Water Technology in Path of Exile

Really some beautiful work over the years.

this new water fx is exceptionnal. It really changes the way you are entering level 1. Congrats.

Bex's job:

Write shaders (X)
Pronounce Lycosidae (O)

"

The surface is actually rendered via a raytracing algorithm in screen space, which means that the water is actually flat, but looks 3d because of shader techniques similar to parallax occlusion mapping.

Except when it doesn't look 3D at all cause you actually play the game IN 3D.

I hate to be that guy, but in this case I feel it's justified.
This was a game I have played constantly since closed beta and spent far too much money on. One of my favorite games of all time.

I have not logged in once after I got to mapping when fall of oriath was released... Why?

This water update.
Yes the water is a nice improvement, if you play in 2D.... I do not.

One of the things that pulled me back to this game over and over again was the amazing 3D vision support. It was one of the greatest games you could play to showcase how criminally underrated the technology is. Ironically it was not even officially supported in this game, but somehow they just programmed every asset right in perfect 3d space, including all the spell particle effects somehow obviously accidentally resulting in perfect stereoscopic support.

It was a miniature world brought to life with real depth and amazing toyification which evoked the holographic chess board seen in Star Wars:A new hope. This one bit of technology elevating POE graphically well above it peers, it really allowed you to see the nuances of the art style and somehow made the oft maligned camera angle actually far superior than any proposed alternative.

And with this one update everything was ruined....

The water, although previously not amazing, at least sat in the right space in the world. Now appears to be tied to screen or hud depth, and it just totally ruins the experience. To the untrained eye it's probably unnoticeable but to someone who is used to playing this game in 3d even in 2d now you can see this pretty obviously. The sad thing is every single effect you have added in the new and subsequent updates still renders perfectly, except this water...

Please GGG, either fix the new water shader to be sitting at the correct world space instead of at screen depth or give us a toggle to use the old water. (hell call it Stereoscopic rendering mode if you have too.) I know you don't like the idea of toggles, but some of us actually like running your game on Max settings, and this new water is broken in 3D.

and yes I know you do not officially support 3dvision. But you really should, and ironically accidentally did for many years, and if any of your staff bothered to play the game in Stereo, I think you would also want too.

minimal effects please this game runs like ass on my system as is

performance over graphics please

Great! fantastic work on the waves. one of the most impactful changes in Poe for a while (for me) quite mesmerizing to look at.

777