Can We Please Talk About the Mirrors?

[SUPERN☢VA]

Fact: House Flipper 2 (HF2) is in essence a SIMULATOR; a game meant to portray realism in an immersive and entertaining manner.

Also fact: HF2 mirrors are totally destructive in-game of realism and immersion.

The mirrors in HF2 are obviously using Screen Space Reflections (SSR), because their surfaces are only capable of reflecting the things that are ON the screen, e.g., the things in front of your player "head cam" and thus within your view (or your "screen space").

This creates a very poor effect where when mirrors are looked directly into, since all the objects they WOULD normally reflect are, well... behind you. Meaning, they just go blank. This really, REALLY needs to be changed to use a "complementary" camera method or just about anything else.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFVav5zQP5c for examples what I'm talking about. Note the the SSR method in this video is EXACTLY how mirrors in HF2 behave, except that the devs have, shall we say, "cheated" a bit by adding a "mirror-LIKE" image overlay to the mirror surface when the SSR fails to provide any meaningful reflection (since it can't at most angles).

Frankly, I expect better from a sequel, and not a cheap one either.

[Meadow]

I don't know the technicalities behind this, but I agree that the mirrors in HF2 look horrible and that it is something the devs should really improve!!

[ggggggggggggggggggggggggg]

I agree, mirrors should reflect.

[Rilf Danielson]

Something is seriously wrong with the game's performance overall. Even on an i9 processor and AMD 7700 XT the game will randomly start chugging and then correct itself...even on the lowest graphic settings.

It's pretty pathetic they can't do real reflections...or reflections at all sometimes. But I wouldn't hold my breath on the issue getting fixed. Which is sad considering the potential this series had after the first game blew up. I haven't been impressed with the sequel, but I can't go back to the original since it doesn't offer anything above the second game either.

[ryleestatler]

On my graphics settings mirrors are just a gray blur. what I started doing was making a reflected copy of the room to give a similar effect. you need more space to do that though

[Waggy]

mirrors are some of the most difficult things to create in 3d software...

[ryleestatler]

Originally posted by Waggy:

mirrors are some of the most difficult things to create in 3d software...

HF1 did it pretty well

[Bastard Emperor]

Originally posted by Waggy:

mirrors are some of the most difficult things to create in 3d software...

They're seriously not, they're very easy to create, all it is is a 3d plane with a 100% reflective shader added to it. I could create one in 3ds max in 5 minutes.

The most valid reason I could see why mirrors in HF2 don't fully reflect is likely due to the performance impact they'd create in reflecting complex lighting solutions in combination with the variation of specular and glossiness levels of surrounding shaders. Either that or they don't want the player model to be seen.

[ryleestatler]

Originally posted by Bastard Emperor:

Originally posted by Waggy:

mirrors are some of the most difficult things to create in 3d software...

They're seriously not, they're very easy to create, all it is is a 3d plane with a 100% reflective shader added to it. I could create one in 3ds max in 5 minutes.

The most valid reason I could see why mirrors in HF2 don't fully reflect is likely due to the performance impact they'd create in reflecting complex lighting solutions in combination with the variation of specular and glossiness levels of surrounding shaders. Either that or they don't want the player model to be seen.

Fun fact, the player is headless, you can see them if you are in front of a camera and are looking at it. Here's a picture when I found that out:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3446322269