Uncharted 3 turns up the heat with procedural fire effects

Naughty Dog’s Arne Meyer has described how the esteemed developer is upping the visual ante for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, specifically with its inclusion of some swanky procedural fire effects.

This technically tricky feature allows fire to realistically eat away at the surrounding architecture, with Meyer stating that players could conceivably take a load off during gameplay and watch a structure (in this case the burning Chateau) slowly burn to a crisp.

“Essentially, we’re programming oxygen and then having the fire follow it around the environment,” explained Meyer, in a post on the EU PS Blog.

“It’s not just a static asset – the fire deteriorates the wood realistically and there are blowback effects, like you would expect. …You could sit down and watch the chateau burn around you, if you sit there long enough,” he added.

This affords not only some particularly impressive visual achievements – such as the corner of wallpaper curling up and igniting – but Drake can also take advantage of falling beams to utilize as a makeshift cover spot. Better hurry though – it’ll soon go up in smoke.

“Procedural fire is a pretty difficult technical challenge, especially on top of everything else you’re trying to get in the game, but it produces some brilliant effects, like the corners of the wallpaper starting to roll and then igniting, and then the embers flickering in the air.”

“You can see beams deteriorating as they burn, and you can even take cover behind them when they give way and fall to the floor,” explained Meyer. “Only for that cover to disappear when the beam has burned away completely.”

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is due out on November 1, exclusively on PlayStation 3.



Source: http://www.psu.com/Uncharted-3-turns-up-the-heat-with-procedural-fire-effects--a010613-p0.php

This sounds good. Cant wait for this game to be released.