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I wrote another bloom effect algorithm with improved quality. It uses a cascaded algorithm like my old bloom algorithm.

Some months ago, someone found the bug that Cascaded Blur bloom effect (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4223.msg39283#msg39283) causes strange flashes on screen. On Sep 10, Gig reminded me of this bug and I fixed it now. The bug that caused strange flashes seemed to be fixed, but some small flickers remained — what we call "aliasing". I tried to remove the aliasing, but it turned out that the current Cascaded Blur algorithm is not capable of antialiasing. So I tried another approach, and finally wrote another bloom effect algorithm with much less aliasing.

Performance
Cascaded Blur 2 is slower than the original Cascaded Blur, but not as slow as the original OpenArena bloom algorithm (r_bloom_cascade=0). Tested on my Lenovo X121e (AMD E-300 1.3GHz with integrated Radeon HD 6310).

Variables

• r_bloom_cascade 0=original algorithm, 1=original Cascaded Blur, 2=Cascaded Blur 2
• r_bloom_cascade_blur shift distance of the intermediate image to approximate a gaussian kernel. Value higher than 0.5 does more harm than good. 0=no intermediate blur. 0.32 seems to be appropriate.
• r_bloom_cascade_intensity brightness of the bloom effect. Bloom buffer is likely to saturate when r_bloom_cascade_intensity is high.
• r_bloom_cascade_alpha amount of the wet(blurred) image
• r_bloom_cascade_dry amount of the dry(not blurred) image
• r_bloom_cascade2_lpf_level decides the quality of the input-stage antlialias filter. If the display resolution of your monitor is 2048x1536, the antialias filter would do sampling (2048/256)*(1536/256)=48 times, which is too much. r_bloom_cascade2_lpf_level limits the sampling count to r_bloom_cascade2_lpf_level^2 time(s). 
• r_bloom_cascade2_darken count of the darken filters used prior to the bloom algorithm.

These still need tuning.

note: Attached tr_bloom.c is combined with fromhell's bloom reflection effect (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4311.0) and the original Cascaded Blur bloom effect (with glitches fixed)

—
Sorry for my poor English skill (｡>﹏<) (and I'm so sleepy when writing this)

About bloom speed.... I just tried DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Timedemo]timedemo (http://([b) with demo088-test1 on a mid-end machine (with integrated Intel video), in windowed mode.
With bloom off: 70.1 fps
with original bloom on: 30.1 fps
with cascaded blur 1: 36.2 fps...
I can't try with cascaded bloom 2 until someone creates updated win32 binaries inlcuding it.   ;D

I tried timedemo on my Lenovo X121e (AMD E-300 1.3GHz with integrated Radeon HD 6310, Ubuntu, open source AMD driver).

• No bloom: 20.8 fps
• Original bloom: 13.5 fps
• Cascaded Blur: 14.3 fps
• Cascaded Blur 2 (Case 1): 13.0 fps
• Cascaded Blur 2 (Case 2): 13.3 fps
• Cascaded Blur 2 (Case 3): 13.7 fps

Test Cases:
Case 1: r_bloom_cascade2_lpf_level=2, r_bloom_cascade_blur=0.32
Case 2: r_bloom_cascade2_lpf_level=0, r_bloom_cascade_blur=0.32
Case 3: r_bloom_cascade2_lpf_level=0, r_bloom_cascade_blur=0

Test Case 1 works a little bit slower than the original bloom effect, but it looks even better than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's bloom effect.
In contrast, Test Case 3 works a little bit faster. This case involves some aliasing, but not as much as original Cascaded Blur.

I should really benchmark this on a FX5200, because the performance difference of the old bloom and cascaded is huge there.

I honestly had no idea this was included with the 8.8 version! Since the colors are dark on my Linux install, the maps looked a little washed out, and the frame rate takes a huge hit in more detailed areas because of my open source drivers. I'll have to try this on my Windows install later tonight and post the frame-rates, it might perform better on that, because I'm really liking how refreshing OA's lighting looks with this turned on. ^^