Hey guys,
Im having a heck of a time trying to figure out how; if at all, to turn on per particle sorting?
Bellow is the example of my smoke in Crysis 2, and as you can see, the sorting happens once the player stops and only then sorts the next particles being spawned.
Is there any way to get the engine to sort the particles per frame and independently of each other?
Thanks!
~Jeff
Proper alpha depth without sorting… Hmm. I think I wished for that when I first heard of accumulation buffers.
It’s been a few decades and what do we have. Same problems all over again. 
That being said, if your source data is more than just color + alpha, you can do something pretty interesting already with current gen HW.
SamiV.
The Particles in Crysis 2 are able to apply a normal map to locally light themselves. This is whats happening here besides the diffuse + alpha. There is a very rough gradient normal map that is merely defining the spherical shape.
When the particles rotate they take on the suns light and a global illumination light area. Because of this though, when the sorting isnt correct or when its broken (like in the video above) it will look awful.
To be honest though, it will not be a “huge” problem since the transparency of the particles in the end will be much less and thus kind of hide the effect… Or so i hope 