HDR in the latest stream was quite surprising. I didn't expect that level of graphics in the game and it's good to see such improvements. However, do you plan on adding normal and specular mapping? Not for units I suppose, they're designed to be flat and it could tremendously slow down the renderer when there are legions of them. Though different speculars on different panels would be sweeeeeet to emphasize materials and make them look more metal-like. But that aside, what about terrain and water? I guess this could improve their look a lot, especially moons and asteroids. Ice planets would benefit from it, too, and metal ones may get more detail without additional triangles. Are there any fundamental graphic changes planned at all like HDR?
Well, they are but it looks more like per-vertex lightning, not per-pixel (texel). Maybe I'm wrong, of course. In that case waiting the same for other types of terrain!
Terrain does have normal mapping, on high settings. Water looks like it has some sort of parallax effect. Most of the lighting just doesn't contribute enough directional information to highlight the normal mapping, and you won't see it unless the camera is up close.
Oh well, I didn't notice it then. I play on medium settings but tried uber once. Thanks for the response!
