Hey guys, if you answer, thanks for your time.
I’m currently involved in the development of a Per Pixel engine based on Quake 2 code, although by looking at it you would think its more to do with Doom 3 than Quake 2. In fact, its pretty much Doom 3 code wise, with an expanded material system. I told you this because I have a question and that may give you a little fore sight into what were doing.
A feature of our engine is terrain, and while its certainly no mega gen, we do like the fact we have models using vertex blending and it looks fantastic. For us anyway 
These terrain models are huge, sometimes taking 15mins + to walk from one side of the map to the other, and with a small, tiny amount of polies too (Sometimes under 4k, with fantastic detail still).
Of course, ET:QW is one of our “Its gotta look like that” go to games which we are aiming for, and while we do get that level of quality most of the time, one thing constantly jumps up and bites us in the backside. Foliage lighting. Of course, we are using noShadows and noSelfShadow on our polygons simply because most of the time they are planes and would look wrong casting shadows (Plus it would be slow as hell).
So, my questions are:
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I notice you have shadows for trees, are these simple inverted projection lights casts down?
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Is your foliage lit at “ALL”? As in will dynamic lighting in the level such as effects change the normals? What about shadowing, if a player walks over it and his shadow is cast upon the plane, will the foliage be in shadow?
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And lastly, is your terrain lit dynamically or does it take its lighting information from pre-computed data and update as needed?
Thanks in advance for your time, if you even answer these. Obviously I’ll mention your games looking damn fine and the only reason I’m asking these now is because I cant wait for the thing to ship already
o’dium - Lead Artist Team Blur
We have always been under the impressional that terrain was handled and lit just like any other surface, and if thats the case maybe it can be expanded upon, as its very strange to what most of us thought was going on.