Half Life 2 Bonus Level

[Alien Slayer]

Was reading in PCGamer the other day that Valve is making a HL2 bonus level (called Lost Coast) to show off new High Dynamic Range rendering on their Source engine. It will be available for free download to HL2 owners later on (this summer I think it was).
Found something on it at gamershell.
There is a small movie showing a piece of it. Not part of the level though I believe:
http://www.gamershell.com/download_8975.shtml

AS

[Twinnie]

I thought everyone already knew about this, I've known for ages and I don't even follow HL2.

They keep hyping it like it's gonna remake the game for like 4 months now. All these HL2 fanboys are getting really excited about it and then they're gonna complete it in 20 minutes.

[Louva-Deus]

They are always stealing the best ideas from Croteam

[Entroper]

I don't think Croteam can claim any credit for HDR lighting, as it's been around for some time now.

[Gimli]

Sands of time, I think.

[Nev]

The only game that has HDR so far is Far Cry, I think.

[Killerpain]

The only game that has HDR so far is Far Cry, I think.

Painkiller implemented it for BooH (the expansion pack). It works in the original game too. The new rendering features are also available in the patches (1.6.1 and later) so you don't need BooH. They also released a demo with a level from the original game (SP demo 3) that showcased the new rendering features but the bloom factor was kicked-up pretty high; they toned it down a bit before they released it proper.

[Nev]

I forgot about BooH

[Fiendian]

Well, I play BooH but I had to turn off all the new features because of lag.

[Grand Master Shinobi]

I got the article from pcgamer sent to me by a firend and i must say it looks really good. Part of the article said it would require a 3.2ghz level processor and a "high end" video card. Which is obvious to most gamers but this level is kinda catering to a niche market isnt it? i mean how many gamers actually do the whole moores law upgrade schedule? I try to and i have a 3.0ghz and a 6800GT but not every one is like me either. Im predicting much dissapointment among the gaming community with the lost coast level.

[Joben]

mmmm yeh. as a 'buget gamer' with a Radeon 9600, and a 2100+ the normal HL2 levels can get kinda chuggy as it is.

actualy reminds me of something i had been going to ask:
Whats the fastest proccessor supported by my motherboard? (A7N8X)

[Grand Master Shinobi]

http://usa.asus.com/prog/p_search.asp?kp=A7N8X&langs=09

[Woutsie]

Video looks great but it will look like crapety crapp on my pc :o

[Entroper]

If you want to see HDR lighting in action, Google "rthdribl" and download the demo. Tech Report used it for benchmarking a while back. It runs pretty smooth on my 6600 GT with 4xAA and 6-way DOF.

[LactosetheIntolerant]

thats a pretty nifty little demo, entroper. runs smooth as butter on my machine, until you start cranking up the AA. runs about 24fps on 16xAA

[Grand Master Shinobi]

is that the demo with the floating spheres in the cathedral? i think i remember seeing that a while ago when hdr first came out.