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Did you ever think...[Graphics]
The Dude With Herpes
Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
So I was watching the videos for the Crysis 3 engine at Gamescom, seeing them all sync up on the PS3/360/PC and how amazing they all looked, then while watching this one:
http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/53682/PC/Crysis-2/Gameplay/Cevat-Yerli-CryEngine-3-Demonstration
It occurred to me:
I'm 29 and I've been playing video games for well over 20 years now. Ever since my stepdad brought home a Commodore 64 for some unknown reason (dude knows zero about technology, I doubt he even knew what it was) I've been playing. I've owned virtually every "major" system since then and have played a lot of games.
Well, growing up with videogames since virtually the beginning of video games I've had a somewhat neat experience of being able to watch the total evolution of graphics from pong to what we have today.
Honestly, when I was 7, there's no possible way I could have known that graphics would go from this:
to this:
Let alone in my lifetime, but ever; the fact that it has happened so fast is mind boggling to me. If you had shown me that when I was 7 and said "One day you will play a game that looks like this" it would have been the most ridiculous thing ever. Hell, I remember when I first played Myst, it blew my mind how good it looked. I didn't think it was possible. I was fully aware that it was mainly still images but it was still rendered on a computer.
I know people like to argue whether or not you need good graphics to make a game better or not, but that's not what the point of this is. Whether or not you need good graphics, the fact is that relative to everything that has come before, even games that look mediocre by today's standards are still amazing technological marvels in the big picture of video games. And there's no questioning that skilled use of graphics and atmosphere can have a mindboggling effect on how a game feels.
So I think it's pretty sweet where we are. Honestly I have no idea where we could even go from this point. But, I remember thinking that exact same thing when I played Mario 64; and look how far we've come since then.
So where are we going with graphics? What is the next step, because it's gonna get pretty damn hard to get more realistic. What are some of your all-time greatest memories of games and their graphics growing up?
Just as some ground rules: Don't turn this into a console vs console vs pc thread; and don't shit on peoples memories if they remember something looking amazing and you thought it was shit. Feel free to discuss the necessity and importance of graphics, but don't be douchebags about it.
Please.
P.S. Yes, that is tooth invaders and yes, I played the living crap out of it as a kid.
http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/53682/PC/Crysis-2/Gameplay/Cevat-Yerli-CryEngine-3-Demonstration
It occurred to me:
I'm 29 and I've been playing video games for well over 20 years now. Ever since my stepdad brought home a Commodore 64 for some unknown reason (dude knows zero about technology, I doubt he even knew what it was) I've been playing. I've owned virtually every "major" system since then and have played a lot of games.
Well, growing up with videogames since virtually the beginning of video games I've had a somewhat neat experience of being able to watch the total evolution of graphics from pong to what we have today.
Honestly, when I was 7, there's no possible way I could have known that graphics would go from this:
to this:
Let alone in my lifetime, but ever; the fact that it has happened so fast is mind boggling to me. If you had shown me that when I was 7 and said "One day you will play a game that looks like this" it would have been the most ridiculous thing ever. Hell, I remember when I first played Myst, it blew my mind how good it looked. I didn't think it was possible. I was fully aware that it was mainly still images but it was still rendered on a computer.
I know people like to argue whether or not you need good graphics to make a game better or not, but that's not what the point of this is. Whether or not you need good graphics, the fact is that relative to everything that has come before, even games that look mediocre by today's standards are still amazing technological marvels in the big picture of video games. And there's no questioning that skilled use of graphics and atmosphere can have a mindboggling effect on how a game feels.
So I think it's pretty sweet where we are. Honestly I have no idea where we could even go from this point. But, I remember thinking that exact same thing when I played Mario 64; and look how far we've come since then.
So where are we going with graphics? What is the next step, because it's gonna get pretty damn hard to get more realistic. What are some of your all-time greatest memories of games and their graphics growing up?
Just as some ground rules: Don't turn this into a console vs console vs pc thread; and don't shit on peoples memories if they remember something looking amazing and you thought it was shit. Feel free to discuss the necessity and importance of graphics, but don't be douchebags about it.
Please.
P.S. Yes, that is tooth invaders and yes, I played the living crap out of it as a kid.
Steam: Galedrid - XBL: Galedrid - PSN: Galedrid
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
The Dude With Herpes on
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I don't know if we'll ever get to a "every blade of grass is rendered independently" type of situation, but we've still got a long road ahead of us to go from "looks believable at a distance" to "looks damned-near lifelike up close". Heck, I've yet to see a game render a tree realistically yet. I can understand why it's done the way it is today, don't get me wrong, but it's still very jarring to see trees that look like paper mache or cardboard cutouts in this day and age.
But that illusion where distance from textures makes them look better is a useful one to play.
And when this happens we will still be searching for the blue key to open the blue door.
I hope I'll be able to jack into a virtual world before I die.
Okay ha ha, but he was talking about graphics capability to be fair. :P
I know, it's a bit of abloo bloo console, but god damn if that doesn't give me hope that developers will get their shit together and figure out how to use it. WTB Crytek 3 engine game.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I can understand why this still happens. Realistically you're looking at tree's all being different shapes/sizes and all having a different number of branches. With the amount of tree's that an area can conceptually have, alot of carefully/realistically sculpted, individual tree's would add alot to the polygon count that could be used elsewhere. Its more efficient and viable to re-use the same tree's, maybe just slightly resized and/or rotated to so they arent identicle. Perhaps its just seen as a way around a potentially time consuming process of creating individual trees when they dont see them as important as other aspects of the environment. As hardware and available resources improve, this will definately change.
Unless there is another reason for it. I'm just thinking ouloud.
I think that textures will improve to the point of photo-realistic in real-time rendering. As for where they go from there...In the short term, I dont know if it'd be anything major, at least for a little while. More likely we'd see more sublte additions. Physics wind blown foliage/debris? More realistic footprint effects on terrain? Permanent physical damage on environment from weapons/collisions?
I remember, going back a good few years, that people would constantly call for permanent landscape damage in certain upcoming games. It didnt really catch on and seems to have been somewhat forgotten for the mainstream. Perhaps, at some point, that idea will be revisited?
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Final Fantasy XIV - Masamune Server (Moving to Sargantanas) - Rykosho Hoshikaze
Steam ID - The Starwind
Now non-violent exploration style games, there's where graphics can shine. Imagine the sort of jungle vista that can only be created digitally?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Mmm.
murder simulators are awesome! have you never seen the movie Brainscan?
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This is why we can't have nice things
We can, but I wonder if it will ever be economically feasible to do so? Also, what kind of game would benefit from it? John Deere 2018?
I'm starting to think the next big push will be more behind the scenes, reducing the artists/modellers needed to actually generate content. I would think a full body scanner, for example, where you could just have an actor stand and be completely digitized in 3d and ready to have a skeleton put into - or a baseball bat or proton pack could be scanned and immediately used as a 3d object in a game with no real artist input needed would be huge in terms of lowering overall developer costs.
How about a flight simulator? Realistic, dynamic clouds, properly rendered shorelines, terrain that doesn't look like ass when you're under 2000 feet, etc.
Look at the leap from HL1 to HL2 in graphics, and then HL2 to Crysis... and now Crysis to RAGE.
The reason why it isn't done and specifically persued now is because it isn't economically feasible. As technology progresses, current day tech becomes cheaper. Remember the big deal people made over Pixar's lamp short film? Or the Final Fantasy movies? Those took a lot of time to render.
The fact is, we don't need realistic graphics to see those things. Turn on the news or watch any action film made within the last thirty years and you'll be up to your elbows in guts and eyeballs.
It's just not an argument that holds water anymore with any rational person. Gaming is finally starting to be recognized as an artistic medium (by some) and we're being treated to more cinematographic levels of realism with every new generation, and I applaud that. Whether it's shooting someone in the face or helping build a new kingdom for your followers, graphics are a big part of what makes this medium so immersive.
Play Borderlands then. Gorgeous cell-shaded goodness. Or Mario games
The interesting thing is how the BIGGER gap has already been bridged, and in THIS current generation. Now we're just getting the details right. Things do look real-life-like right now. Compare to PS2 or N64.
I wonder if we're going to see a lot more use of the tech they developed for The Force Within, with realistic materials that break/deform and otherwise behave as they should (unless that was lolhype bullshit). Sating people's bloodlust, you could have a general human body and paint on someone's appreance, and if they're shot then the body reacts appropriately with brains/guts spilling out etc
I see a lot of happy nerds if this comes to pass
Right, but Moore's law doesn't apply to artists.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
But seriously, having an artist to come up with the basic outline for something, then feeding the specs into a program with variables for different features is the way of the future.
Procedurely generated music, art, and writing, OH NOES.
Immersive killing isn't a good thing. That sort of stuff fucks people up.
Hey, I'm all for it if it means we get another sequel to Elite.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
This is what I want; not for things to look real, but for things to act real. There were some crazy tech demos of R2D2 being thrown into different materials that were amazing. Granted, not all of it made it into the game, but what did was pretty cool.
They talked about level designers having to become achitects because the levels would have to take into account gravity and what buildings were made of. Imagine the destruction on Red Faction, but even more detailed.
Anarchy Online had procedural music long before anyone even knew what it was. It worked out really well IMO.
I think it could easily be done graphically too as time goes on. I mean, procedural "dungeons" ala Diablo 2 have been around forever but they're very limited in diversity. I think that it would be feasable to make a Star Trek type game with countless unexplored worlds that were created procedurally (at least the terrain; towns/NPC's are long down the road) that were realistic and just as "creative" as something an artist did.
I'm sure that will step on some toes, but even a game artist has to recognize benefits of doing so; and it's not like they would be useless. There would still be specifically designed things that they could focus on instead of wasting their talent trying to pump out planet 4626242135.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I think that's gonna be the next frontier to be explored. Improvements in pure graphics will net less and less gains, (diminishing returns) for stuff we will barely notice. Physics and materials are the next thing to work on along the path for better games.
The sequels had procedurally generated planets that you could land on.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I wonder if there were something, some example, that someone could show us now, that we could compare to our current stuff, and make us think the same thing?
If someone had shown you the Crysis pic back in the 80's when you were playing Commodore, and you thought, "Man, that's impossible!" I wonder if there's something similar that we could see now, a sort of "here's what the future of graphics looks like," that would impress us just as much....
... probably not. Or maybe? I don't know.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I agree with this completely, but even so I wouldn't be as interested in an ultra-realistic battlefield depiction. Not because I think it would be desensetizing, but for the opposite reason: I'd find it disturbing. In a game where it's used sparingly, and for specific purpose I could see it being an invaluable tool, but not in something like battlefield. such realism would strip it of any entertainment it could offer, and just wind up burning me out. I'm far more interested in graphical power being used to give us new, imaginative, highly stylized worlds like that of Mirror's Edge or Team Fortress 2
I hope this never happens. The amount of jobs that would be lost would be crippling. Mocap has already taken away a lot of jobs from the animation industry. Jobs that have been retained in mocap ready studios are like factory work for animators. They simply clean up the mess that mocap has created in the animation (though the "mess" has been reduced drastically with recent advances). It's very formulaic, with not a lot of room for creativity.
Keyframed animation (everything done by the animator), may take longer but is far better in terms of quality. Look at everything done by Naughty Dog. They HATE mocap. (unless this has changed with Uncharted, everything in Jak was done with keyframe.)
The next noticeable step will be total photorealism. We will see it in our lifetime, probably sooner than we think.
Personally, I don't like what the drive for photorealism has done to the videogame industry. The focus has changed from giving your game it's own stylized look to making it look as real as possible (in many cases). It's sad that games with a striking style like Okami get totally overlooked by the majority of people.
Yeah really. We dont need someone from PA telling us that games are the devil and killing in games makes fucked up people. Thats just wrong man. Look at how they already are. People would be fucked by now if that were the case.
I don't know if it's been mentioned already, but it really feels like most games are turning into Barbie dolls with second grade storytelling. We've all heard that tremendous art can't substitute good writing in comics, but if it's vice versa then the comic can have some promise. Does anyone else feel like this is happening more than before?
Graphics r awesum but how many of us would trade these graphics for a memorable narrative?
The next time you walk around, pay attention to the 'graphics'
Then do the same in a game. Yeah.
I'm pretty sure that in ten years time, we will look upon the current generation like we now look at PS2 3D. Trust me, it does not age well.
It's actual, true "3D" input, and moving away from "output is on a flat plane in front of you".
The Wii is halfway there on the input front, and we're going to need stupid goggles of some description so I can't see the room around me, and every time I move my head the correct view renders for that line of sight.
Imagine that - looking to your left by physically moving your head there, while pointing the wireless plastic gun thingy you're actually carrying in your arms in the other direction to shoot some mans you saw running up 2 seconds before. With rumble on the gun etc.
That is far more immersive than better textures drawn onto a flat 24" screen (or whatever) in front of you.