[HN Gopher] Fog Volumes arrive in Godot 4.0
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       Fog Volumes arrive in Godot 4.0
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 149 points
       Date   : 2022-07-06 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (godotengine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (godotengine.org)
        
       | jl6 wrote:
       | Nice. I remember when volumetric fog was a brand new thing in the
       | original Unreal in 1998.
        
       | mrguyorama wrote:
       | Is there a document or something that explains the 4.0 roadmap?
       | These one off blog posts don't do a great job of showcasing
       | future plans
        
         | BudaDude wrote:
         | Most likely they will add one once Godot 4 leaves alpha. The
         | major focus for 4 was a rewrite of the graphics engine.
        
           | mattlondon wrote:
           | Agreed - from what I can see this is an enabler for adding
           | new features _later_ (e.g. 4.1 or whatever). There seem to be
           | a few nice things though - e.g. temporal anti aliasing and
           | this fog etc. Some features /fixes from 4 are being
           | backported to 3.x, but I am not sure if there is any
           | stringent rationale for what gets backported and what
           | doesn't.
           | 
           | Looking forward to the v4 release! Good luck to all involved.
        
             | wingmanjd wrote:
             | If I recall correctly, v4 is also supposed to have better
             | baked-in multiplayer support. I'm also looking forward to
             | the eventual release!
        
       | colechristensen wrote:
       | I really want to play around with Godot for making unusual
       | visualizations and computer interfaces, but so far it seems like
       | there's quite a bit to ramp up to being able to execute an idea.
        
         | galleywest200 wrote:
         | I decided to grunt it out via a course on Udemy and the ramp
         | was worth it. The software is great!
        
           | sph wrote:
           | Care to link the course please?
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | For visualisations it can be somewhat weird to use but as a
         | game engine the ramp up is almost too fast in some cases as it
         | tries to funnel you down easy concepts that don't scale
        
       | 999900000999 wrote:
       | If Unity has another layoff round we might see Godot become more
       | popular.
       | 
       | Unity still has an unparalleled ecosystem, but I'm fearful of
       | locking myself to such an unstable company.
        
         | jorvi wrote:
         | > Unity still has an unparalleled ecosystem
         | 
         | You have never used Unreal Engine and it's asset store etc.?
        
         | mattlondon wrote:
         | Just on this point about ecosystem, what specifically are
         | people thinking of?
         | 
         | The asset store and the q&a things are generally full of cruft.
         | There are a lot of tutorial videos etc, but you generally don't
         | need 50 on the same thing (...and Godot seems to have a
         | pleasantly surprising number of decent tutorials floating
         | around - both "official" and community created).
         | 
         | The only thing left I can think of is that it is easier to
         | recruit engineers for unity, but surely pro shops are not using
         | unity (on the whole)?
        
           | skocznymroczny wrote:
           | It's the game engine equivalent of "why people use Maya if
           | there's Blender who can do that stuff". There is a lot of
           | middleware designed to work with Unity, there are many
           | workflows defined on how to properly export models from 3D
           | software to Unity preserving all the materials and special
           | effects. There isn't as much for Godot yet. Yes, you can do
           | it yourself, but most companies don't have time for that.
        
           | Thaxll wrote:
           | Godot is nowwhere in the game industry whereas Unity is a
           | standard.
        
           | dimgl wrote:
           | V Rising, Hollow Knight, The Stanley Parable, Valheim, and
           | more mainstream successes are all Unity games.
        
             | afloyd wrote:
             | Note, Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, the recent remake, is a
             | Unity game, the original HL2 mod and 2013 version are both
             | in the source engine.
        
           | Vetch wrote:
           | Godot is a great engine that will continue to grow and
           | improve. Unity too is excellent, with many useful
           | professional and tutorial assets. Unity's 3D offerings and
           | tooling are more mature, even as an indie. Some of my
           | favorite professional games made in Unity are: Dyson Sphere
           | Program, Cities Skylines, Pillars of Eternity and Disco
           | Elysium. These are all elite tier for their genres.
           | 
           | Regarding tooling, there's a lot of cruft sure, but that's
           | just Sturgeon's law at play with Unity's size and age.
           | Another aspect of Unity's reputation is it faces a fate
           | similar to web development: it's a lot of people's first
           | experience with programming.
           | 
           | The Godot experience is cleaner, more streamlined and
           | constantly adding more great features. Godot is newer compare
           | to Unreal and Unity so hasn't had time to accumulate cruft.
           | But as long as developers aim for some amount of backwards
           | compatibility, it will happen. That's not necessarily a bad
           | thing.
        
           | 999900000999 wrote:
           | Okay, find something like Gaia Terrain for Godot ?
           | 
           | >, but surely pro shops are not using unity (on the whole)?
           | 
           | This is false, Unity is very popular, I've played several
           | professional games made with it, for example.
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo:_The_World_Ends_with_You
        
         | camjw wrote:
         | They laid off 4% of staff, doesn't seem that drastic to me. I
         | know a few people working there and they didn't seem too fazed,
         | but I get that it's a big company and other divisions might be
         | different.
         | 
         | Doesn't take away from the fact that Godot is the shit.
        
       | tobr wrote:
       | It looks wrong to me with soft shadows in the fog and then a
       | sharp shadow on the floor below.
        
       | crdrost wrote:
       | They almost get to this with some of their lighting demos -- the
       | real joyous experience with this sort of lighting effect is to
       | turn on a tiny bit of fog "dust" in some sort of big spacious
       | building like a cathedral, and see the shafts of light coming in
       | from various windows. Always a gorgeous effect to see in a video
       | game.
        
         | m12k wrote:
         | Affectionately called "god rays" among graphics programmers
        
         | _the_inflator wrote:
         | This is something that brings in atmosphere into games. I love
         | it.
        
       | wly_cdgr wrote:
       | I like how something that used to be a trick for hiding draw
       | distance limitations has become a rendering engine selling point,
       | heh
        
         | omoikane wrote:
         | I don't think the old fog effects used for drawing distance
         | limitation tricks react to shadows, unlike volumetric fogs.
        
       | digitallyfree wrote:
       | I'm curious as to why they didn't bother with antialiasing on the
       | demo images - the performance effect should be almost negligible
       | for this scene on a modern machine. The render quality may be
       | fine but the jaggies make the end product look less refined.
        
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