Bloom lighting effects

Bloom lighting is used to give lighting a more realistic look, giving shiny halos of light to particularly bright objects, as is seen with most camera lenses. The effect was mentioned developer blog for RuneTek 5 as one of the additional graphical effects that will be possible in HD mode with the new engine. Note that bloom lighting does not work with all graphics hardware and drivers, and may fail to work in either OpenGL mode, DirectX mode, or both. When enabled in DirectX mode, if the player is not in fixed screen mode then Bloom will currently turn antialiasing off, regardless of the setting in the custom graphics options menu. However players may prefer this over the loss of water texture effects which are currently not supported in the OpenGL display mode.

Current uses
Bloom lighting was introduced as a graphics option on 28 November 2011. Here are examples of areas and objects where bloom lighting is currently in use:
 * Animations - The sparks that appear when smithing items on an anvil
 * Areas - The path west of Barbarian Village to Falador has bloom lighting, Barrows and Zanaris
 * Emotes - Breathe Fire, Firemaking cape, Attack cape, Magic cape, Prayer cape
 * Items - The orbs on lava battlestaves, Completionist cape, some Dungeoneering keys, some halos, and other items that use particle effects
 * Magic - Fire spells, Home Teleport and standard spellbook teleport spells (and anything that uses the same animation), Ice Spells, Earth spells, Claws of Guthix, High Level Alchemy, Lexicus Runewright's normal magic attack and the explosion from book barrage, Night-gazer Khighorahk's jump-ball attack, all of Shadow-Forger Ihlakhizan's attacks
 * Monsters - Aberrant spectres, Tormented demons, Rockslugs, Pyrefiends, the insides of tomes of Ranging, Magic and Strength, Har'Lakk the Riftsplitter,
 * Players and NPCs - Players who are viewing the world map, Light creatures, the flowers on the chests and hats of some Tool leprechauns
 * Portals - Castle wars, Player-owned House entrance portals and Portal Chambers, Pest Control, Kuradal's Dungeon energy barriers, Har'Lakk's portal attacks
 * Scenery - Fires and standing torches, Lava, Zanaris, Port Phasmatys, the four lamps in Gypsy Aris's tent, the falling particles of Magic trees, Dungeoneering furnaces, "overhead" lighting in the starting room on abandoned and furnished floors
 * Summoning - Calling a familiar, Summoning obelisks, the Bunyip and Unicorn stallion's healing effects, Lava Titans, fire titans, pyrelords, obsidian golems.

Simulated bloom effects
There are instances where particles are used to simulate bloom effect around specific points of light. The halos of light found in these are NOT bloom effect. They are particles, and they register in the particle count output, which is accessible through the developer console. Here are a few examples of areas and objects where bloom lighting is simulated using particles:
 * The 10th anniversary cake.
 * The spirits in the 2011 Easter event.
 * The pumpkins and candles in the 2010 Halloween event.
 * The trees and candles in the 2010 Christmas event.

Trivia

 * Zanaris was originally meant to be updated with bloom effect with Fairy Tale Part III on 13 May 2010, but technical difficulties had postponed the implementation of bloom lighting.
 * There have been numerous cases of turning bloom lighting on causes the game to crash upon entering a world. To resolve this, turn the bloom off and keep the settings to medium. In fact, most computers with inferior graphics cards cannot handle bloom and will crash the game instantly.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in the smoke dungeon spectres chamber, causing the screen to be covered in smoke and colours to be changed.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in the Paterdomus temple that causes almost everything to become black and white. This has not yet been fixed.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in the Sophanem bank, the entire area will become completely white except for the off-map areas which are black as normal.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in the Shilo Village Underground Gem Mine that causes the vast majority of the area to become black and white. This has not been fixed.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in the Dorgesh-Kaan - Keldagrim Train Station that causes almost everything to become black and white. This has not yet been fixed.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in Dreamland during the Lunar Diplomacy quest that causes almost everything to become black and white. This has not yet been fixed.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in the Chaos Tunnels that causes almost everything to become black and white. This has not been fixed.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in Rantz cave near Gu'Tanoth that causes almost everything to become black and white. This has not been fixed.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in the Water Ravine Dungeon from Spirits of the Elid in the Kharidian desert that causes almost everything to become black and white. This has not been fixed.
 * There is currently a glitch with bloom lighting in the final room of The Lair of Tarn Razorlor that causes almost everything to become black and white. This has not been fixed.