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I played the free (if you own HL2) downloadable level for HL2 today. It’s called Lost Coast. It really isn’t much, very short. It was created mainly to demo a new feature called HDR or High Dynamic Range. It’s very impressive in my opinion. It is a technique used before in the film industry for color correction and computer animation rendering. With the power of today’s computers, it is finally being introduced in real time gaming. What it is, is basically a new lighting technique which replaces the conventional “fake” lighting placed in various rooms and scenes in the game. For example, in an outdoor stage, the entire world will be lighted by some kind of global illumination, when you walk into a house, the lighting will be darker, so the house has its own dimmer light. With HDR, it is possible to have just one light source that lights everything, even when you enter the cave. All the materials give off some kind of lightability, so the house will be lit by the same source as well as it pours through windows and doors and will automatically adjust. Also entering from dark to light will give you overexposure as well, just as how your eyes adjust in real life. You can see examples from the game and a better explanation here.
I understand the Day of Defeat: Source mod for HL2 is also using this HDR technology. And many of the next gen consoles can use this as it has been seen in Resident Evil 5. It will surely provide a more realistic experience in gaming.