Vtastek, you and Phal converted me back to morrowind with your shaders, and now you're trying to make me come back to Oblivion? what are you playing at??

lol seriously thats awesome tho. I, and im sure the lurkers as well, really appreciate the work you've done. In morrowind and now Oblivion as well.

I made this for you :cookie:

very nice

Holy Crap!!! :):)

OMG OMG he did it OMFG WOW :celebration:

That is incredible. Can't wait for this to show up as a downloadable mod. The frame rates even looked good!

From what you've tested so far, how much of a performance hit do you think most users will experience?

Holy mother! That's phenomenal! And you did this without access to the depth buffer? Seriously?

I am most impressed.

Vac

OK I've been doing some experiments in trying to get at the depth buffer.

I've sort of got something working.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/519253/Depth3rd.jpg is what it looks like in 3rd person. The depth seems to increase exponentially so you can only see the effect of things right in front of you.

I get even more problems when I go into http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/519253/Depth1st.jpg. It looks like Oblivion clears the z buffer before rendering your characters body.

As Kevin Sorbo is contractually obliged to say in everything he does, "It's never easy".

I'm pretty sure this won't be helpful but after Googling for the "NiDX9ImplicitDepthStencilBufferData" you mentioned I found one result and it was Oblivion related. I'm a programmer too, but sadly not in the graphics arena so I may be of little help, but there are multiple objects it seems belonging to a parent "NiDX92DBufferData" or something of the sorts. The result I found looks like a data dump of some kind (they mention "rtti information"), with an object hierarchy. You can see the google result here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=eGV&q=NiDX9ImplicitDepthStencilBufferData&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

The pertinent area is this

 *	NiDX92DBufferData - derived from NiRefObject and something else	*		NiDX9DepthStencilBufferData	*			NiDX9SwapChainDepthStencilBufferData	*			NiDX9ImplicitDepthStencilBufferData	*			NiDX9AdditionalDepthStencilBufferData	*		NiDX9TextureBufferData	*		NiDX9OnscreenBufferData	*			NiDX9SwapChainBufferData	*			NiDX9ImplicitBufferData

Thus it seems there may be much more buffer data available to you than what you've found so far, or the more likely case that you know much more than I do about this subject and have already tried the other data paths. But just in case, I thought I'd offer this up.

Congrats, you found the depth buffer. Just divide the first image with a constant number(something like 100-1000), and it will look more like a depth buffer. I am getting sky line from the image above already. For second image, it is common practice to draw guns as a separate pass even with a different FOV.

Great news and a awesome video, thanks scanti and vtastek :celebration: :foodndrink:
This is really an exciting time for all of us oblivion players :ahhh:

I must also thank AmpolX for starting this topic :icecream:

The video is indeed quite impressive, we may not be there yet, but it's starting to look like the Oblivion equivalent of Morrowind Graphics Extender may one day be possible, I do look forward to seeing what will come of this.

I've been watching this thread and it seems there is some real progress going on here. Keep it up.

From a high point,
Without shader: 29 FPS
With shader: 31 FPS
:) It is working faster! It must be something else obviously, but this means it is fast. But also note reading from depthbuffer is a slow process by itself and additional pass for it in the final shader, and I have a 8800 gts. And my shader is PS 3.0(But there can be PS 2.0 versions too). But overall, the fps hit would be similar to a post process shader(lower than SSAO, almost the same with HDR-Bloom).


MGE has lots of tools and features in its scripting engine, but the amount of mods for it is really limited. Number of mods activating shaders based on scripts are 3. There is great potential in MGE. Tons of functions never ever used.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/morrgraphext/index.php?title=Function_Reference

There are even mods for distant land mipmaps for Oblivion, mipmaps?! MGE is good with creating distant land but I would love to see a weather mod based on scripts for Morrowind.

OK I've disabled the clearing of the Z buffer before drawing the body in 1st person and I've got the buffer a bit more linear (by multiplying the sampled texture by itself a load of times).

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/519253/ImprovedDepth.jpg

At the moment the code will only work on ATI cards. I'll have to get my other laptop out the cupboard (with nvidia graphics) and get it working on those cards as well.

vtastek: I'm planning on being able to have selectable multiple techniques in each fx file. Probably low for ps1.4 and above, medium for ps2.0 plus and high for ps3.0. The code should select the highest quality setting your card can handle but I'll allow the user to set the shaders to a lower setting.

I would love to give some menigfull criticism and praises, but I have zero understanding for how depth buffers works, so all I can say is:
Sounds great and scanti - You're The Man :bowdown:

A BIG word of appreciattion for what you guys are doing.

Looks amazing! Forgive my ignorance but I assume in this video the sun position is static? Or did you find a way to determine the sun position?

Oh and a more generic statement, there are some very interesting developements going on in this thread. Most of which I have no idea how it works but that doesn't mean I cannot want to have it.

-kyoma

Has anyone informed IlmrynAkios of Scanti's momentous discovery?? It was THE thing holding back OVEP progress, correct? I'd like to see a renewed hope in that project; I myself have invested a lot of time poring over all those OVEP threads and technical white papers, so when OVEP seemed to take a permanent hiatus I was very bummed to say the least... But anyway it'd be great after all this time and effort that the biggest obstacle is now finally behind us.

With that said I think a HUGE thanks is in order for scanti, and vtastek and those others who have put in months of effort into these projects. I hope too that scanti makes great strides with the depth buffer, and with the OBGE rewrites! The best of luck! Cheers! :foodndrink:

Great! It is enough accurate for godrays shader. It may become better in time for a SSAO shader too. My shader is directly from GPU gems 3 example, it is PS 3.0 and you can't make it PS 2.0 by simply decreasing quality passes. But phal's shader is based on Farcry 2 and can select PS 2.0 or PS 3.0 base on quality.(with if statements inside the technique)


Why do you think sun is always at top left corner? That's why I always only moved sideways or forwards.


I've merely done nothing but maybe gave some motivation. And I want to look those white papers(a little synchronization between Morrowind and Oblivion), MGE is really in a state where anything(global illumination, soft shadows, cone step mapping ) is possible. :chaos:

That clearing disabled sure makes it look a lot better. Oh the joys of having two laptops, I wish I did. But then I do have ATI, so I'm good.

I know it's fairly simple but have you tried to take the natural logarithm of the depth buffer? If it really is exponential, then this should set it back to a linear relationship. If I've got my maths right.

I know it's not addressed to me, but the multiple techniques sounds like a really good idea.

I just want to say that this sort of work is the kind of thing that makes modding so exciting. The idea of literally being able to create your own world the way you want it to be is an incredible experience, and by providing the community with such a diverse amount of resources, Oblivion really is becoming a very personal game for each player. I congratulate you on your efforts and am greatly looking forward to seeing what comes out of this.

My jaw is on the floor from this thread, I can't wait to have this in game. Great work, keep it up!

Fantastic. It's beginning to sound like that mod will be a must-have for users with the proper hardware (glad I spent fourteen hunnert on my computer :V).

Wow. I just trod on my jaw.