However, this isn’t how water actually works. Due to the difference in refractive index, there’s a critical angle beyond which all light is totally internally reflected. This forms a circular ring around the viewer. Beyond this ring, the water stops refracting light and instead reflects objects under the water.
It looks like the water shader already does screen space reflections. Implementing this would be as simple as checking the angle of the water surface after the normal map is applied, and reducing the amount of refracted contribution over a narrow range of angles until it doesn’t contribute at all, and reflection makes up the full contribution to the final appearance of the water surface.
While I do agree this would be a cool little feature, this is just a needle in a haystack.
There are more important things Roblox should focus on adding to the engine currently, and underwater refraction isn’t one of them (in my personal opinion).
Although, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. I just think there are better ways of going about this. I think at the very least they should improve the entire overall water shader, and even better, refraction/reflections in general, this being among it. Better to look at the bigger picture than these somewhat smaller issues, but this is still undeniably important, however.
if we stop posting feature requests because you assume that “other things are more important” then we will end up with no feature requests at all.
replies are to support to the feature request. feel free to post the opposite but at least give specific reasons why, not just because you think that it’s unimportant.
Might’ve conveyed the wrong message in my post, in that case my apologies, but that’s not exactly what I meant. Elttob gave a very specific feature request, which is completely fine, I’m not against it or anything. I just meant I think posting about “the bigger picture” would be more efficient, but who knows?
Never said it wasn’t of importance, please read my whole post.
I can’t be the only one that thinks improving water and/or reflections and refraction in general ALONG WITH UNDERWATER REFLECTIONS is more beneficial than teensy tiny steps? I personally prefer feature requests with several important points in them when talking about a pretty vague topic that has many points of improvement, such as water.
i won’t reply any further on the context behind your original reply because it’s common sense that you’re calling it unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
make your own feature request if you want something else.
Oh yeah! You’re right! Roblox’s graphics are on par with UE5! It’s up to ME to make my stuff look good! It would sure be a shame if we were using decade-old technology!
Let’s keep the feature request focused on the original topic. A more broad request can be opened elsewhere! I just prefer more atomically sized posts usually.
Alrighty, well in that case I do think this would definitely be beneficial. Would open up more possibilities to underwater-based games, as most modern games on Roblox with swimming generally resort to custom water as a generally better alternative (due to Roblox’s… limited, water shader).
You can make things on par with UE5 graphics with the current technology; PBR support, billboards, and beams can go a long way. You can’t make a super realistic UE5 game without realistic assets; path traced flat cubes can only go so far with realism
I get your frustration dude, your examples are kinda far fetched for roblox but, some stuff really is past due. How for example, do we still not have emissive textures supported on MaterialVariants/SurfaceAppearance in 2024
I hire professional freelancers for my assets, which are easily above the current standards of popular roblox games. I’m tried of the roadblocks that the roblox engine has.
And those artists also have to optimize those models to look good on Roblox; for example baking details into normal maps instead of discarding it or making performance run horribly with keeping all the polygons. This is getting off-topic but there’s guides in #resources:roblox-staff on how to optimize your UV and materials to make the most out of the 1024x1024 textures and compression. For example for a rock asset using less of the UV on the bottom as it is sen much less often compared to the top. If there’s any particular things limiting you you should definitely submit a feature request; it shows demand for these types of features.
