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Prey Real Lights plus Ultra Graphics mod improves Parallax Occlusion Mapping, lighting, blood and more

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Our reader ‘jmx777’ has released a brand new version of his amazing Real Lights plus Ultra Graphics mod for Prey. According to the release notes, this new version adds tracking cameras sparks on emp grenades and Thypons interference, improves fire effects of pipe leaks, improves blood and lighting, and adds heat distortion effects to all the heat emitters.

Moreover, this latest version replaces Offset Bump Mapping with Parallax Occlusion Mapping on rocks floors, improves POM displacement effects on walls and floors whit tessellated sun shadows, adds POM displacement on floors and props, by brand new displacing maps, adds unused specular texture maps to several objects and brushes materials and tweaks water material to be more reflective and detailed.

In order to showcase some of these graphical changes, jmx777 released some comparison screenshots that you can find below. Version 1.0 of the mod is on the left, whereas Version 1.2 of the mod is on the right.

Those interested can download the mod from here, and below you can find its complete changelog.

  • Added tracking cameras sparks on emp grenades and Thypons interference, augmented reach of tracking, also they can be broken.
  • Now Operators react properly to environmental fire and produced fire, added burning effects. Also, they will evade the fire of a leaking pipe if they can.
  • Adjusted the material settings and shaders for many brushes and props:
    -Replace Offset Bump Mapping whit Parallax Occlusion Mapping on rocks floors
    -Greater unified detail mapping for vegetation and rocks.
    -More pronounced POM displacement effects on walls and floors whit tessellated sun shadows 
    -Adds POM displacement on floors and props, by brand new displacing maps. On future updates, I’ll keep adding new ones.
    -Adds unused specular texture maps to several objects and brushes materials.
    -Change of material shaders on arboretum greenhouse to make it a real glass structure. On vanilla having the Greenhouse not being transparent was used as a help to hide the pop-in of the vegetation inside.
    -Tweaked mirrors material to make it fully mirror-like. But note that they don’t reflect real-time due limitations on the engine.
    -Tweaked water material to be more reflective and detailed. Note that the game doesn’t use real water volumes, without an in-house editor further modification or implementation of water volumes is not possible atm-Changed plant boxes glass normal and gloss maps to a more detailed ones.
    -Adds unused SSS texture map for opacity to vegetation.
  • Replaced the Levels Save-Load images to new ones that correspond the real state of the modded in-game areas, all the new shoots were taken by Digital Frontiers.
  • Improved fire effects of pipe leaks.
  • Added heat distortion effects to all the heat emitters.
  • New gore effects on Humans and Thypons deaths.
  • Now the lights and electronic props also react to the stun gun.
  • Added more blood on weapons impacts on Humans.
  • Improved particle effects of powers cast by the player.
  • Prolonged the time of Thypon blood splatters on player’s camera.
  • Added effects for Humans npc blood splatters on camera.
  • Added interference effects for all sings.
  • More particles effects added to recycler recycling animation.
  • Tweaked how flashlight dims on different distances, now it maintains intensity constantly (the drain of power remains the same, the gameplay isn’t affected)
  • Added specific volumetric effects on arboretum greenhouse, Crew Quarters, Neuromod Div and Psychotronic levels.
  • Uses only high poly lod models of more rocks and special structures.
  • Changed space texture using the one that appears in old gameplay demos.
  • New Earth position and lighting, to be more on the line of moon-earth real life position in space, thanks Jlbiggs!
  • Improved impact effects of water
  • Augmented view distance for fog/cold/mist particle effects.
  • Improved destruction effects on lights.
  • Activated missing shadows on the medbay of life support level.
  • Adjusted intensity of some very bright and noisy volumetric effects on cargo bay level.
  • Adjusted intensity of the lamp post volumetric effects on Arboretum to be more subtle.
  • Adjusted several base game lighting inconsistencies across all the levels
  • Adjusted the pause menu to be fully clear, leaving a lighter effect when the options are selected.
  • Fixed mist particle effects not being rendered properly introduced by the last version of the mod.
  • Fixed flickering of volumetric effect near the exterior transition door at power source level.
  • Fixed persistent sparks effects on some turrets after being fully repaired.
  • Cleaned particles code gaining 3-7 fps depending on the scene and the number of particles being rendered.