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"Half :ife 2 : The Lost Coast"

"One feature that we'll be adding to the Source engine in the coming months is high dynamic range lighting. To showcase this we've taken a part of the Highway 17 chapter of Half-Life 2 and worked it into a single level that incorporates HDR along with some new gameplay. We're calling this short level "The Lost Coast," and it will be made available free of charge to Half-Life 2 customers that meet a specific set of high end hardware requirements. We'll be publishing those requirements soon."

Good stuff. Can't wait. Have a small amount of dread regarding what "high end hardware requirements" entails..............

Well that demo uses pixel shader 2.0, so any card with pixel shader 2.0 or above will be able to run it. This is what that new level will be using. For ATI cards I think anything 9600 above, but for Nvidia it might well be 6800 and above because I don’t think the Nvidia cards had proper pixel shader 2.0.

poopots wrote:
> If you can run this
> [URL]http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/[/URL] I would say you
> will be able to play it with no problems.

Hardly, theres quite a big difference between a tech demo like that and the complex environments that HL2 has, not to mention the other aspects of the game eating up memory/cpu etc at the same time.

> Pandaemonium wrote:
> The autodetection of hardware requirements sounds a little dodgy. So
> what if your machine can't run it? Surely it's your choice if you
> want to down load it?

Actually, having read on a couploe of site's, Valve won't release this new episode if your PC doesn't match their specs.

If you can run this [URL]http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/[/URL] I would say you will be able to play it with no problems.

Pandaemonium wrote:
> The autodetection of hardware requirements sounds a little dodgy. So
> what if your machine can't run it? Surely it's your choice if you
> want to down load it?

I never trust those auto detect things, they always seem to select Crap graphics mode even though my system is more than up to the job of running at higher detail.

I also hope that Valve do allow free choice to us gamers as to whether we think our PC's are capable of running this new addition. It would seem odd for Valve not to, but then a year ago it would have seemed odd for Valve to force consumers to register Half Life 2 online before they got the chance to play so I suppose it could go either way.

Lipe wrote:
> How can you be dreading it if you've got a 6800GT?

The words alone are enough to send shivers down the spine. ;)

How can you be dreading it if you've got a 6800GT?

I will eat my boxer shorts if your card is not supported.

poopots wrote:
> 6800gt are those one percent,

Yeah. ;D

I’m not saying people with the 9800pro or better are in the top 1%, I was trying to say people with flagship cards such as the x800 and 6800gt are those one percent, ATI and Nvidia make most there money on the budget and midrange cards.