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Dr. Beef's VR port of Jedi Outcast has the best implementation of the lightsaber effect I've seen. It's far better than the lightsaber effect in ILM's own Vader Immortal.

The lightsaber in Vader Immortal is clearly just cylinder that scales up and down (and gets extruded when you wave it) to mimic that pulsing effect with a billboard texture for the glow of the lightsaber. See a video of it in action here.

enter image description here

But I'm still trying to figure out how it's done in the VR port of Jedi Outcast. It's clearly more than just a billboard texture when you hold the lightsaber down and look at it from the hilt. Is it using an outline shader on the lightsaber blade geometry and applying the pulsating glow texture to the outline, or maybe using a bloom effect for the glow of the saber? Any ideas on how this effect is pulled off so I can do something similar in my game? Here's a video of it in action.

enter image description here

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    \$\begingroup\$ Users here generally can't answer "How did Game X achieve Y" — those details are usually only known to the devs who worked directly on that feature, who may be restricted from posting about their methods publicly by NDAs, or may simply not have the time or interest to browse StackExchange and post answers. You'll usually get better results by editing your question to ask "How can I achieve Y in my game". That opens the question up to answers that successfully replicate the same effect, even if we have no idea whether they're exactly the method "Game X" used. \$\endgroup\$
    – DMGregory ♦
    Apr 16 at 17:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ @DMGregory Noted, and edited \$\endgroup\$
    – OpenUserX03
    Apr 17 at 0:55

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As only the actual devs of the VR port of Jedi Outcast can say for sure, Here's my guess on how I'd attempt this same effect.

I think the bright part of the lightsaber is still a cylinder or capsule with a clever texture and animation. Now that bloom is a thing, pulsating the emission values can give a nice effect.

I think the blue glow is actually a string of blue particles that blend nicely together and flicker. I think the blend mode is something other than additive, so that the value's don't stack when viewing from different angles.

I Didn't know Jedi Outcast was ported to VR, I'm going to have to check it out myself one day!

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