Perhaps we could turn this into a thread where we can talk about little details that one should try to apply in mapping to make levels look better. For now, I thought we could talk about lighting in games and custom maps we've seen.

I've noticed some things that are really irritating about how lighting is implemented. First off, if a light source seems blindingly bright when you look at it, then one might expect that the light source is casting light on object in your area (eg. your eyes). I have noticed in some maps and visual makeover mods, such as FakeFactory HL2 mod, that a light can be blindingly bright and still manage to not cast any light as far away as you are, leaving you blind in a dark corner. It just doesn't make sense. if you can see a light, then it shines on things in your area. If you are blinded by a light, then it shines very brightly on things in your area. Some tips I came up with are try make bright light sources sunken into the wall/ceiling a little bit. Not only does it make for cool shadows, but it also helps to enforce the believability of the light source visual as the actual light caster by making it really bright only when you're in the field of intense lighting, but not too bright from farther away.

Another one is the excessive use of bloom or specularity. I'm lumping the two terms together since it is my understanding that they are fundamentally the same thing. Basically, it makes objects appear to be brightly lit by making a little glow around it. Look around in real life. Do dim neon lights do that to your eyes? No. Now, high beam lights on a car would. USING SPECULARITY AND BLOOM ON MOST ILLUMINATED OBJECTS IS LIKE TYPING IN ALL CAPS. It should be used only on abnormally bright surfaces. Bloom/specularity should be used as an extra flare or cherry on top for some cases where lighting is abnormally bright compared to the surroundings and majority of lighting situations in the level. Aside from that, don't go so crazy that the bloom takes up your entire screen unless you have a really really good reason for it.

Lastly, sudden transitions from really bright to really dark breaks any believability for me. Why? Why is it that if you turn on the hall light just outside your room in the middle of the night, you can still see (dimly) all around the inside of the room? Light bounces. A quick fix is to add low intensity light that casts no shadows to dimly light up dark corners.

That's all I have for now. Thoughts, comments, wanna add anything?

agreed about large amounts of Bloom (specularity is diffirent).. And blinding lights with no actual lighting really suck! But making true to life lightning in games is still something of a challenge. It would be helluva slow to allow light to bounce

I will say Crysis did a very good job at the whole lighting system that got implemented. Maybe that lighting system is why the game runs so damn slow for some computers?

I'm definately gonna agree with OCAdam. Crysis did an excellent job with the lighting. Now, compare that to something like Quake 4 or Doom 3. It was neat that they were kinda pioneers in large scale applications of dynamic shadows, but it really broke the immersion becasue dark equals black. This really stood out in the Quake 3 demo, where there is a dark room that is lit up by only a flourescent tube light, which you can shoot to make it swing about and cast moving shadows. However, everywhere the light did not hit was completely black. If the developers added a very dim light that did not cast any shadows, then you would still be able to cast shadows from a bright light in an otherwise dark room, but there would still be a bit more realism because the light would illuminate more than just what it was directly shining on.

Here's a thought for a quick and cheap way for generic light bounce to avoid completely dark corners. Make all surfaces have a aim ambient glow, except select surfaces that you really want to be completely dark unless a light shines on it. Is there a way to do that in the UT04 or UT3 editor? I looked, but never found a way to give all surfaces in a level an ambient glow, only selected meshes.

Oh, and about the performance in Crysis, I hear that the shader quality is a big factor, aside from the fact that there are a zillion polys on a character and the texture resolution approaches infinity.

for UT2004, in the world or zone properties, there is an option called something "ZoneBrightness" or "AmbientBrightness".. that should do it..

Doom3 engine is also 3+ years older than Cryisis

But look at the way things are going.. everything is about the latest rendering features, and less about how it plays.. occasionally a game comes along which plays well though, but they are getting fewer

It just so happens that Crysis did both great in advancing the graphics department along WITH having some really fun gameplay.

Agreed, I had lots of fun with it. Though I could have done without the journey inside that mothership.

Doom 3/Quake 4's lighting is, as far as I know, intentional. Radiosity has existed in computing since the 1980s, I think HalfLife 2 was one of the first to use it in realtime 3D rendering.

Doom 3 wanted to create that scary look with darkness. Darkness does not get created when everything can be seen. Realism and atmosphere do not always shake hands. Quake 4 was this way for more or less the same reason, they are both dark games with dark atmospheres.