Dynamic lighting in HTML5 - not what it seems

[ThirdOnion 4,898]

Like in the Flash client, there's an option to enable "dynamic lighting" in HTML5. Unlike Flash, however, there actually isn't any dynamic lighting in HTML5. In fact, all this setting does is add a sort of glow effect around supply boxes. From a distance, it looks somewhat convincing. But it's not an actual light - it's actually a sphere-like mesh with a hazy semi-transparent texture applied on it. You can see this very clearly in the below images, where the mesh passes through the level geometry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the camera gets close to these meshes, they fade out of view in order to hide the fact that the effect is just an illusion. In addition, there is no light emitted by flags or from shots. It even doesn't make a difference if dynamic shadows are on. Interestingly, the glow effect is present on CP points.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was too lazy to get screenshots from the Flash version, but if you load it up you'll see that there are proper lighting effects and not this glow / haze thing. While the HTML5 effects don't look bad, at least from a distance (they look much worse up close where you can literally see the vertices of the mesh), and are certainly much cheaper to render, they are certainly not dynamic lights. It seems that the HTML5 renderer does not have support for rendering them yet, which is fine, but then why is the setting called "dynamic lighting?" Perhaps it should be renamed?

N.B. Other graphical effects that Flash has but HTML5 lacks include fog, shadows on bushes, and soft edges on bushes.

 

 

[Maf 32,300]

9 minutes ago, ThirdOnion said:

It seems that the HTML5 renderer does not have support for rendering them yet, which is fine, but then why is the setting called "dynamic lighting?" Perhaps it should be renamed?

You said it yourself - it doesn't support it yet. An update is probably planned for the future, but is low on the priority list.

[Guest]

What’s worse is that they are insanely tacky in daytime maps.