[btbuildem]

It's interesting how hard this problem is. We've been trying for decades, and we're still in the uncanny valley with it.

If you freeze-frame this, the peaking waves look like snow-capped mountains. It feels unrealistic because for water to have features this sharp, it would have to be quite windy -- and the wind would never be blowing straight up. Here, the sharp features would need to be directional.

The simulation has the swell nature of the waves down pretty well though. There isn't as much horizontal movement, as more up-and-down, which is what you'd expect to see in open water.

[zamalek]

> uncanny valley

I've been playing Nightingale and, oh boy, is the ocean water something special there. To be clear, they don't tackle spray and such by keeping the waves calm, which has allowed them to focus on other things. Whatever it is they are doing to simulate light transmission is working. The light shining through the waves at sunrise or sunset looks great and really sells the effect for me.

It could maybe be accused of being a bit painterly, but it doesn't look wrong.

[btbuildem]

I checked out some gampleay videos -- they do a good job with the swell too, and I really like the way ambient light interacts with the water (daytime you can see in, nighttime you can not) -- but again, the water texture quality is a bit uncanny. It looks like they're just scrolling a bumpmap over a wavy surface, with the final effect of too much horizontal motion for the little surface ripples/wavelets. It makes it look like there's a current, more like a moving river than a ocean/lake body of water.

It's a stunning-looking game oveall, wow. I had no idea :)