This is not a real fire extinguisher. This is one from Counter Strike 2, sat on an unassuming
wall on the new version of the Office map. It isn’t trying to wow- yet it’s wowed me,
because it’s one of the first times this game has looked good enough to pass as real.
Disclaimer: I’m not exactly a fire extinguisher expert. I wouldn’t know powder from foam if it
hit me in the face, and for years I thought you held this bit here and it
squirted out here. So even though I now know better, if panicked in a firey emergency,
I’d probably still revert to prior assumptions, so bear that in mind when watching this video.
But while I wouldn’t know what kind of water to use to extinguish an intel 13900k fire,
I DO have a passion for videogame graphics, which is probably more
applicable in this situation any way so THERE. The term ‘photo realistic’ has been thrown about
for decades to describe convincing videogame graphics- it was even used to describe the
original Source 1 version of Half Life 2. But they’re fairly safe with such claims because some
photos are RUBBISH. But what I like about this fire extinguisher example from Counter Strike 2
is that it’s far simpler than most graphics these days are, yet the result is still more realistic.
Even knowing that it’s fake, I have to really stop and analyse it to try and
figure out what distances it from reality. For a long time with videogame graphics,
you’d fault obvious things like its texture quality being too low and blobby, or its polygon
count being too low and ‘angular’. But then, once these aspects of videogames got good enough,
you’d start faulting its lighting, or the general ‘feel’ of the image for being off in some way.
Kind of like those early CGI-rendered movies. But here, they’ve got the lighting and general
feel of the image spot on! And so we have to return back to faulting stuff like the texture
quality and polygon count, but now to such a nitpicky level that we feel kind of silly
even trying to criticise these things. Oh look, this dial looks a BIT blocky,
and this white wall behind it has slightly blobby-looking imperfections. The scratches on
the fire extinguisher are a bit pixellated and some of the angle changes to this hose section
can be a bit abrupt. But we’re reduced to such anal nit-pickery (ew) because, let’s be honest,
it gets the rest of the image kind of right. The reflection sells it! But I’m also impressed with
these shadows, between the holder and the extinguisher itself. You just wouldn’t get
this sort of PRECISION in older games. Look, it even appears to REFLECT the holder on this bit
here! These sorts of minute details are usually reserved for pre-rendered, raytraced images.
Yet here it is, in a competitive game where everything’s designed for high fps. If anything,
it being in a game like this makes it all the more incredible that it looks THIS GOOD. Because it’s
not meant to look great: this game is designed for speed! For high framerates. Its polygon count is
intentionally low, the texture resolution, as low as they think they can get away with. This is an
instance where the artists have leaned heavily on clever lighting and shading effects to make
up for shortcomings elsewhere. It’s just that clever lighting and shading happens to be what
the new Source 2 graphics engine is all about. So how does it manage these tiny little details?
The self-shadowing on the fire extinguisher seems to show up even when ambient occlusion
is disabled, yet it’s still considered to be ambient occlusion but I’d presume it to
be some kind of pre-calculated lighting that’s baked into the model’s textures before-hand to
save on performance when you’re playing the game. And the apparent ‘reflection’ of the holder here
I don’t think actually is a reflection of it, and is instead some quirk of the roughness map,
where it thinks the fire extinguisher curves inwards and thus lights it darker than the area
above it. Although that’s wrong to do, it just happens to do a great job of imitating how the
reflection of the black holder would look, once bounced off the fire extinguisher itself! Woops.
But so what. Because the illusion works! So let’s break it apart.
Turning on wireframe shows that it’s got roughly… 2400 polygons. Counted it myself. And
this is quite a lot for a pointless model like this, but it’s only 4 times more than this old
Source 1 version had. And that looks TERRIBLE. So yeah, it could definitely have been higher
still- and there are graphical tricks that you can use like ‘tessellation’ which could have
been used to smooth these kinds of edges out more upon close inspection. But let me make it clear
that it doesn’t really matter for a game like CS2. So what if we set all game’s settings to lowest?
Is this enough to ruin the look of this fire extinguisher? Setting it all to lowest
settings changes just 2 things about this- and it isn’t to drop the polygon or texture quality,
as you’d expect! The first of the changes it does make is to the ‘Shader detail’, which when
set to ‘low’ instead of ‘high’, disables these high-quality reflections and swaps it out for
a generally reflective-looking sheen instead. Clearly, this is where the magic happens. And
when it’s no longer using these accurate and potentially bright-looking highlights from the
surrounding scenery, it stops ‘belonging’ where it is. And it isn’t just the fire-extinguisher:
that bare white wall looks even more bare without its glossy coating,
and the tile roof and plastic dividers may as well just be drawn on at low shader setting.
So I know that you don’t care about graphics, it’s only me, going on and on and on about a
fire extinguisher and you looking at me like ‘what are you talking about’, and I know that a lot of
you will just SCHLONG this whole game down to low settings and be done with it, but PLEASE,
I beg you… …use high shaders.
At this point I expect the biggest criticism people will have about this image is that
there’s no reflection of your ugly moosh in it, like anyone would want to see that. So yes,
this is one limitation with using cubemaps for reflections instead of raytracing, and is the
one way in which this image could be ‘improved’. The other difference that lower settings make is
to quarter the shadow resolution. Yet despite being less precise, it does little to ruin the
effect here, since the extinguisher’s shadow is so fuzzy in the first place. Which is thanks
to it being lit by such a large light, which causes shadows to look fuzzy and
low-resolution looking. Even in real-life. This one particular spot on this map looks
pretty awesome, no matter how potato your PC. But this fire extinguisher model isn’t exclusive
to this one location. There’s one just around the corner here, and despite it having a sign above
it to show everybody that this is where this beautiful fire extinguisher is, its lighting
doesn’t quite match as perfectly as the other one did, and in my opinion its reflections should
be darker due to it being next to where this dark-looking wall juts out. Valve please fix.
And this fire extinguisher model is found all over the Nuke map, accompanied by varying different
signs to inform you that yes, it is still a fire extinguisher. Yet none of these examples
look quite as perfect as it does on Office, just here. Up against a plain blank wall.
It seems the more you add, the more there is to give away that this is a picture of a videogame
that isn’t quite photo-realistic just yet. Which makes this simple, unassuming spot on
Office all the more special right now. And I can’t wait to witness more examples of this
simplicity punching well above its weight in the graphics department on other maps as well.
While it looks very convincing, it doesn’t behave as a fire extinguisher would. It can’t be shot
off the wall, nor can it be used, nor does it explode when shot, as it does in many other games-
even those with much more primitive graphics. But again. CS2 doesn’t require that, nor would it
necessarily benefit from that sort of interactive element. And for my last trick, I’m going to
show you what the same spot USED to look in the previous Counter-Strike game. Are you ready?...
Ew.