I have to hand it to you developers. The water looks gorgeous. This new material is far more subtle than the prior version, now using transparency, camera angle and object distance beneath this new surface material to create the illusion of depth far, far better. The addition of sun dappled water on the shore and the variation of wave textures comes together really well. I just have to applaud you guys for the work on this.
Even the patches of seaweed look nice now!
I tried really hard to find faults with this new visual update, and there are faults; but I want to first stress that this really was really well done and that I absolutely do not want to detract from how great this is by what I’m going to point out next.
There are only two issues I’d like to point out.
The first is that this solution unfortunately does not work too well on shallow water, as the dependency on distance renders this type of water entirely transparent, you can barely tell there is water there at all. If we look at the Marshland map for example, although the middle is not meant to be a lake nor deep water, it is still deep enough for docks and ships, and should probably look deeper than a puddle.
Here is the thing. The water itself doesn’t look bad, if you let lighting help out. Here is a video where I have rotated the map as well as lowered the camera angle. Actually looks marshy, doesn’t it?
I’m not sure how you can go about solving this, and whatever solution is chosen, I do hope it does not influence the way the main material for water currently looks, as again, it is gorgeous.
The second issue is just that rivers still use the old appearance, which did not look out of place with the old visuals for water, but does now, and it could also do with the same change of visual style. I’m going to guess this is in the works and that you guys are aware of it.
That’s all. Thank you very much for hearing our feedback on this matter. And thank you for the continued development!