Parents these days are keen to encourage their children to learn a second language: French lessons are a staple of the British education system; many American students learn Spanish, reflecting the growing cultural diversity around them; Mandarin Chinese is taught to Australian school kids at a younger and younger age each year in the belief it will be an indispensible tool for them when they grow up.

But one language alien to nearly everyone is 3D graphics geek-speak: very few people aspire to become fluent in this bizarre language, and those that do go and work for ATI or NVIDIA. I remember the good old days, when a polygon was a polygon, and a texture was a texture. These days, it's all about cubic environmental displacement bump mapping and volumetric lighting rendered through a unified shader architecture, and the like.

Well, I'm here to tell you that there's a new buzzword in town, and this one you're going to want to know about... Today we are exploring HDR lighting, and looking specifically at its implementation in the forthcoming Half Life 2 level, the Lost Coast.