This is a whole story about how the liquids in the bottles ‘isn’t really there’ and how it’s not a ‘real physics simulation’ - all just completely ignoring that none of this is real.
There is a sense in which the bottles in half-life Alyx are ‘fake’ - that they sort of have a magic painting on the outside of them that makes them look like they’re full of liquid and that they’re transparent. But there’s also a sense in which the bottles are real and the world outside them is fake. And another sense in which it’s all just tricks to decide what pixels should be what color 90 times a second.
I want to see that shader. How is sloshing implemented? Is the volume of the bottle computed on every frame?
Clearly, there's some sort of a physics simulation going on there, preserving the volume, some momentum, and taking gravity into account. That the result is being rendered over the shader pipeline rather than the triangle one doesn't make it any more or less "real" than the rest of the game. It's a lie only if the entire game is a lie.
Is it really doing any sloshing though? Isn't it "just" using a plane as the surface of the liquid? And then adding a bunch of other effects, like bubbles, to give the impression of sloshing?
This is the perfect example of what I meant. So many great quotes in this about the tricks being stupid and also Math. Also the acknowledgment that it’s not about getting it right it’s about getting you to believe it.
Like, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XWxsJKpYYI
This is a whole story about how the liquids in the bottles ‘isn’t really there’ and how it’s not a ‘real physics simulation’ - all just completely ignoring that none of this is real.
There is a sense in which the bottles in half-life Alyx are ‘fake’ - that they sort of have a magic painting on the outside of them that makes them look like they’re full of liquid and that they’re transparent. But there’s also a sense in which the bottles are real and the world outside them is fake. And another sense in which it’s all just tricks to decide what pixels should be what color 90 times a second.