The Darkness (Destiny)
by Ragashingo 
, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, October 12, 2017, 22:22 (2399 days ago)
I told people in my fire team chat I was posting new information on The Darkness. That is partially true. But, instead of talking about the extra dimensional evil, I wanted to talk about how nice Destiny 2’s lighting is!
Most games, it seems, show The Darkness by sucking the color out of everything and maybe applying a blue filter. Skyrim was terrible at this as all the shadows like from trees and rocks were still cast and everything!
Destiny 2, in contrast, is, as Lord Shaxx would say: AMAZING!!!
![[image]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/b3no3w0osdcarmp/TheDarkness-1.jpg?dl=1)
![[image]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/hjakbvedod9dzmp/TheDarkness-2.jpg?dl=1)
But look! Color is preserved! If I rotate the camera around you can see a world that includes real, actual darks along side open, moonlit nights.
![[image]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2yy5734m2ks2ivz/TheDarkness-3.jpg?dl=1)
What’s more, even focusing on The Darkness, we can see that the game is taking the lighting into account with an amazing amount of detail. Look as the more reflective parts of my armor gleam!
![[image]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ex9unp7x9gu8npn/TheDarkness-4.jpg?dl=1)
And when it does get bright, the results and revealed detail are awesome:
![[image]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/lk8j9sc2x910lxn/TheDarkness-5.jpg?dl=1)
I don’t know what all goes into making Destiny 2 look as good as it does, but it sure does look good! Even when consumed by The Darkness. ;)
You lied to me...
- No text -
You lied to me...
by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, October 13, 2017, 06:30 (2399 days ago) @ Robot Chickens
Haha!
But no. I said something close to: "I'm making a new post about the darkness. There's some great new stuff in Destiny 2." It is totally my fault you misinterpreted and I couldn't be happier. :p
You lied to me... +1
by red robber 
, Crawfish Country, Friday, October 13, 2017, 21:21 (2398 days ago) @ Robot Chickens
- No text -
The Darkness
The graphics truly are stunning. They're even better than D1, which was already gorgeous. One thing that truly impresses me is how the shaders included reflection/shine data. Usually I'd expect the reflection to be a feature of the object the shader is being applied to, and the shader to simply be a color table that changes what the base color values of the object are. This does not appear to be the case in Destiny 2, where the reflective nature of the object is at least partially influenced by the shader. Some shaders even include two-tone colors (watermelon, for example - the green-red dynamic toning looks great on cloaks!) and others contain ombre overlays (such as Indigo Matrix) which seem to break the paint by numbers dynamic most shaders apply to the weapons.
This flexibility in color application is unusual, to say the least, and - while I can't say for sure if it was super tricky to code - it's certainly not the "easy way" to do color shaders on the cheap.
The Darkness
by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, October 13, 2017, 16:20 (2398 days ago) @ Kahzgul
I didn’t look so closely at those and I know I have most or all of the ones you mentioned. I’ll apply them when I get a chance and take a look! :)