Cinematic Effects in Source

Having explored the full range of these innovative new graphical features, it is time for the finale: a 3-minute "war movie" that Valve put together. It uses standard shipping shaders, textures, models, physics and player-driven animation. It was effectively filmed “on location” in the game Day of Defeat with no enhancement to the original assets. The only changes are these new Cinematic Effects.

The Day of Defeat Trailer:

Duration: 3m 24s
Resolution: 1280x720
Filesize: 204 MB
Codec: WMV9

Download Locations:

bit-tech.net Server #1 - removed due to high demand
FileShack mirror
NEW - FilePlanet mirror
NEW - Gamespot mirror

Update: bittorrent - ALL VIDEOS (~360mb)

In case you can't stretch to the full 204 MB download, here are some further screenshots. However, as we have already said, these effects really need to be seen in motion to be fully appreciated.

Conclusions

Opinion on these new cinematic effects is split. On the one hand, there is no doubting that they're pretty "cool" and in terms of making games more cinematic, they are definitely bringing movies and games closer together. However, there will be a significant number of hardcore gamers that will not welcome these changes, just as the resisted HDR. This vocal minority oppose any eye-candy that might get in the way of holding a competitive edge.

Take HDR Exposure Control, where the player is temporarily dazzled by the bright sunshine after exiting a building. Undoubtly a cool feature, but when you get head-shotted by an enemy player you can't see because you left your Oakleys on your desk, you quickly disable that feature under serious play conditions. (plus, they didn't have Oakleys in WWII - Ed).

Apply that theory to something like Day of Defeat and you get a similarly mixed reaction. It will greatly enhance in-game cinematics but its impact on live multiplayer will surely be limited. Think beyond that, however, and the potential should have a lot of people excited. For one, there is Half-Life 2: Aftermath and future Source-powered games that will surely take advantage of this technology. In a single-player environment, effects like Depth of Field can be employed in scripted scenes with great impact.

The other group of people who should be salivating over this is the growing Machinima community: people who use computer games to make short films, like the Halo-based Red vs Blue. The Source engine is already a favourite amongst PC machinimaniacs and with these extra effects, it is destined to become even more popular. We might even see it creep into areas like online comics like Concerned.

Valve are expected to introduce the Colour Correction and Film Grain effects in the next Steam update. Motion Blur and Depth of field will have to wait until hardware catches up, as current hardware is only capable of rendering each frame in the trailer in two seconds. That's right, two seconds per frame. Valve is hoping for Motion Blur and Depth of Field to be 2006 features rather than 2007 features, but we will have to wait and see how hardware develops over the next year or so.

After a number of "broken promises" recently, Valve decided not to give a specific date for this update, no doubt to avoid the rapid criticism should they miss that date by even a single day. Having said that, we can reveal that Half-Life 2: Aftermath is now set for a Q1 2006 release, aiming at February.