How Good Can Graphics Get in the Next Generation?

[mundox]

Conclusion? Narnia was a terrible movie. :rofl:

agreed :p

So yeah nice graphics make the next-gen games... gimme my Wii, i really don't care about graphics anymore >_>

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

A game doesnt have to be projected on a 20m cinema display but and still look convincing. The 10 hours is because of the insane amount of detail you have to render to make it look decent for a large display. A 1.5M home teli isnt going to be anywhere near as taxing to get something ath looks realistic.

Saying that I think itll be a while. We are still so very far from getting realistic environments. Sure things look nice but no game really has any of the fine details yet and I think it will be some time. By that I mean things like trees where each leave moves independantly of eachother. Skin that moves and contorts convincingly. Hair where each strand is independanr ect ect. The closer you get the more dificult it is to progress as all these things are extremly taxing on a processor.

Conclusion? Narnia was a terrible movie. :rofl:

Honestly, I may be dead wrong here, but I think the resolution needed for even a movie, no matter how large it is being displayed, is probably much lower than you probably think it is. I mean still right now, for regular TV resolution is what? 680 * 480 I think. And plamsma TV's are something like 800*600 to 1280+. I mean right now HD is 1680 the highest. So Movies, just becuase they are explain so large, I really do not think their resolutions are much higher at all.

I tried Google to find an exact number to no avail, but from what i have read it appears movies indeed may even be made and created at a few thousand pixels hire than HD itself, and it makes sense to me they probably are, but even with that said, I think we would all be shocked to hear the resolution as I do think it is lower than we all think. Even still, lets pretend it is massive, I do not think it is the resolution that causes the rendering time to be so high. What it really is is the amount of details and the textures they use are just such an insane amount higher than what they normally would be in games. Take Donkey from Shrek 2, he had how many millions of working independent hairs? Same goes for the amount of polygons, etc. It is just at this point somewhat a different way of approaching it all. Although it is the same idea in theory, it is two way different applications of that theory, at least this is my understanding of it all.

I may be dead wrong, but I think this is the case.

So it is not unrealistic at all to expect Video Games to one day reach those levels, as it is just a matter of the hardware reaching the levels and having the power itself.

Again though I personally think graphics are truly just fine the level they are now, okay maybe a little better is cool with me, I will not lie, but right now they are about as good as they need to be with me. To real, and it no longer feels like a video game but an emulation. To real, and different visual styles will not exist (think Source vs Doom engine). So I think messages sent out from the gaming community like this one in articles in just irresponsible and will end up perhaps hurting gaming overall.

We need Next Gen game-play. Not Next Gen graphics. Plain and simple.

The graphics will take care of themselves with hardware itself. I think it is pretty obvious to see if the hardware is capable of doing better graphics, the developers will take advantage of that for sure. From my understanding this means we need less lazy developers. Those who are willing to take chances and not just meet a deadline, but actually push the technology in the different areas of gaming itself. Again things like physics, AI (I mean seriously, AI is still super damn dumb and predictable, even with F.E.A.R. whose Ai was supposed to be so amazing, they were still bumbling idiots in many areas.

Graphics right now are way to over emphasized, and the majority of gamers fall for the hype they should be the most important aspect. As a result we get the same crap games to play and they just look better.

Actually the Crysis engine is an AWESOME example of where I believe developers should at least be focusing some, if not way more, of their energy.

At least that is my .02cents

[SaLiVa]

I believe the graphics market needs to revise "how to make things look realistic". I believe it isn't all about getting the highest resolution possible, but they should emphasise more on the rendering. A 640x480 image can beat any 1280x1024 image if done correctly.

I think 3dfx had the right thinking path with T-Buffer and FSAA. Motion blur is very important, and so is blur in general. Right now looking at my hands I can't focus on one particular hair strand from 30cm away, and from a meter away I bet you won't see any hair at all. Basically what I am saying details when you go close to an object, less details when far.

Though I am not talking extreme like Oblivion. For some reason the land on a hill on the other side of the river seems matted...

[Gary_Player]

Yea well a lion's body and mane of indevidually rendered strands of hair is enough to tax any system for a while to come.

They did kinda over-do that effect, but if it did take 10 hours a frame i wouldn't want to go back and tweak things either :laugh: