xNormal 3.14.4 released

xNormal 3.14.4 has been released!




- SSAO in the DX10 graphics driver
- Fake indirect lighting in the DX10 graphics driver. Added a Cornell box example to show this.
- Recompiled using SSE for extra speed
- Improved a bit the quality of the raytracing graphics driver ( I have secret plans for that )
- Corrected several bugs

Enjoy!

SSAO

I finished the screen-space ambient occlusion realtime technique ( inspired by Crysis ) for the upcoming xNormal 3.14.4

Here is a video of the effect applied on Kevin "Ironbearxl" George's Sylia model:



I'm taking only 16 samples so is very fast to render. You will be able to tweak it using some parameters. It will be only available for the DX10 graphics driver by the moment but is a very simple technique so, probably, I will port it to the DX9 and OpenGL drivers too.

The 3.14.4 version will be released soon ( this Monday 24, perhaps... ) so you could use the new features for the Dominance War 3 before it ends.

Indirect lighting ftw !

I am experimenting with indirect lighting / radiosity in the xNormal's 3D realtime viewer.
Here are two videos showing preliminary results :




(sigh, I need to get rid of all those flashings! )

A Cornell box:



Currently, it only works in Direct3D 10.0 but will be very easy to port this technique to OpenGL or DX9. The algorithm is very simple and fast.

With D3D10.1 will be much faster and it also could cast indirect soft shadows ... but there is no official Vista SP1 yet and I cannot afford an ATI 38XX / S3 Chrome 400 currently so I need to wait...

I'm also experimenting other interesting techniques for the 3.14.4 ( like SSAO, SSS and MTD ). Stay tuned!