Water Comparison

With both my planned implementations of water nearing completion it seemed appropriate to run some comparisons.

CPUWater was coded so that Decade could render a terrain with water on PCs which do not support the relevant OpenGL Extensions required for GPUWater. Decade will automatically detect which it can use.

The main surprise to come from running this comparison is non technical. After a few friends and programming peers viewed my comparison video (below) approximately 80% if them commented on how good CPUWater looked and that they thought it looked more realistic than GPUWater.

Scene Rendered with CPU Water

Scene Rendered with GPU Water

The main reason for this is because CPU water moves. Its height at each point varies depending on the tessellation of the mesh therefore it looks like waves lapping the shore. Since GPU water is comprised on only 1 quad and the waves are simulated using bump mapping the shore line is static.

Perhaps I should write a CPUGPUWater. The water will comprise of a tessellating mesh like CPU water, but it will be rendered using bump mapping like GPU water. This might achieve a nice result of having water which moves naturally however also appears to be highly tessellated despite its low poly count.