VDrift Graphical Upgrades

[joevenzon]

I'd like to have soft particles(spherical billboard), multiple lights and HDR rendering(no I don't mean bloom). => I'd like to have a decent deferred renderer.

VDrift already does HDR rendering (I don't mean bloom), but it uses a very simple tonemapping that's local to the pixel. It could definitely be improved. I was looking at implementing Wolfgang Engel's light pre-pass renderer. It allows for easier antialiasing than most other types of deferred renderers. See:
http://diaryofagraphicsprogrammer.blogsp...derer.html

What sort of other light types and sources do you think we need? For night time driving there are several, but I can't really think of anything to add for daytime driving, except maybe in tunnels.

I think a better material system is needed too. Right now there are a few parameters set in the texture, but they just aren't general enough to work for many surface types (as MirceaKitsune has found).

Right now we have things like SetSmoke(), SetSkybox(). What if I have an alternative particle/skybox implementation/shader. How do I integrate it into the scene graph?

If you look at my sky rendering integration in the bullet branch. It's an ugly hack right now. I still haven't figured out how to add it to the scene graph in a clean way.

The scene graph system needs a little bit of work, but it's a pretty good base. Here's how integrating something like your dynamic skybox would work:
* load your new shader in GRAPHICS_SDLGL::EnableShaders
* add a new shader type in the GRAPHICS_SDLGL::RENDER_INPUT_SCENE::SHADER_TYPE enum
* add a property to the DRAWABLE class if needed (we already flag skyboxes so you may not need to do anything for the case of your skybox code)
* make sure your DRAWABLE instance gets marked with the property you added (for skyboxes, this happens via the track's objects/list.txt file and the code in TRACK::OBJECTLOADER::ContinueObjectLoad)
* in GRAPHICS_SDLGL:rawScene call renderscene.SetShader(RENDER_INPUT_SCENE::MY_SHADER_TYPE, shadermap["my_shader_name"]);
* upload any per-frame parameters to the shader in GRAPHICS_SDLGL::RENDER_INPUT_SCENE::Render
* add code to GRAPHICS_SDLGL::RENDER_INPUT_SCENE::SelectAppropriateShader to enable your shader based on the DRAWABLE property you added

I want to fiddle with the code some to make it easier to manage shader types, render passes, and shader constants. Also, right now there are a lot of really huge function bodies that I'd like to simplify.