game that animation felt too thick, like it was gel rather than water.

The water effects will indeed be difficult to replicate (still working hard on that), but the first photo is impressive mainly because of the quality of the materials rather than the raytracing-ness. On that note, UE4 has an excellent materials system, and since we're gonna try super hard on the textures, I'm confident we'll match that quality.

Didn't Cyan give you all their textures from Riven? If not, would it be possible to ask them? Cyan are the best texture artists in the industry IMO and those Riven textures are what make the game visually.

While I can't share any details regarding our relationship with Cyan, I don't believe we ever mentioned plans to integrate the original source textures into the new game. All of the texture work you've seen on the site and at Mysterium has been recreation from scratch by our awesome artists.

That said, the textures are not what makes those shots so difficult to reproduce, it's the shaders and ray tracing. Unreal is very powerful and can get pretty close, and what we might lose in the transition we'll gain so much more. Real-time reflection looks awesome.

Yeah good point.

Here's a quick response to the question "is real-time ray-tracing impractical on current machines." A while ago, I wrote a real-time ray-tracer prototype on a standard desktop computer (Pentium 4 Northwood back then). Here's a link to my old blog (I know it desperately needs to be updated): https://bezzray.wordpress.com/

Basically, yes real-time ray-tracing is possible on current hardware. Before anyone asks, no, this isn't a full-featured engine. It's just the renderer, and I don't have time to make it as such (unless someone wanted to pay me full salary ). I believe we are much further along in hardware capabilities than in software at the moment. Hopefully one of these days software will catch up and this will become the de facto standard for home gaming.

-Will

...Unreal 5. I can only dream.