Why no mirrors?

[me:ka]

I mean, there are, but you can't see your reflection in them. Is it some kind of technical limitation because the game uses a combination of cover-based and first person view? But considering that even the first Deus Ex had proper mirrors, and that came out 16 years ago, I find that hard to believe. Human revolution didn't have mirrors either, so that's pretty pretty strange. The game is very realistic looking, so the fact that there are no proper mirrors kinda sticks out.

[Vassago Rain]

Yes, it's a technical limitation. Also resource intensive. DX has super tiny textures all the way down to 16x16 pixels.

Mirrors aren't really used much in today's games, and if a game has reflections, it's typically used for more impressive things, like reflective water.

[me:ka]

Originally posted by Vassago Rain:

Yes, it's a technical limitation. Also resource intensive. DX has super tiny textures all the way down to 16x16 pixels.

Mirrors aren't really used much in today's games, and if a game has reflections, it's typically used for more impressive things, like reflective water.

Exactly what technical limitation is it then? Like I said, considering that mirrors already existed 16 years ago in games, it can't be a technical limitation. That it's resource intensive, that was one thing that developers also said 16 years ago.

[DarkMatter]

Everyone just does selfies in the future. Mirrors are obsolete. Yeah it's a pain when the power goes out, but every house is painted in solar paint so it only happens occasionally on very long nights either very far south or very far north.

Plus know one cares what they look like as they are covered in pollution and you can't see people at more than 1 metre in the distance because of smog. It will all clear up in 200 years though, if there are some areas of the forests, wetlands and oceans still alive.

[Vassago Rain]

Originally posted by me:ka:

Originally posted by Vassago Rain:

Yes, it's a technical limitation. Also resource intensive. DX has super tiny textures all the way down to 16x16 pixels.

Mirrors aren't really used much in today's games, and if a game has reflections, it's typically used for more impressive things, like reflective water.

Exactly what technical limitation is it then? Like I said, considering that mirrors already existed 16 years ago in games, it can't be a technical limitation. That it's resource intensive, that was one thing that developers also said 16 years ago.

Ancient games like Duke 3D were made on ancient engines powered by lots of smoke and clever effects. The Build engine used raycasting, which let them do mirrors super easily and super cheap, but because Build uses raycasting, if you're positioned between two mirrors, they'll keep casting back and forth forever, freezing the game. Just a fun little quirk.

Real, actual 3D titles all the way back to unreal use rasterisation. The mirrors in deus ex aren't actually mirrors, but a secondary view of an object typically projected onto dedicated geo as a sort of texture in itself. As long as textures are kept small, this is effective. Once textures get big, it gets really expensive to do this, and with games like half-life 2, when you see a mirror or a videoscreen with something going on, it's incredibly blurry, and in a very small window, because drawing two big textures twice...well.

A lot of modern game engines also have problems or limitations when it comes to rendering scenes more than once, meaning ancient features like picture-in-picture displays aren't always possible. Even such things as rear view mirrors can sometimes not be produced, and instead of having a PiP rear view mirror at the top, you'll have to press a dedicated button that switches your PoV to the rear of the car, rather than from behind the wheel.

This isn't to say that the effect can't be done well despite limitations. For instance, in crysis 3, it's not uncommon to be talking to an NPC, while you're shown a pretty high quality 'video' on lots of computer monitors, while you also have the same exact scene that's going on repeated on whatever scope you've got mounted on your gun, and there might be some HUD elements also rendered. Then again, crysis 3 was the king of hardware requirements for quite a while, because pretty effects are costly.

And that's as short of an explanation as I can give.

[duEprocEss]

This is a good explanation.

http://imgur.com/tJnnM

[Frosty]

Hey, I still can't read the fine print on the discarded papers around the city on High setttings, screw reflections if something has text I want to read it crystal clear! :O

Half-trolling attempt there, I have always been bothered that in some really great game visually you'll still see blurry text on papers & signs even on highest settings.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

It's a shame, but I can get why.