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Comment by codeflo | Hacker News Reader

The smoke effects are cool, but otherwise, it doesn't feel like the graphics are really that much better, just different. Flatter dynamic range (everything is bright now). Busier textures. Exactly the same pixely shadows (most visible in the screenshot "Back Plat"), which makes me think the engine hasn't been modernized that much.

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I think the big upgrades in Source 2 are around tooling. The Valve Hammer editor for CS:GO is a glorified Quake map editor. I think it can even still edit Quake maps.

> Flatter dynamic range (everything is bright now)

This change seems arbitrary. In CS3, they could reverse this change and make the case that they improved the atmosphere, and people will agree with it.

It seems very intentional to me, they mention "character read" as a goal for the relights on the website. IMO CS1.6 still has the best ability to quickly see an enemy than any of the other CS games (it's still way better than something like CoD). The flat lighting with less visual noise could really help bring this back.

CS:S with cl_minmodels was the best for this, and I'll forever miss this feature. :(

Consider the comparison images:

https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/apps/csgo/images/csgo...

(The former is CS2, the latter CSGO). In my office, with the sun streaming in through the double windows, with relatively low-gamma, lower-contrast old IPS monitors that don't suck but aren't 4k professional OLEDs, yeah, I absolutely want everything to be bright. It kills the horror-movie feel, where your eyes are at the edge of their abilities, squinting and peering into the foggy shadows for barely-perceptible hints of motion, but if you want to actually see what you're doing you want flattened dynamic range.

If you're not watching on an HDR monitor in a pitch-black home theater, you can't see anything in Batman (2022) or Game of Thrones, or any of the modern "realistic", "gritty," underexposed shows. It's definitely more artistically appealing in ideal conditions, but if you're not going to perfectly recreate the ideal viewing conditions (and crank up the gamma on your display to compensate a bit while you're at it), it's pointless.

I have the same complaint regarding dynamic range with regards to sound mixes, too. I understand that the real battlefield sends soldiers home with tinnitus because explosions are head-splittingly loud. I don't want that realism when I'm in-game, flashbangs should not be mixed in Counter-strike such that their own monitors and headsets/speakers physically incapacitate the players if they turn the volume up to be able to hear the radio commands. When listening to a movie, I usually just accept that I have to turn on subtitles (even though my hearing is fine) and will have to read the dialog if I don't want to wake up my kids with the house shaking when there's an on-screen explosion.

> When listening to a movie, I usually just accept that I have to turn on subtitles (even though my hearing is fine) and will have to read the dialog if I don't want to wake up my kids with the house shaking when there's an on-screen explosion.

Some audio receivers feature some kind of "baby's asleep" mode that boosts the center channel & vocal-range frequencies while suppressing everything else. Folks who don't want the real Theatrical Experience (which I think is actually most home viewers) probably ought to just leave that mode on all the time.

An alternative for systems without that feature is to just manually boost the center channel.

I believe the former is CS:GO and the latter is CS2.

> Consider the comparison images

To be honest, I strongly prefer the CS:GO image. It looks more interesting, with better contrast and a spookier feel to it. It even has details where the CS2 image doesn't, like the grating on the floor on the left side.

The CS:GO version reads more cinematic to me, while the CS2 seems cartoony/gamey even though they might have improved the geometry (I can't tell).

Counter Strike isn't trying to create a cinematic or spooky atmosphere. It is a multiplayer FPS first and foremost, and being able to quickly identify players is the most important priority of level designers. A lot of tweaks over the years have been done in the name of readability.

CS2 seems much better on this aspect than CS:GO.

To me it looks more cartoony. Like TF2. Back in the day, "better" graphics normally meant "more realistic". It seems like either we've given up on that for the time being, or tastes have changed.

Also to me the smoke looks weird. Maybe real smoke does behave that way, I don't know. But I don't get why it just hangs there like it's an inflated balloon. And I don't get why after moving the smoke with an explosion the smoke reappears magically in that spot.

It really seems like their smoke processing is just removing/re-adding cubes into the volumetric model, then using the shape of the cubes to draw "a cloud". It looks more like a marshmallow than a cloud of smoke, to me.

It doesn't seem like they model air movement, at all, and I don't see how to get realistic smoke without some concept of wind.

I felt like they kept the dynamic range, but now everything is 3 levels brighter and you have to deal with glare off surfaces.

Why bother with high quality shadows if everyone will just turn them off immediately?

If you turn off shadows in cs you're putting yourself at a significant disadvantage. Many games have been clinched on a shadow that was noticed.

Not turning off shadows, turning off high quality shadows

Why turn off shadows when you can actually see your own by looking at it? You would be at major disadvantage when playing competitive.

I think you might've misread the parent comment, as far as I can tell they meant turning high quality shadows off, e.g. switching shadow quality to low, not switching shadows off altogether.

Most players prefer the game to look good rather than min-maxing things that won’t affect their score anyway.

> Flatter dynamic range (everything is bright now).

I was about to write this.

I like the improvements, but I dislike that everything is brighter and with less contrast in the examples. The CS:GO environments look more characterful, almost like comparing The Matrix with a greenish tint to a hypothetical Matrix where everything was bright and clean.

I wish they could mix the improvements with the older lights/contrast.

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