here is the CONSUMER review for those who may stumble across this
errr little update i bought it (i will saywaste of money), and bleh. the tech is laggier than i expected and it seems to somehow throw off the good looks of any lighting you may have had. the gi likes to dance around and flicker on shadowmap (while not giving correct results) and the only other noteworthy metion is the volumetric light, which is only noteworthy because it isnt an incredibly annoying effect that smothers your screen (thank you blur, depthoffield and the other ppe). the “volume” is just a few circular dots on the light source. the gi also has a very small range.
aside from the notable features, the “lens flare” “enhanced bloom” “depth of field” “Motion blur” “enhanced god rays” yeah all that is just padding in OP’s message, and it actually tears apart the way ur game looks. to start, motion blur, and depth of field, are both buns. they blur your whole screen and just make everything look like you got pepper sprayed. the enhanced god rays (?) and lens flare (?) are unnoticable but they are fine.
i had to disable most of the aforementioned to even make it look normal. i DID test multiple times and diff conditions but overall it is just hard to setup if you aren’t the owner.
that brings me to my last point, editability and the god forsaken scripts. editing this is difficult as the settings are very bleak, only on/off, which is you’d expect more for about $15. this would be easy to pass up if the scripts were well organized and readable (which ok, i get it, the average consumer doesnt care about this) but this all spells something out to me.
a lot of these things (no accusations just assumptions) seem to be pulled from the toolbox. the GI and Volumetrics may be made but a lot of these seem to be adapted freemodel scripts, just added so the price can be marked up. Not to mention that some thigns are LITERALLY just using the base lighting objects (bloom, depth of field, sunrays, they all just use their base lighting obj)
My first impression of what i saw set the bar quite low and I blame myself not OP for buying this.
A good thing is that while performance is bad, (on shadowmap somehow), it still is technically real time so, full marks for that.
** I forgot to mention that after enabling volumetric lights the whole workspace became bright white, and was absolutely tearing my fps to shreds…
TLDR; don’t buy unless you’re willing to be let down or have deep pockets
hopefully 2.0 addresses some of these issues
here are some pictures i snapped (with an UNALTERED version of alare, nothing tweaked so “out of the box”)
- an honest review, no offense intended