Dev News (Patreon)

Hey all! Since it's been a while since you heard from me, I wanted to let you know how things are going.

Though I'm always working on SEUS, progress with actual results tend come sporadically, and as SEUS PTGI gets more advanced, each update becomes more difficult to achieve. 

Though I said I felt ready to move on, I have done quite a bit more work with HRR ("Half Resolution Rendering", check out my last few posts to learn more). I suppose the promise if 2x performance at comparable image quality is truly seductive, yet equally high-maintenance! With a lot of work, I have made some progress, though I still feel a little torn about the feature. What do you guys think about me releasing a new HRR Test version with the improvements?

I've also still been working on the "resource pack based voxelization" and accompanying resource pack conversion tool. I'm in the process of rewriting it as a standalone application (instead of a script in Unity as it was when the project stared). I have opted for a C# WPF application, since that's what I was most comfortable with, and SEUS PTGI only works on Windows anyway. When it's done, I'll create a GitHub repository for it where the source code will be available (in order to fully disclose the functionality of the executable).

I've also identified a problem in the code that is responsible for conservation/distribution of energy for multi-bounce lighting that has been there since the beginning. Fixing the problem, resulted in vastly more accurate indirect lighting, particularly in closed/interior spaces with no additional rendering cost! So that's pretty cool!

I've also been working on 1.16 compatibility. The way that OptiFine renders particles has changed since 1.14. SEUS PTGI relies on the old functionality, so particles still don't render properly, but most other compatibility problems have been fixed.

I've also been toying around with changing the voxel data structure in hopes to allow for greater view distance for ray tracing (both for the maximum length of each ray and for the maximum distance from the player that voxel data exists to be traced through). No concrete progress there yet.

I want to thank all of you who have been so positive, encouraging, and supportive! At times it's easy for me to feel frustrated with my creative process, so your kind words really mean a lot to me!