Retro Game Engine Update 🔥 Exploring a Spatial Compression system in my game engine. Instead of changing object scale, the renderer subtly compresses distant depth in the vertex shader before projection. The goal is to make far-away spaces feel more scenic and theatrical, like a matte painting or miniature... set,while keeping nearby space physically grounded and navigable. Same exact scene with this on/off for comparison. What do you think?show more

Slay would it be possible to do the opposite? Making smaller world feel like they have more space in between them

100%, will have to try and record a video of that now lol

This looks in some way similar to the AI-slopped meme of a few seconds of walking that became very popular at one point. I know this one is real, though, good job.

Sorry if this is a dumb question 🤓 how does this method differ from using longer camera focal length? Looks great! Just trying to wrap my head around it since I do 3D but never work in game engines.

Not dumb at all. The main difference is the camera focal length would uniformly be applied to the entire scene. This method Im using is not uniform. So things near the camera are not getting the effect.

Oooh got it now! So it’s proportionate to distance - cool! I tried this one with actual mesh deformation which wasn’t friendly to my computer at all - this looks way better!

Oh this looks real nice. Glad to see your project is going in a good direction.

Thank you! 🍻

try integrating Panini projection, that should accomplish this more naturally

Ill consider it. I used that in unreal engine years ago before nDisplay. Dont think it would work for my needs but ill look into it, thanks!

This is what Red Dead Redemption 2 did for things in the far distance. Great work.

@Dustykkometso Did not know that, thats cool!

I feel like this would lead to bizarre visuals while turning.

I'd love to make something in this in the future! Will you be releasing it? I'm out of the loop on this so far.

Yes, I plan to share with others.

at first I dont get the idea.. after watching vodeos.. but your comment make it completely sense! How did you come up with this idea? Is there any games which used simlar effect ? btw, it reminds me the trick we used in stereography when we decouple depth cues and play with them

Yeah i was thinking of things id seen in animation, old arcade games, movies that used matte paintings, even a school play with the almost illustrated, overimposing set. I want an artistic crank to emphasize things in the distance. Very cool hearing about your experiences!

Very interesting.

Nice

This looks cool! How does turning look like?

Will record more video, but so far it holds up well as long as I fine tune the values.

this is so trippy, cool shit

I feel like my brain has to fight for a sense of scale there, just to be let down the the actual size of the thing when you eventually get there. Kinda like disneyland's castles and streets built to vanishing point scale, fascinating illusion, but only from the right spot.

Same FOV? How does it work?

Same FOV in both shots. It works by applying modifications before camera projection to compress the depth of far away things.

My mind is kinda blown; this looks great. In, say, a long hallway, or some scene with long straight lines toward the vanishing point, would there be a noticeable warping effect?

I shared another post inside a hallway with the effect inverted. Certainly a lot to explore/test here

But .. this is just changing the FOV with extra steps 💀

That looks kind of amazing. I love how it makes the space seems smaller, gives the buildings a better sense of scale next to the players perspective.

On looks more realistic to me

That’s a cool feature! It definitely accomplished the goal. I would like to see more running around to really get the feeling of it

this is awesome, very nice trick

It looks otherworldly with the feature on. Is the time between distances the same in gameplay? In this case to the door of the tower?

Yeahs nothing physically changes at all so you would reach the door in the same amount of time in both cases. Its just a way to change how things are perceived, but they maintain their original state.

Oh this is a nice trick!

That's very interesting. 👀 Would you mind showing this without the post processing effects, too? I'd love to see the effect on its own. Your post setup hides small details and Twitter's video compression adds noise on top of that.

I really like this. It feels like this is closer to what our eyes see, rather than what a camera sees.

brilliant! i like it! :)

What does this look like when rotating the camera?

Would it be the same as increased fov with decreased frame size?

idk. what would it look like if you did the oposite? make far away objects look even further away?

This looks awesome. Reminds of elden ring immediately. Can this be seen like a better alternative of very high FoV? Games on high fov look like more exaggerated version of the right video. Can you do high fov while maintaining similar look?

I love it. Seriously top tiers effect. may be needed in a lot of game as a mod 😅

It feels like mixing high FOV (close-up) with low FOV (far)

Looks really good! Such a nice idea. Could have used a prettier sample scene perhaps though to demonstrate "scenic" a bit better

Off topic but I did noticed you were able to get moving quickly with your engine! I’m curious of what your work flow is like?

This instantly made me think about Elden Ring.