Feature: 'Using Vertex Texture Displacement for Realistic Water Rendering'

In today's first Gamasutra feature and an extract from GPU Gems 2, Kryachko looks at techniques developed for rendering realistic depictions of the ocean for the game Pacific Fighters, showing how vertex texturing can be used to increase realism. As he explains in his introduction: "Water surfaces are common in computer graphics, especially in games. They are a critical element that can significantly improve the level of realism in a scene. But depicting them realistically is a hard problem, because of the high visual complexity present in the motion of water surfaces, as well as in the way light interacts with water... Modern graphics hardware provides a number of useful features with DirectX Shader Model 3.0 that can be used to aid the rendering of water surfaces. This chapter will discuss how one of these features, vertex texturing, can be used to increase the realism of rendered water surfaces... In addition, we also use branching in order to improve the performance of our vertex programs." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including plenty more technical details (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).