Ok, I'm talking out of my ass again, but:
Even in architechtural ray-traced images of buildings, the lighting very often looks totally shit and plastic. Everything is too "reflecting", can't describe it better. What is a porous wood or brick wall and should have ~the same brightness no matter what the light angle versus viewing angle against the surface normal, has this weird effect and looks like plastic. It is more easily pronounced on curved surfaces of constant color/texture where you can actually deduce that it's a lighting shift instead of texture brightness shift. In games you can see it when the brightness changes with moving -> it's a light effect, not an inherent texture effect.

http://www.infosprite.com/members/BlackDog/bdog_d3map_2.jpg

If I had doom 3, I would
know if this looked realistic or not, but
it really looks shiny to me now that it's static. Most natural rocks around my part of the world are not shiny, except in the way sand is - tiny facets reflecting at random places.

I don't know more about the technology and I have not played doom3 but it is definitely a problem often in 3d image generation and it needs probably some unrealistic hand-tinkering to solve currently. Just like milk is hard to simulate correctly because of sub-surface scattering so they must use some non-realistic trick to make it right... I think. This 3d scene based image generation is always an approximation of reality, and there are always problems and artifacts associated with the chosen methods and levels of approximation.

But to settle this all, couldn't someone make a d3 demo level with wood, bricks and/or rock tile castle wall and make phait (and me) believe the d3 engine would work :) (Does that mean just a fainter specular map for those textures?) 

Sorry I haven't followed it that closely but I think people are off the mark a bit with the continual accusations of these new engines looking "plasticky".

Firstly, if they look too shiny in any way, they tend to look "metallicy", the shinyness is a metal shinyness not a plastic shinyness.

Secondly, most of them don't overuse the feature as much as one thinks looking at screenshots. IMHO most of them look fine in the game - maybe Riddick overdoes it a bit.

Thirdly and most importantly, a lot of surfaces (APART from dry rough stone) in our world have a slight sheen to them, whether it's all out gloss or just a subtle satin. They almost all reflect light with a sheen. Go look at some Anish Kapoor sculptures (often coated with very very matt paint/dust) which don't reflect at all, and you'll see the difference. Thus, it's appropriate for engines to display most surfaces in game with some sort of sheen. Then, the surfaces that don't have any sheen stand out more as obviously being dirty/grimy etc. It's like the stuff floating on the water in UT2kX or HL2 - the contrast with the reflecting water makes the nature of that stuff (plants, crusty slime) more obvious. Sure in a really dingy and DRY dungeon, you wouldn't need any sheen, but other than that it has it's role to play. 

You are wise, and furry. 

why does Doom 3 NEED to be realistic? It has a solid art style that is obviously unrealistic in a number of ways. I thought it looked pretty cool. I also liked Wind Waker. 

I'll agree that specular highlights in D3 are rather unrealistic. They're undetailed and far too broad, which I think results in an impression of overshinyness since the highlight is contributing too much light over the entire surface. But I can't agree that they are too intense. I can see quite a few surfaces right from where I am sitting that have far more intense highlights than any surface in that screenie. 

Here are two screenshots of that area, one with r_skipspecular 1.

http://www.infosprite.com/members/BlackDog/d3_with_specular.jpg

http://www.infosprite.com/members/BlackDog/d3_without_specular.jpg

Draw your own conclusions. 

I'll take the extra FPS over the extra shininess any day of the week, thank you very much. 

The new star wars game using the doom3 tech:

http://image28.webshots.com/29/0/79/43/248407943JGjPHL_ph.jpg 

 

Talking about shininess... 

Buildings at least in this part of the
world are made of tiles or rough (don't know the word) wood planks which are that non-shiny stuff. Especially old wood painted with that red earth-paint. If you go up close you can see how the sun makes the wood porous.

Lower parts are of stone or concrete. Their shininess depends on the finish, but is 99% of the time non-shiny / very little shiny. There are a few polished rock houses. And most tombstones are such nowadays. But Quake doesn't use these polished materials much, at least not in my imagination. Although it uses metallics, which can have a lot of shininess, fine for me.

Also a lot of nature, like many tree species' trunks, sand, dry dirt or even dry old asphalt are all very porous and non-shiny.

It's not just rock.

Maybe someone's done scientific measurements of the shininess of materials. Hell, there must be a standardized unit for that. How could architechts and designers work otherwise? An architechture student told me once there was some "aging" software designed in some US university for 3d model rendering that would make the architechture renderings more realistic, add patina to copper etc... 

I hammered this scene with 6xAA 16xAF to take screenshots with lubbley smooth edges, which is why the difference (AA is a bandwidth hit on both screens, and turning off the specular maps is a bandwidth saving on one of them).

Running at normal settings there's no performance hit. 

Buildings at least in this part of the
world are made of tiles or rough (don't know the word) wood planks which are that non-shiny stuff.

....because you live in the 3rd world??

Well back in civilisation, what I said applies. But yes obviously there are non-shiny materials and they shouldn't look shiny in games. Ummm. 

My student apartment is actually built mostly of wood, although I don't live in the third world. It's a perfect legitimate organic building material, especially in a country with lots of forests (still left).

I should have made the point maybe like this to show what I think: mostly only new materials like aluminium, plastic, stainless steel or glass tend to be shiny, whereas quake uses mostly old castly-churchy materials (yeah there's the base part and some marble, but _mostly_, and that is at least to me, the real quakey part) like bricks, rock, wood, rusting iron, which are mostly not that reflecting. If you have a plastic mat in your apartment, live next to a glassy steel-beamy reflecting office building, it doesn't have much relevance to quake in my mind. 

oh my god this is like the most toatlly lame argument ever like is this shiny is this not shiny? like what if there was a shiny wood or a not shiny metal it could be like totally wicked either way and my friend eric totally has this shiny table thats made from wood and it is totally a lot more shiny than metal if you understand the words i am trying to say? 

You're so shiny down there.
<giggle> 

we know youre a smart fuck.

and yeah, i think specularity seems to get overused ( as in, specularity maps should receive a darken pass), but still, but every surface has some amount of shinyness. 

I just finished the game. It was WAY better than I expected it to be. I'd say it is rather underrated. :(
Of course it could have been better but it is a damn good FPS, that's sure. Dunno if you would like a longer review with critic and stuff. There is quite a lot that sucks, but why be so picky and not enjoy the rest.
I hated the ending though. Dammit, no satisfaction AT ALL. Fuck it.

So, are there any good custom SP levels yet? 

the weapon sounds were better than doom3 :x 

There are a couple, I don't have time to dig them up now but check out 3dgamersedge.com for one, and the doom3world final maps section for a pretty cool level by Efx.

Q4 was exactly what it said is was going to be, a sequel to Q2, I still like the singleplayer in it. :) 

Q4 was good. I like the Strogg :) 

I had more fun in Q4 than I did in HL2, D3 or FEAR. 

yeah it did seem to get better and better as you progressed, I remember loving the fully upgraded nailgun weapon, it just destroyed everything in its path :)

Favourite levels include the nexus (??) level, the stroggification facility, and a few others near the start I cant remember the names of :(

Its just a shame the vehicle sections blew so much stomach contents in comparison 

Q4 singleplayer is average. i liked Prey a lot more. 

had some breathtaking moments thanks to really 'interesting' level design, but I found the combat extremely weak throughout most of it. Later levels redressed this to some extent, but for the most part I think it suffered from 'Doom 3 Imp' syndrome. I haven't had the urge to replay it, and I usually forget it was even released.