More doom3 will rock, tho. 

Er, no? 

by bending, I mean the shadows should thicken at lower depths beneath the creature. Apparently the floor doesn't have a normal map. 

From what I understand a normal map will not bend a cast shadow as it doesn't have any real vertices to calculate light data on. To the shadow cast from whatever object, it appears as a single flat brush/plane and doesn't "bend" the shadow accordingly.

Of course I could be wrong. 

You're right.

Doesn't that feel good? 

It's OK pjw, you're not the only one that does that.

It's ruined most games I've played for years for me :( 

thanks Prod, and Maj. I guess we'll have to patiently wait for a generation of hardware that supports real time ray tracing to see realistic shadow falloff from dynamic moving objects.

Funny that it isn't so noticeable in game as it is here. 

I haven't gotten to the point where it's ruined games yet, but it's certainly distracting at times... 

Kill an alpaca today
http://www.phait-accompli.com/crap/ava/stupidal.gif 

I've no screens to show, and maybe it was only true of Doom 3's low detail settings, but did the shadows cast by objects obscuring the torch light often look as if they were floating to anyone else? This was particularly noticeable with railings. The shadows didn't seem to hit surfaces properly, it was more like they were cast against an invisble box at roughly the right distance and left to float.

Not exactly a major thing, but it kind of annoyed me anyway, given that all the lighting was supposedly unified or something. 

Hrm, can't say I did, they looked normal to me. Perhaps an optical illusion because of the strange angle? Try doing some pm_thirdperson action to see if it's really different. 

Nowt to do with ray-tracing... in fact the output of Doom3 is the same as what you'd get with a basic ray-tracer.

What's needed is the bumps to be actual geometry, or an uber clever displacement pertubation parallax tachyon texture based thingymibob to fake it. I'm sure some clever sod will do a mod for it... 

an uber clever displacement pertubation parallax tachyon texture based thingymibob

Jiggery-pokery is another useful phrase that I was introduced to recently. 

That screenshot seemed oddly bright... 

http://www.shadertech.com/contest/#reliefmapping

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=275568&whichpage=1&#170788 

did the shadows cast by objects obscuring the torch light often look as if they were floating to anyone else?

Yes.

When the game was first released, I spent several long evenings chatting over the counter with a guy who worked in a local shop about it. We talked at length about the games pros and cons, and id stuff in general.
He commented on the light/shadows and cited an example that was almost verbatim what you describe re: railings.
It didn't seem to bother him though; maybe your more experienced eye caught it with less scrutiny.

Jiggery-pokery is another useful phrase that I was introduced to recently.

But I believe you need a custom engine for that.
See also: thingumypurpose 

Did I miss something, or did we all miss this?

http://www.planetquake.com/fatty/

:( 

in case you have missed it, you might be interested in this _ Jacco Bikker has been on a bit of a roll these last few months: http://www.flipcode.com/cgi-bin/fcarticles.cgi?show=3&id=65091 

Review for "Cheyenne Mountain Complex" at my site.
[thanks Tronyn].

http://www.planetquake.com/underworld/index.html 

The Official Motto of Raven 

I think a week or so ago he was saying he was very close to getting done, right after his current map.

It'll be sad to lose you Fatty! Good luck on future endevours! 

Gamespot even had a whole category to which game had the worst use of bloom in 2004. Check it out.

http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/all/bestof2004/day3f_13.html 

I got a new comp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yeaaaaahh!!! After years sitting at my poor p-133 I have finally got a faster duron-1000 PC.

I'm soooooo happy!!!

I'll tell you more soon. 

congrats! 

Yeah, I just checked it out in the DarkPlaces beta, and it was a fun novelty at first, but after about ten minutes I just wanted to take Ranger's damn glasses off and give them a good clean...

Better than the old gl_glow effect though, which I guess it obsoletes now.