Bloomin’ Heck

Given its prevalence in recently released screen shoots for games across a range of platforms, High Dynamic Range (or HDR) rendering is the “new” normal/bump mapping. Eighteen months ago, normal/bump mapping was THE technology to have in games. Almost every game pushed at hard core gamers claimed to have it - publishers gushed, developers bragged and we, the gamers, salivated. In obvious obedience to Moore’s Law, rendering technology has moved on – THE technology to have is now High Dynamic Range rendering.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for innovation in rendering technology, particularly when it results in a greater sense of immersion. My concern is two-fold.

• High Dynamic Range rendering will get over used. For the next six to twelve months we will be required to suffer through games filled with washed-out highlights (bloom) and high contrast environments that are less than realistic. Some developers will get it right, but most will just throw it in their games so that publishers can drop the appropriate catch-phrases in marketing materials. (Or worse still, some developers will be compelled by publishers to add HDR in place of other, more important gameplay features.)
• The quality of the High Dynamic Range rendering effect is dependent on the resolution of the textures. Pre-rendered images that use highly-detailed materials with HDR look great (see DaikenTana composites of HL2 models with actual photos), but put HDR over lower resolution materials and the effect is lost. The sense of immersion is compromised due to a lack of detail/complexity in the material; the object in question just appears to be flat.

I’m sure that, in the long term, High Dynamic Range rendering will represent a valuable innovation, but in the short-term, I think that rendering technology needs to be more concerned with more effective materials handling, increased realism in lighting and atmospherics, and improved depth of field rendering. HDR, however, is and will continue to be THE technology for the next six to twelve months. Every highly lit texture, irrespective of the nature or condition of its surface, will bloom. Now, where are my sunglasses?