Continuation of these posts: (you know this update is bad when a person has to do 3 rant posts about it.)
and
With that out of the way, the future of this update is looking very bad.
- Reflections = Global Illumination apparently.
smh
Global Illumination is great and can really improve graphical fidelity on many games, but EnvMaps are an awful way to do it. (I’m done sugar coating my replies because of how many flaws I’ve seen.) These are relative to the orientation of your camera (not position) and can cause distortion and discoloring when you walk from room to room. Global Illumination and reflections are similar, but still have differences, and trying to use reflections as pseudo GI is a horrible idea. The system used to decide to create a new EnvMap just makes it look even worse.
Example:
This could be a bit better if Roblox allowed for parallax correction on these EnvMaps, but it still would look a bit jarring.
- This is a very, very, bad idea.
“automatic placement.” I’m worried because since Roblox prioritizes performance over quality, this could mean that we’re going to only have probes with similar features to what we have now (no parallax correction, slow updating time, poor quality, etc) that affects every single object. This also could mean that it’s still applied on every surface, which I’ve explained in detail why this is will make indoors look absolutely horrendous in my 2 previous replies.
- Why do we need to turn up EnvironmentDiffuse/SpecularScale?
Why can we have some sort of reflective property that doesn’t need the Environmental Specular and Diffuse scale cranked all the way up? There is literally no reason for this to be tied to either scale, and it’s especially annoying when thin walls.
Default skybox with EnvironmentalDiffuse/SpecularScale set to 1, with 1 stud thick walls. Awful.
- We only get 1 EnvMap
If you’re only going to give us 1 EnvMap, we might as well use the skybox for reflections in interior showcases seeing as we have much more control over them than we do with this update. Literally, CloneTrooper1019’s skybox reflections are better than this update because they are subtle and update based on triggers and not some system that has trouble finding where the center of a room is.
@Maximum_ADHD 's game:
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Skybox color and reflections affect Indoor EnvMaps
This further emphasizes the fact that this does not need reflections to be tied to EnvironmentalDiffuse/SpecularScale. Notice how the object is well underground and away from the ceiling.
Pic from @amer_thel
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Stop keeping customization and flexibility out of our reach
Giving us an cool update with tons of potential to enhance the graphics, experience, and immersion of games but only giving us the option to enable it, is like taking a kid to a theme park and not letting him go on any rides. I said it before to give more control to developers and ease up on restrictions. If you’re so worried about performance, just create a system that will disable probes after a certain amount of probes are visible and if it’s far enough away. If you want to go further, just use CubeMaps of nearby reflective surfaces.
There’s so many things that is bad about this update that I think I can safely say I hate it. I don’t hate the addition of reflections to Roblox, but I despise the restrictions, the unnecessary things we need to enable to actually have them, the quality, the system used to judge reflections, the lack of control, and the reason why it’s being added: to fake global illumination. Reflections are relative, if you move from one spot to another, reflections move and warp accordingly. Global Illumination on the other hand is mostly static, if not completely static. For a multi-billion company who had the resources to implement real-time reflections 2 years ago, and this is what they had to show for it now? I’ve gotta say, I’m pretty disappointed.
EDIT: I am sorry to any Roblox Staff I have offended who are working on this current update or any additions/features/etc., that I have mentioned in my replies. I originally thought that Roblox had been working on this for quite some time, but it never occurred to me that this update might have been because Roblox needed to implement more features because it just opened to investors. I am sorry for being insensitive and ignorant to the fact that these updates take time, resources, and patience. I also apologize for expecting so much of a Phase 1 Beta and from a few developers. It never occurred to me that there could be a small team working on this within very strict parameters of the Roblox Engine. Big thanks to CloneTrooper1019 for providing insight and and letting me know that what I did was very over the top and unnecessary. I may not be pleased with the current state of this update, but that doesn’t mean I should be a complete pessimist and lash out to anyone working on this. Huge respect to the staff members working on IndoorEnvMaps and to CloneTrooper1019.
