every shot looks like something out of a 90's/ealy 2000's movie, the residential areas and the financial district in night time reminds me of the first Sam Raimi Spiderman movies or even Men in Black. I know its oddly specific but it really gives me a sense of nostalgia even tho ive never been to NY. the only thing that's missing are the crown vic yellow cabs/cops.
7:50 Nope. It's "baked lighting." Source Engine does this automatically. Essentially instead of raytracing the camera (which would be very slow, especially in Half-Life 2 from 2004), it does the raytracing simulation on a giant texture that is projected across the entire map. This is a way of performantly creating "global illumination" or that diffuse reflection you are seeing. The mapper might not have even known that the sign would do that.
I think what sells the realism of this map is the lack of texture tiling. Repeated texture patterns are one of the biggest giveaways that you're looking at a 3D rendered environment. The map artist here did an incredible job keeping texture tiling to a minimum and making just about every inch look unique. They also played to the strengths of Source's lighting and shading by having the map set during an overcast day and night. Without the harsh light from the sun, every surface can be lit evenly from nearly all directions, and you can use ambient occlusion to add soft, ambiguous shadows where needed.
Not exactly. Its because all of those textures are almost un-edited raw photos Thats the way how people used to make textures in 2000's video games and i still think that this way is the most unique and cool one Raw photos can be tiled to, but they have the "realistic" details because they are... actual photos instead of highly edited textures Textures can be made from raw photos too ofc (thats the way i work) but the amount of procedure being done to them makes em loose the "realistic" photo vibe
In my opinion it's just impressive how tricks like photorealistic textures and overcast weather let source engine almost keep up with modern-day videogame graphics after all these years
maybe i phrased that wrong, but for its time and still to this day, it was the best, and imo it still is the best because of its feel. no other engine replicates the feel the source engine has
To me this feels like a level concept that just works well within the limitations of the source engine. It's got a lot of geometric structures, baked lighting, it's overcast so the lack of crisp shadows isn't apparent, the textures chosen were all realistic, and the color and brightness of everything was made to be as consistent and realistic as possible, even though it's just simple textures with lighting. I think it's a showcase of how limitations can foster so much creativity, and how most game engines have not had their full potential reached. Technology has moved quickly enough that it's often not worth staying behind and squeezing every last drop out of something, unless you're Todd Howard.
1:39 I can actually date the time period of this map to the late 1990s, specifically 1998 or 1999. At 2:09, the electronic marquee on Times Square mentions the Y2K bug, which was a legitimate public fear at that time: "Y2K bug will turn machine against man! Is the world really going to explode?"
joining server for souple minutes to randomly shoot people is indeed wasting time, unlike dedicating your entire life and money into a server that noone cares about
Why does it matter? If you enjoy doing something that's harmless who cares how old it is. Just because it isn't as popular anymore or it's old doesn't mean you can't do it. Messing with people who get easily pissed off is fun, no matter how far into the future we go it will always be. This is like saying it's crazy a lot of people even play older games like the nes for fun despite our high advancements in gaming
@@fartman9223 "you do the not popular thing, you invalid for that" Nice logic. Like having fun was ever about being popular or useful. You really had to put smn down to defend smn else
"Drink More" was lifted from a Matrix x Powerade promo that did when the second matrix movie released. It had an exclusive flavor that I REALLY liked, which is why I remember that artwork.
I usually roll my eyes when people talk about "liminal spaces" in games. But hot-damn, the signage looking correct at first glance, but being wrong when you actually look at it, is **exactly** the sorta thing that happens in dreams.
I'm from the city, born in the early 2000s so I got to catch the tail end of the city looking like this, found this map a few months back and spent hours just admiring it the same way you did, it's my favorite map by far. Insane how well it captures how it felt.
7:50 I'm pretty sure all they did was place some lights in front of the sign to actually emit light. Doing it how you described seems unnecessarily complicated. Either way, this is easily the most impressive map I've seen in the Source engine. It manages to look almost photorealistic while using old techniques, like using photoscans of real buildings as textures. It's obviously not very convincing up-close, but as you said, a distant screenshot at a lower-res will have you questioning whether if it's from a game or not. And it helps that it has an overcast setting, meaning that the Source engine's blurry shadows actually fit quite nicely.
@@Phoenixblow The way he was describing it implies that the map creator manually drew the lighting detail into the texture, knowing it would be in front of a glowing sign. Baking light would be placing lights in the actual map, and having their illumination baked into a lightmap, which is most likely what the creator did.
I like watching Garry's Mod map videos, and this video of this 17 year old map is beautiful. The map really stands out, and gives you the feeling of actually being there. Thank you, and take care.
Source engine uses Raytracing for its lighting, its just pre-baked when the map is created, so its not realtime. the blue you see from that sign isn't a texture, its actual blue lighting from the sign.
That was pretty much standard for a lot of game engines around that time to use baked lighting. The most recent example of a game that heavily relies on baked lighting is TLOU2
My friends and I love this map. It has a lot of space to mess around, lots of interiors to furnish, and for a map of its size, it is really well optimized.
this is the literal example that you can achieve "photorealism" with high level of detail in the models and textures on their own without the ray tracing lighting. Making a realistic composition also means having realistic roads that lead somewhere, buildings that you can see all the way to the back and a good skyline. If we could combine this super detailed map with ray tracing or path tracing (which is the other half of photorealism) we could have the perfect game.
I love detailed maps like this! Have you ever seen gm_adventurers? It's another very detailed map based on a building in Disney that was torn down around the time the map was released, immortalizing the place into a map one can visit anytime.
It's mostly because of overcast lighting. It's easy to do and it looks most realistic. You may notice this a lot in some videos which showcase graphic mods. This, or rainy night. Because sunny weather with a lot of green can look cartoony, and overcast is a cheap and lazy (but very effective!) way to make the image look realistic.
It really is interesting just how much realism can be achieved simply by replicating an actual environment. No changes to the shaders or rendering pipeline, just the right elements in the right place makes ALL the difference!
This is one of the best maps for Garry's Mod ‒ this 18(!) years old game is still as awesome and special as it was ‒, that creator is a legend. This map is kinda resource intensive, New York area for sure, but the map layout is fictive, of course. The vibe is so damn good on this map... Ahh... 😏
Really like how the mapper used photo textures instead of the default painted hl2 ones, combined with the simple geometry and toned down lighting it kinda gives off goldsrc vibes. Kinda a shame they didnt add more depth to the buildings, but its understandable cause of hammers brush limit
hope there's a team of people who will work together to recreate this map but bigger and higher quality. This looks very good but it's just missing a few people and cars and you got yourself a nice game.
A very nice map ive also downloaded it from the workshop. It looks really good for a pretty old game. If you really want to explore the map, you better use a car or some other vehicle. Its just fun to drive around and explore everything.
I love the small Y2K-era easter egg in the map, where if you head to the car showroom, you get to hear Romulus 3 from NFS 2/3, as well as one of the cover cars of NFS 3 (a Lamborghini Countach) spinning on the podium.
This map just goes to show how realistic and wonderful games can look when the map designers pay a lot of attention to lighting and shading details. I also believe that a lot of photogrammetry or at least photography, as well as reference pictures were used in this. Dice could learn a thing or two from this.
I mean, a lot of maps in gmod already have the liminal feeling to it, but seeing a place that is the very _definition_ of bustling with activity, _not_ doing so, is just so unsettling
actually really well made map. like just blur your eyes a lil bit and it looks like a photo. helps that they lit this with a generally cloudy day to diffuse most of the sky lighting.
GMOD is proof that enough micro contrast on textures either from fake shadows or rust and dirt, you can make a game look realistic regardless of its lighting system. Fake the little static details. Make the big ones real.
I just wish they were a few NPCs and cars to make it really come alive. The attention to detail is fantastic. I'm probably in the minority on that one.
![GEEK TIMË [OFFICIAL AUDIO]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ry-6RvkH880/mqdefault.jpg)
every shot looks like something out of a 90's/ealy 2000's movie, the residential areas and the financial district in night time reminds me of the first Sam Raimi Spiderman movies or even Men in Black. I know its oddly specific but it really gives me a sense of nostalgia even tho ive never been to NY. the only thing that's missing are the crown vic yellow cabs/cops.
this comment was how I felt when I first looked at this map. glad others are able to see it too!
There’s even a news ticker talking about Y2K lol
Looks kinda like a movie studio backlot
I wanna go back.
RUclips cannot hide the truth forever. Don’t forget your world never left.
7:50 Nope. It's "baked lighting." Source Engine does this automatically. Essentially instead of raytracing the camera (which would be very slow, especially in Half-Life 2 from 2004), it does the raytracing simulation on a giant texture that is projected across the entire map. This is a way of performantly creating "global illumination" or that diffuse reflection you are seeing. The mapper might not have even known that the sign would do that.
The mapper would have had to place a point light in front of the sign, with the appropriate settings.
@@sharp14x No because it's an emissive material.
@@macksnotcoolI used to create and tinker around in source maps in the hammer editor. Spot on with everything you said.
🤓☝
@@Wookie_27 I thank God that my average day is not as useless as your entire life.
I think what sells the realism of this map is the lack of texture tiling. Repeated texture patterns are one of the biggest giveaways that you're looking at a 3D rendered environment. The map artist here did an incredible job keeping texture tiling to a minimum and making just about every inch look unique. They also played to the strengths of Source's lighting and shading by having the map set during an overcast day and night. Without the harsh light from the sun, every surface can be lit evenly from nearly all directions, and you can use ambient occlusion to add soft, ambiguous shadows where needed.
yeah this is pretty much it. the texturework in this environment is stunningly good
I've always felt that something was off when looking at otherwise realistic 3D environments and this comment answers why. That makes a lot of sense.
Not exactly. Its because all of those textures are almost un-edited raw photos
Thats the way how people used to make textures in 2000's video games and i still think that this way is the most unique and cool one
Raw photos can be tiled to, but they have the "realistic" details because they are... actual photos instead of highly edited textures
Textures can be made from raw photos too ofc (thats the way i work) but the amount of procedure being done to them makes em loose the "realistic" photo vibe
Looks like the max Payne Map
@@KidTonyGaming you're right! Max Payne is cool, it was the exact way it was textured
This will be gmod in 2014
Truely
2012* we are advancing faster than we know
nintendo HIRE this man
@@JustLostTheGame fuck nintendo, they destroyed our freedom.
i have to admit, the source engine to this day one of the BEST engines to simulate the overcast look of a cloudy sky.
Hardly agree to that, source engine does have the most craziest unprefect texture and moody world
lil bro is living under the rock for 15 years
By 2010 standards sure? There’s plenty of games with better lighting than this today, it’s just the realistic textures that are tricking your brain.
In my opinion it's just impressive how tricks like photorealistic textures and overcast weather let source engine almost keep up with modern-day videogame graphics after all these years
maybe i phrased that wrong, but for its time and still to this day, it was the best, and imo it still is the best because of its feel. no other engine replicates the feel the source engine has
To me this feels like a level concept that just works well within the limitations of the source engine. It's got a lot of geometric structures, baked lighting, it's overcast so the lack of crisp shadows isn't apparent, the textures chosen were all realistic, and the color and brightness of everything was made to be as consistent and realistic as possible, even though it's just simple textures with lighting.
I think it's a showcase of how limitations can foster so much creativity, and how most game engines have not had their full potential reached. Technology has moved quickly enough that it's often not worth staying behind and squeezing every last drop out of something, unless you're Todd Howard.
@aphasiagaming my comedic timing is impeccable
1:39
I can actually date the time period of this map to the late 1990s, specifically 1998 or 1999. At 2:09, the electronic marquee on Times Square mentions the Y2K bug, which was a legitimate public fear at that time: "Y2K bug will turn machine against man! Is the world really going to explode?"
The gun store has several images of guns made after 2001
@@shrekrab Well yeah, I mean. GMod came out in 2004 bruh. He's saying the map Takes Place in 1998.
@@HouseJambo ??? The map that takes places in 1998 predicted future guns is what you're saying.
@@shrekrab sure whatever, nobody cares.
@@HouseJambo can't tell if you're dumb or pretending
This makes me appreciate how faithful GTA IV's Liberty City map is to the actual New York
good point!
1:12 we’re in the 20’s and people are still wasting time trolling gmod servers. remarkable times we are in.
joining server for souple minutes to randomly shoot people is indeed wasting time, unlike dedicating your entire life and money into a server that noone cares about
Why does it matter? If you enjoy doing something that's harmless who cares how old it is. Just because it isn't as popular anymore or it's old doesn't mean you can't do it. Messing with people who get easily pissed off is fun, no matter how far into the future we go it will always be. This is like saying it's crazy a lot of people even play older games like the nes for fun despite our high advancements in gaming
@@fartman9223 "you do the not popular thing, you invalid for that" Nice logic. Like having fun was ever about being popular or useful. You really had to put smn down to defend smn else
The cleaver sign is genius
Chrissy would be proud
That cat won't stop looking at his fuckin- picture!
Not that it changes anything... But I can confirm he was sick for a while!
"Drink More" was lifted from a Matrix x Powerade promo that did when the second matrix movie released. It had an exclusive flavor that I REALLY liked, which is why I remember that artwork.
Yeah that's crazy they even got the matrix ads and the electronics shops in there lol don't see no bums though
That color correction is ON POINT
love that sopranos reference with the cleaver billboard
noticed that too, nice detail
I usually roll my eyes when people talk about "liminal spaces" in games. But hot-damn, the signage looking correct at first glance, but being wrong when you actually look at it, is **exactly** the sorta thing that happens in dreams.
I'm from the city, born in the early 2000s so I got to catch the tail end of the city looking like this, found this map a few months back and spent hours just admiring it the same way you did, it's my favorite map by far. Insane how well it captures how it felt.
7:50 I'm pretty sure all they did was place some lights in front of the sign to actually emit light. Doing it how you described seems unnecessarily complicated.
Either way, this is easily the most impressive map I've seen in the Source engine. It manages to look almost photorealistic while using old techniques, like using photoscans of real buildings as textures. It's obviously not very convincing up-close, but as you said, a distant screenshot at a lower-res will have you questioning whether if it's from a game or not.
And it helps that it has an overcast setting, meaning that the Source engine's blurry shadows actually fit quite nicely.
😂 no photoscans
@@RedDredDragon Maybe photoscan isn't the right word, but it definitely uses real images for many of the building textures.
TBF they did use that technique in Portal 1 with the little energy ball collectors
This is called baked light
@@Phoenixblow The way he was describing it implies that the map creator manually drew the lighting detail into the texture, knowing it would be in front of a glowing sign.
Baking light would be placing lights in the actual map, and having their illumination baked into a lightmap, which is most likely what the creator did.
Got this randomly suggested…what a little gem of a map.
That's some high quality mapping right der!
I like watching Garry's Mod map videos, and this video of this 17 year old map is beautiful. The map really stands out, and gives you the feeling of actually being there. Thank you, and take care.
this map was made like last year, it just takes place 17 years ago, not even really because the twins are there so a little longer back
as a new yorker this is nuts
it's hard to believe a 20 year old engine can still simulate realism this well..
Source engine uses Raytracing for its lighting, its just pre-baked when the map is created, so its not realtime.
the blue you see from that sign isn't a texture, its actual blue lighting from the sign.
That was pretty much standard for a lot of game engines around that time to use baked lighting. The most recent example of a game that heavily relies on baked lighting is TLOU2
My friends and I love this map. It has a lot of space to mess around, lots of interiors to furnish, and for a map of its size, it is really well optimized.
1:52 Cleaver, thats the movie of Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos
everyday we learn more and more about the limits of the source engine
Can't wait to see what people will do with source 2
I'm gonna be recreating some *certain* events with this map
this is the literal example that you can achieve "photorealism" with high level of detail in the models and textures on their own without the ray tracing lighting. Making a realistic composition also means having realistic roads that lead somewhere, buildings that you can see all the way to the back and a good skyline. If we could combine this super detailed map with ray tracing or path tracing (which is the other half of photorealism) we could have the perfect game.
Theres ray tracing on this it just isnt realtime
I love detailed maps like this! Have you ever seen gm_adventurers? It's another very detailed map based on a building in Disney that was torn down around the time the map was released, immortalizing the place into a map one can visit anytime.
It's mostly because of overcast lighting. It's easy to do and it looks most realistic. You may notice this a lot in some videos which showcase graphic mods. This, or rainy night. Because sunny weather with a lot of green can look cartoony, and overcast is a cheap and lazy (but very effective!) way to make the image look realistic.
Damn Garry’s Mod maps have come a long way. I used to play this when I was in high school back in 2009!!
It really is interesting just how much realism can be achieved simply by replicating an actual environment. No changes to the shaders or rendering pipeline, just the right elements in the right place makes ALL the difference!
DUDE! This is easily my favorite map. Def my go-to when I open up Gmod, and I still haven’t found everything yet!
This is one of the best maps for Garry's Mod ‒ this 18(!) years old game is still as awesome and special as it was ‒, that creator is a legend. This map is kinda resource intensive, New York area for sure, but the map layout is fictive, of course. The vibe is so damn good on this map... Ahh... 😏
Really like how the mapper used photo textures instead of the default painted hl2 ones, combined with the simple geometry and toned down lighting it kinda gives off goldsrc vibes. Kinda a shame they didnt add more depth to the buildings, but its understandable cause of hammers brush limit
this game is 18 years btw
1:08 the news ticker is talking about the millennium bug, so this is 1999
Loved the cleaver poster, assuming that’s a reference to certain movie in the sopranos
POV: "Reality can't be a simulation" mfs witnessing even the Gmod maps are getting more and more realistic over time
hope there's a team of people who will work together to recreate this map but bigger and higher quality. This looks very good but it's just missing a few people and cars and you got yourself a nice game.
A very nice map ive also downloaded it from the workshop. It looks really good for a pretty old game.
If you really want to explore the map, you better use a car or some other vehicle. Its just fun to drive around and explore everything.
This is like GTA 3's Liberty City, but with GTA 4's graphics.
I love the small Y2K-era easter egg in the map, where if you head to the car showroom, you get to hear Romulus 3 from NFS 2/3, as well as one of the cover cars of NFS 3 (a Lamborghini Countach) spinning on the podium.
Love the channel dude, keep it up!
Thank you so much
Wonders of baked lighting
Yeah, wait until the dude learns about normal map textures.
I love that huge maps like this are possible now, looks fantastic
Imagine how wild this could look if it were remade for Source 2 when S&Box comes out
This map wields the full power of source engines style
Proof you don't need all of this fancy lighting, materials, and raytracing. Just good ol' classic baked lighting and good textures like the old days.
For you it's nostalgia for me Max Payne 1 vibes 😂
This just explained to me how accurate GTA III’s map was
I think there's a mod that makes the graphics ULTRA realistic
Shi I gotta do it
What mod is it?
@@khorvair not sure it's been months since I last watched a realistic Gmod video with all the mods to make the game look realistic
If only this map was properly built with CSM support, all those realistic mods just add bloom and a whole lotta lens flares.
You can make the game much more beautiful just by activating the overlays of the game itself, you can make some cool combinations.
playing this using vr just wandering around would be amazing
Imagine teaching in the future, where you have to use Garry's Mod to experience the architecture of "old cities" of this era
This map just goes to show how realistic and wonderful games can look when the map designers pay a lot of attention to lighting and shading details.
I also believe that a lot of photogrammetry or at least photography, as well as reference pictures were used in this.
Dice could learn a thing or two from this.
I mean, a lot of maps in gmod already have the liminal feeling to it, but seeing a place that is the very _definition_ of bustling with activity, _not_ doing so, is just so unsettling
add a some crowd to this, some cars, sounds and little fog, and BAM.
this is actually insane, the sense of scale is so realistic
As someone who grew up in the north east in the 2000's this feels like a gloomy sunday were i would go to gamestop or something
Actual GM_BigCity.
The texture work really brings it to life and carries it.
This is not gm_bigcity
This was so random, but so good at the same time.
~refracting~ reflecting
baked lighting, every source map basically
The Night version of this map is like 10x better. Especially because of the reflections and lighting
Respect for not caring about having the highest graphics lol. Its annoying when someone would be mad for having 59 fps instead of 60 lmao
"graffiti is repulsive" is the worst take i've ever heard on an otherwise awesome video! keep it up :)
actually really well made map. like just blur your eyes a lil bit and it looks like a photo. helps that they lit this with a generally cloudy day to diffuse most of the sky lighting.
For some reason I get yakuza vibes even tho this is New York and Gary's mod
pretty dope and funny how he avoided copyright 100%......must be monitizing this thru servers lol
Say thanks to the algorithm you got a new subscriber!
“And my favorite-“ *sound of bones snapping* “Drink More”
Another way to tell it's based on how it used to look, beyond the twin towers, is the presence of benches.
Modern benches are barely chairs
Now i want more part of new York
imo, nothing beats southside in terms of asset usage. Every inch of that map looks like a real place, and it never looks janky.
That looks like the New York at about 2 in the morning if everyone left their doors unlocked.
With modern lighting this would still look pretty good.
Players always wanted a scalable game where AI would run NPCs within a realistic setting. I don't understand why game devs never understood it.
I really love playing this map :)
one of my favorite maps ever, it's a must download for me :)
If you see a 100 foot tall sailor made out of marshmallow climbing a building, wasn't me. I swear it.
Hats off, played alot of Gmod and its the best map Ive seen
would be a great map for L4d2
Now that most of the RAGE engine is open source, imagine how realistic it would look if the building were also fully modeled.
This is absolutely mind blowing!
this is my favourite map
Cannot wait to play this in VR!
If you go through the video progress bar with your mouse it kinda looks like google street view
perfect for DarkRP servers hosting 10 players
HA the Cleaver movie poster from The Sopranos right outside the subway station 😆
THIS is the perfect map for darkrp
This needs to be converted to GTA IV
its gotta be cuz of the lighting. thats what light looks like irl. irl has a lotta grey. "realistic" games tend to saturate everything too much
A lot of those business textures are taken from GTA 3 and The Warriors games. In which yeah, a lot of those were photographs of real places.
Now imagine that with better quality textures and with the unrecord mod, simply incredible.
9:29 If I was ten years old again, I will put a lot of zombies and other Half-Life enemies right there.
This looks really good
I always thought photorealism was much more better to replicate.
GMOD is proof that enough micro contrast on textures either from fake shadows or rust and dirt, you can make a game look realistic regardless of its lighting system. Fake the little static details. Make the big ones real.
Imagine this running in UE5 with traffics and ppl crusing around...
Takes me back to 2008
I just wish they were a few NPCs and cars to make it really come alive. The attention to detail is fantastic. I'm probably in the minority on that one.
imagine if we showed this guy the 1:1 multiverse map right after he posted this video
love this map