Ultra mode!

Sure

Speaking of which, it's starting to really irritate me how the reflections system in this game is set up. I thought Ultra Mode would fix that, but no. It's still the same as it was before, only instead of a random unrelated picture, our costumes reflect an environment map.

What's the problem? Black doesn't reflect. At all. I mean, it's possible it does, but I don't have the bionic super sight to actually SEE that. I just see black. Some areas might be imperceptibly a little greyer, but really, it's just black. Of course, setting my costume to white turns it into a mirror, but that's kind of besides the point, because white isn't what I wanted.

Which is kind of odd, really, considering white objects in real life tend to not be as reflective as black objects. Those funny people who make custom cars always complain about how black cars need to to be perfectly smooth, or the black paint's reflection will highlight every defect. I don't know what the system for reflections actually is, but it seems like it's another one of those subtractive systems that, starts off of white and then adds colour to it, so if you start off of black, black is all you get.

Considering environment reflections don't seem to work well for me in building windows, it's kind of disappointing that I can only get reflections I can see with bright colours.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I can understand why you're disappointed about dark colors not reflecting like the light or bright colors. Speaking as a silk screen printer, I'm thinking it's because the dark colors don't do well reflecting because they're dark. What's going on is that the reflections are really transparent pictures being 'pasted' on dark colors. In order for reflections to show up, there would have to be a light colored underlay to make them more opaque. Now I will freely admit that I know absolutely nothing about programing computers and such, but this is the only thing that makes sense to me.

Speaking as someone who's constantly surrounded by glossy black plastic (*sigh* computers these days...), I can definitely testify that a black item, as long as it is shiny, WILL reflect things very strongly. Much more so, in fact, than any white shiny object I can currently have a look, though admittedly that's probably because I lack the right objects to compare. It has been my experience that white objects tend to show too much of their own colour, masking reflections, whereas black objects show only their reflection, hence being more clear. Of course, that's because real-life plastics tend to have a transparent glossy layer over the plastic itself which is reflective. I don't really know how that works with raw metals, but I do know that metals painted black tend to reflect more than metals painted white.

On the flip side, what we tend to see as a "metallic shine" isn't actually white OR black, but more just "reflective," as in we don't see much of the underlying surface so much as we see a reflection of what's around the surface. Playing around with reflection maps and raytrace reflections 3D Studio Max (way back when) showed me one thing very clearly - an object that is 100% reflective actually loses its own texture to reflection. We see such mirror-like surfaces as greyish-white because light tends to focus on points or sharp edges, condensing into white lines, and light also tends to reflect directly into your eyes, again causing the objects to white out. And as we're surrounded by light and objects that are usually grey or light, these mirror surfaces end up looking greyish and shiny.

Now, as far as actual implementation goes, I don't actually know how this works. You are, however, probably on the right track inferring that reflections are a transparent layer overlaid over the actual texture. I've done some research into computer graphics transparency models, and what I can infer from observation is that if this really IS transparency, it's using the Dark Theme subtractive model. As a painter, that should actually be right up your alley, because Dark/subtractive calculations mimic paints and dyes, in that they assume a white base that reflects all light, to which you add pigments that block specific colours.

Our Dark Themes as used for power customization actually do an inversion first when determining colours. That's because you pick colours to BLOCK, so picking blue would actually give you yellow, because you block blue and let everything else through. So the system does an inversion, such that when you pick blue, you block everything OTHER than blue. The reason I suggest that's what's being used here is because a white base - a colour which would block everything other than red, green and blue, or in essence block nothing at all - is going to be a very clear base for other reflections. If white shows all colours and blue blocks red and green, you still get a blue reflection. Black as a base, on the other hand, blocks ALL colours, so really nothing you try to add to it is going to make much of a difference, because it's already blocking all colours to begin with. That's why black shiny and reflective objects actually end up looking dull and matte in the game.

That's kind of disappointing, really, because I find black to be one of the more stylish colours, especially for metals and accents and sunglasses, and I'm continually finding that it just doesn't shine well. And it should.

P.S. I need a refresher on transparency models...

*edit*
I found the article I was looking for. It's a pretty good read for anyone who's interested in how transparency in computer graphics works. I believe it was BABs who originally pointed us to this article, though I may be mistaken and I don't want to misquote the guy any more than we already do. SOMEONE pointed me to it, and it was never discounted as being a good source for reference regarding this game.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Alrighty. Be right on it as soon as Test patches on my work PC.

*edit*
There you go! This is two instances of the same texture - Metallic - one in pure white, one in pure black. Both pictures were taken in the same parking lot just outside the Tailor in St. Martial, and I specifically stood next to the green car to make the reflection obvious. You'll note the white costume reflects things pretty well. You can see the green car clearly, you can see the sky behind the camera, and if you look closely, you can even see a house off to the left on the side of his right leg, and even part of the blue car that's mostly behind him. It's not very clear what we're actually seeing, but it's not supposed to be. It's stuff reflecting off a guy's chest.

You will also note that the black costume reflects what I would describe as "bugger all." If you squint really hard, you can sort of see the lines on his right leg where the green car reflects just out of shot, but I accidentally swivelled the camera such that the darker patch of "shading" on his right thigh obscured most of the green car's reflection. If you have super bionic meta-human vision (or know what to look for) you can see the square shape on his right breast where a building comes up from the horizon, but that's about it. And all of that you can see because I just told you it's there and because you have a picture of the reflective suit right next to the black one.

Now stop squinting and look at them side-by-side. The left one looks shiny, glossy, metallic and pretty reflective. The right one looks like it's made out of velvet. And note that only the chest and pants of the white costume are actually white. The gloves, boots and that chest pattern are darker. They're still Metallic, but you can easily tell the difference.

See what I mean?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Actually, that's 'plastic' reflection, where the surface reflects the actual color that strikes it; metal surfaces tint the reflection with the color of the metal. In the image below, both of the spheres in the background are blue with reflective surfaces; the left sphere has the 'metallic' property, the right one doesn't:


For a real-life example, look at this picture of copper sheet:


See how the reflections take the color of the metal? The difference is that for 'plastic' reflections, the reflection can be considered to be on top of the surface, so that the reflection doesn't take on the color of the surface, for metallic reflections, the reflection occurs 'in' the surface, so it acquires an overlay of the surface color. And I don't think that the CoX graphics engine is really set up to do either properly.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The thing is though. Black cars aren't 'reflective black metal', they're reflective black plastic, because what you're seeing is a reflection off the paint, not the metal.

I'm not sure if there *is* a shiny black metallic element, as the majority of metallic elements are described as 'silvery' or 'silvery grey'. Copper's a little bit of an oddity in that regard, along with Gold.

It isn't new to Ultra Mode, no. I actually raised the same concern back in CoV Beta and during I6 Live. Faux reflections suffer the same fate, I believe I opened with that, but the thing is... I was kind of hoping Ultra Mode would fix that. I guess it isn't up to ultra mode, though. This looks like an artefact of how the game handles transparency, an issue that has been plaguing the game ever since I2, when we first got to use auras and found that black ones were almost entirely transparent.

One would have to delve into technicalities FAR too obscure to a player to really discuss this, but to say that this is not what I expected to see.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My knowledge in metallurgy is severely limited, and thanks to that dang rock'n'roll, I can't look for "black metal" and actually find ANYTHING to do with metallurgy, so I can't even do research on this. I would assume metal that is black is usually painted, but I wouldn't know.

However, the only reason I brought in realism here was to explress that black reflections are something that ought to be available SOMEHOW. I mean, Impervium is a blackish purple metal and THAT is plenty shiny enough. Just look at your typical Combine architecture Arachnos fort. Whether that's plastic, paint or magical black shiny metal, shininess shouldn't be restricted to bright colours only, sinply because dark colours can be glossy, too. That's kind of the point of Environment Reflections.

I have quite a few black-metal-clad heroes and villains. I don't know if that's realistic, but that was never really my prerogative. I know they look cool, and I wanted to see if they couldn't look cool and shiny. No such luck. Considering everything ELSE that I can see Environment Reflections on is terrible (doesn't actually reflect the environment in real time), this is kind of disappointing.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

For a six-year-old game to grow, it needs to attract players who aren't six-year fans with six-year-old machines. In order for the game to attract players at all, it can't look six years old, or everyone will just pass it up for the new shiny. Like it or not, looks matter, because most people won't stick with a game beyond the first day if there isn't SOMETHING to grab their attention. I've tried and dropped plenty of MMOs within a day, so I know that's a factor.

But, humour me. What could they have done with their newly hired graphics programmers that didn't involve better graphics?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.