» Fri May 28, 2010 6:43 am I think I'd be happy with full GI only for sunlight and moonlight, and only for indoors. What is the cost for multiple dynamic lightsources (like torches we can place anywhere) even if it was just based on SSAO? Arma2 which have SSAO have a heavy penalty when using multiple non shadowcasting dynamic lightsources used with its town generator module. If they can pull off "anything", then sure, go for it. But GI and SSAO is fairly heavy stuff. Just trying to be realistic about it.
SSAO effect is independent of scene complexity. Dynamic light sources have a high cost in forward renderers. Crysis really goes slow with multiple light sources(I think it is the case with Arma2 too). It's not because SSAO. In deferred shading(Killzone 2, Crysis 2, Metro 2033...) you can have as many light sources as you like for free but shadowing them is still costly. Metro 2033 runs amazingly good though.
The performance cost for multiple dynamic lights is there in Morrowind and Oblivion already because they both use multiple dynamic light sources. It is a matter of optimization and turning this cost to advantage with adding Thief style gameplay mechanics and destruction.
The games doing realtime GI are doing it fast. Or they couldn't do it in the first place.
