Also Lane, or anyone else that is interested, I have done a lot of research on water in gaming over the past few days to find out what it would take to bring UE4 up to date with competing engines. I was surprised to find that most of the heavy lifting has already been done. Being late to the ball would actually work in Epic’s favor in this case, if they simply used the published work of other companies as their foundation for a new water engine in UE.
The rest of the gaming industry starts with the work published by Jerry Tessendorf, “Simulating Ocean Water - UCSD Computer Graphics Lab” which anyone can download. The Tessendorf FFT (Fast Fourier Transforms) method is at the heart of all descent gaming ocean water today. And if you can understand those algorithms, then you are the right person to write UE water shaders!
IGN assigned their Singapore office to this water task, so I do not know how many resources were required. But I was amazed at how much of their work is available for public viewing. Check out this article: ://www.fxguide/featured/assassins-creed-iii-the-tech-behind-or-beneath-the-action/
If the Skunk Works were to design a gaming ocean engine, it would look like what was achieved in Black Flag, an “advanced and elegant design” that provides a fun, pleasing, realistic immersive experience. The waves act and look as they should. The water color recreates the changing colors as the ocean changes depth in the Caribbean. The foam and water splashes, cloud reflection, integrated Beaufort-scale, and especially the translucent emerald green colors that come out at the top of waves, well, amazing. IGN drops this into their engine and provides easy controls for the level developer to quickly make changes and optimizations as they wish. And the Ocean engine works well with the time of day, LOD, Weather Engine, it just works. Granted, their land based water is not so great, but that is why I think a full blown water engine needs to consider land water, ocean, and more attention to where to ocean and beach interaction.
The amazing thing is IGN openly talks about this and gives much of their solution away, as do all the other gaming companies. If someone with the right skills were assigned to this task, they could review what others have done and come up with a solution that is right for UE4. It is not like they need to start from scratch.
I know people on these forums are working on water solutions for UE, but they are not approaching it in the right way, using the solutions already achieved by other companies.
