Dynamic Fluid Surfaces

#1 Kory,

Gonna be honest with you. Yes, it can be done. Have you seen it in a 'released' game? I am thinking no. Why? Simple, look a the demos you posted links to. TINY areas. No AI, no real game play at all. This is a common tactic for graphic developers. Show off the latest and greatest but, realistically.... in an actual game environment, it won't work or it will but, you are only playing in the water, or the (frame rate drops to nothing).... not playing the game. Here are a couple of links to things related that we can do but not make 'games out of yet'..... Keep in mind... Good tech demos, not games:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD-KDwq3qeM

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGjRLJpXYxA

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Just keep these things in mind, we might be able to do it, but not in a full game environment.

Ron

#2 That waterworks demo is awesome stuff. I understand about show off tech demo but sometime some good eye candy is enough to get people at least interested.
As for the Dynamic fluid surface. I can't remember if many or any game is using that maybe Gears of War 2 but not totally sure about that. Nonetheless it would be a cool effect to have on the waterblocks in T3D. Granted the feature didn't do much to the framerate.

Here is it done in TGEA video posted by Stefan Lundmark
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANQz-GbS90w

#3 Yep.... again though TGEA. Does not directly translate to T3D. From my point of view, I would rather have something like the water in the Dragonborne DLC pack for Skyrim.

Basically, from what I can tell, it's a height-mapped based texture re-write function. If the 'water plane waves' get to a height of 'x', then draw the 'foam texture' to create 'white caps' in the oceans and lakes. Far more convincing for 'real' water than anything that nVidia has put out so far. "minus the 'voxel solution (little balls that simulate water)' which is totally impractical for real-time at this stage, unless you have a freakin Titan video card array.

Ron

#4 I agree that some of those effects in the videos might be more marketed to special effects houses rather than real time simulations. Nvidia makes very high end cards that won't be in anybodies machines any time soon. I am thinking of the their Quadra line. However, it is cool that this stuff is being developed though. It could make for some cool cut scene videos.

I don't know about voxels not being able to be used in real time. Couldn't one do some simple 1 to 2 layer voxels for the water surface? Then use some simple noise functions (possibly pre calculated) to control height? I think the minecraft mapping system is all voxels, though they are not moving a whole lot. When they do move they become entities.

#5 It would be cool to have it done with normal maps. Thats usually how it's actually implemented in games and would get some similar results without being useless for real-world scenarios.

#6 Here is another video of an engine that uses it in a realtime engine
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NUA-1qIXvs (0:30)
This engine is based on direct x 9 ( I believe). Though the engine use a slightly different method, a deferred shading.

#7 Uh, Morrowind had it. But I don't recall noticing it in any recent games, strangely.

#8 Daniel
That's what I'm talking about! Some kind of water effect, were players and other objects can interact with it. For example someone shooting into water and the water splashes, to show where the bullets are hitting. Of even like that video if a player walk through the water the surface of the plane ripples.