Working mirrors in video games ?? What kind of sorcery is this ? (GTA IV, 2008)
Working mirrors in video games ?? What kind of sorcery is this ? (GTA IV, 2008)
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Quake had a working mirror too
There were a few different ways I’ve heard it being done, but the one I recall is the game is rendering every thing twice, so there are two of the character there, for example.
There’s always been ways to render things like this without raytracing, but most developers didn’t bother putting them in because of the unnecessary hardware requirements
Mario 64 did this in 1996.
Yes I know how the mirror room worked but still Mario 64 did this in 1996.
The Sims 2 (2004) had good enough mirrors too.
God of War on the PS2 had this, I’m pretty sure Deus Ex did as well…*maybe* Resident Evil 1 (PS1) in a specific room in the mansion since all they were rocking pre-rendered backgrounds and had processing power to work with.
It’s never been some gargantuan feat, it’s just hardly ever worth it when working with limited hardware power.
As a trade-off for working mirrors you have to play in fr*nch though
Kiss psycho circus the nightmare child (2000) has a working mirror too. I was mindblown with this technology 20 years ago when playing because i don’t remember any other games back then (no internet)
Loved it in prey 2006 intro and doom 3
Is it just duplicated geometry and another character model or is it a different technique?
If I remember correctly Duke Nukem 3D got working mirrors in 1996
I tuink mafia 2 had some sort of working mirrors
Only a young person would say this.
Deus Ex, 1999
Meanwhile Star Citzen in 2025 . . .
# Duke Nukem 3D (1996)
https://preview.redd.it/bz6aqb8r564f1.png?width=2545&format=png&auto=webp&s=705616e6841c77eff8c59a0f4eaa0790ee4d0d46
That’s just rendering second time with planar reflection. Notice that when that technique is used, the mirror is always planar.
I imagine it being done as making a paralel line from the miror, setting a camera in the oposite side of the line and rendering it with a mask on the mirrors
Remember Mafia 3, those mirrors where pure nightmare fuel.
GTA VC has a complete reflected floor in Ocean View Motel
What till you hear about a game called Portal.
If you play deus ex human revolution with the developer commentary, they talk about how the engine they were working in couldn’t do anything with mirrors when all the previous games in the series could. To reference this they put a broken mirror in the protagonists room with a work order for a new one.
What kind of sorcery is this ?
is shit graphics sorcery.
Double rendering if I recall, it renders a the mirror like it’s a new room
Rec Room has working mirrors
magic of planar reflections 🙂
Hitman whit it’s heavy use of Planar Reflection is so amazing, and still runs amazing
This screenshot could be simply having the room recreated and player doubled? Or planar but the reflected player has weird shading…
Bro I literally did this mission like 2 hours ago, what are the odds
This is called planar reflections. In this case, an additional virtual camera is placed on the surface of the mirror, and its rendered image is applied as a texture. This technique works well only for isolated surfaces like mirrors and in contained rooms with simple geometry (which is why you can see functioning mirrors only in bathrooms or small enclosed spaces).
Since you have to fully render the scene once for each reflective surface, you can’t place them just anywhere. Otherwise, it would cause an explosive increase in rendering complexity (which is not the case for ray tracing). That’s why their use is always strictly limited.
This is the tradeoff for physically based materials.
You either have working mirrors, or physically based materials.
Until you start using ray tracing, better yet, path tracing.
Path tracing is the unifying theory of anything, you can theoretically render ANYTHING with path tracing
GTA IV was ahead of its time and my favourite GTA of them all.
The trick for mirrors is usually to place a camera and then play its feed on the “mirror”. Its not trying to do fancy reflections.
https://preview.redd.it/y0gn71efl64f1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=628230fbada2e2f70f0bc4c1f0bb197ef9328f33
William Shatner’s TekWar from 1995
Condemned had great mirrors, the game gave me a heart attack when I saw a crack head come out of a closet right behind me in the reflection
In duke nukem mirrors are implemented by duplicating the room behind the mirror. A duplicate Duke is also inserted into the mirrored room with his direction mirrored to that of the player.
dont google doom 3 mirror scene
Hitman: blood money (2006) had working mirrors iirc