Mirror, mirror, On the Wall...

[ZardozIX]

I was wondering if anybody has attempted to make a Mirror to hang on the wall so you can see if your power amor is sitting just right.

Sometimes it's nice to check out how some piece of clothing looks on you before you og traipsing around burned out Boston showing your ass because there is a big rip in your pants.

 

Just an idle thought. I have waaay too much time on my hands... :rolleyes:

[EmissaryOfWind]

There's a reason why mirrors never work in games, it's because they're really hard to do ;) It would be 1) tough to script, and 2) straining your computer by rendering twice the amount of stuff.

[tomomi1922]

There's a reason why mirrors never work in games, it's because they're really hard to do :wink: It would be 1) tough to script, and 2) straining your computer by rendering twice the amount of stuff.

 

I am sure it is not that hard. But it is more pointless, because unlike real life where we can't see ourselves, in game we can go in 3rd person mode and pan around. And it is more resource intensive, yes. But same is already done in game when it comes to reflective water and some glass surface. Like the reflective glass on the scope of the Kalash rifle mod, so annoying that I can't see at night because it reflects too much of the back as if it is a rear view mirror.

[zanity]

I was wondering if anybody has attempted to make a Mirror to hang on the wall so you can see if your power amor is sitting just right.

Sometimes it's nice to check out how some piece of clothing looks on you before you og traipsing around burned out Boston showing your ass because there is a big rip in your pants.

 

Just an idle thought. I have waaay too much time on my hands... :rolleyes:

 

There's a reason why mirrors never work in games, it's because they're really hard to do :wink: It would be 1) tough to script, and 2) straining your computer by rendering twice the amount of stuff.

Mirrors are EASY to do- technically they are called PORTALS and the mirror relection is just a special case of a portal render view. Why is it so many technically incompetent people feel the need to excuse laziness in game engines with some pseudo technical excuse?

 

Quake 3 had portal views, and what was that? A millions years ago?

 

The TRICK with mirrors is to fade to the portal render only when close to the mirror, and place mirrors in locations where the relected view is lo-weight on the render system. The original Duke Nukem 3D had mirrors like this.

[MLeonhardt]

Uh

 

3rd person view

[Reneer]

Mirrors are EASY to do- technically they are called PORTALS and the mirror relection is just a special case of a portal render view. Why is it so many technically incompetent people feel the need to excuse laziness in game engines with some pseudo technical excuse?

 

Quake 3 had portal views, and what was that? A millions years ago?

 

The TRICK with mirrors is to fade to the portal render only when close to the mirror, and place mirrors in locations where the relected view is lo-weight on the render system. The original Duke Nukem 3D had mirrors like this.

Regardless of how you do it, the mirror still has to render everything within its vicinity (whatever you set that as) twice. Trying to compare Quake 3, a game released in 1999, to Fallout 4 or Skyrim or even Oblivion makes little sense in terms of how many objects each engine typically deals with.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Reneer

[JuJooGuppy]

Seems to me that a mirror doesn't have to render everything twice, it just needs to be a 'camera' of sorts, showing the same rendered content at a different angle. I saw the excuse of mirrors being too much of a strain, and that may be the case if you were indeed making a mirror that actually reflected and rendered everything again, but think of the game Portal / Portal 2. Essentially, the portals open up and allow you to look through, which is how I think quick, easy, good looking mirrors would be best done. Just a trick of another camera so to speak.

Hope that even makes sense, I am tired...

[Langy]

Yes - mirrors could up to halve your frame rates. That's not an issue for everyone's system - plenty of people have computers capable of taking a halved frame rate and still outputting frames fast enough for the user to go 'good enough for me!'

 

Jujoo: A single render can't show two scenes at different angles. The rendering process is very angle-specific.

[Reneer]

Seems to me that a mirror doesn't have to render everything twice, it just needs to be a 'camera' of sorts, showing the same rendered content at a different angle. I saw the excuse of mirrors being too much of a strain, and that may be the case if you were indeed making a mirror that actually reflected and rendered everything again, but think of the game Portal / Portal 2. Essentially, the portals open up and allow you to look through, which is how I think quick, easy, good looking mirrors would be best done. Just a trick of another camera so to speak.

 

Hope that even makes sense, I am tired...

That "other camera" still has to render everything it sees. So essentially you have two rendering points: The player's FOV and the camera's FOV, but the camera's FOV is placed onto your portal / mirror. That last bit is why Portal could show you different angles because it rendered two or more scenes depending upon where the camera / portal was placed.

[ZardozIX]

I know I'm going to make an ass of myself by suggesting this but why not take the output from the third person view and frame it to look like a mirror? It's just the effect of realism we want, not the perfection of reflection.

 

"When you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME..." :tongue: