An instanced engine - why?

"The universe is too complex to be comprehended directly" - Steve McConnell.

Gallery:

Gallery

Notes:


  • A single Ubershader - No costly shader changes on the GPU. Distinctive and identifyable rendering style, ala Gears of War, Team Fortress 2.
  • What the Ubershader does
  • Deferred Rendering - Unlimited lights.
  • Alpha Coverage based translucency - No Alpha Sorting.
  • In game level editor - An Area is still 10x10 metres, and a Zone contains 4x4 Areas.
  • Hundreds of small point lights all drawn in a single batched call - Deferred rendering in conjunction with alpha coverage makes it possible to draw point lights 'into' the scene as 2D quads, once all the geometry has been rendered.
  • The alpha primitives do not need to be sorted, because all translucency is done either via alpha coverage, or additive alpha. Although alpha coverage does not produce as accurate results as alpha blending, it allows the engine to handle thousands of translucencies without slowing down. Accuracy can be improved by using larger buffers / multisampling.
  • GPU Particle systems - Literally thousands of CPU independant particles