Graphics

[GreatEmerald]

I've noticed an interesting thing while I was at school in an IT class. Look at this picture. Especially works on those who don't know UT3. What do you see? Is it a scene from a movie? A video game? Or real life? I'm quite sure not everybody could answer that correctly. The real answer can be found in the URL.
So, anyone noticed that graphics are getting so good that it's hard to tell real life from rendered worlds? What do you think will be next? Will we get to the point we already got with audio: there's basically no place we could advance further? What will we research then?

[Vigil]

Originally Posted by GreatEmerald

What will we research then?

Fun.

[dub]

Well for one that picture isn't exactly large, so it's easier to be mistaken - which I wasn't, I will add.
Post that picture at full resolution and it becomes even more obvious.
That looks far from "real" to me. It looks like a game. (Also, I know Shangrila, so my first thought was "oh, Shangrila")
Further, make someone watch the game being played at full res. and unless you have no clue about video games, there's absolutely no way it'd fool you into thinking it was real/a movie or whatever. Ergo there is still tons of work to be done in the visual department, when it comes to games.

Games are moving towards visual realism, but we're still miles away. There is still so much more to be done in the way of real-time graphics that I'm pretty sure I'll be gone by the time anything comes out that will really make it hard to tell if it's a game or the real thing.
I haven't played a game to date which is even teetering on "is this real - or is this a game?!"

Every generation that brings new graphic prowess, is usually heralded as virtually indistinguishable from realism... until the next gen surfaces and you laugh at yourself for thinking that it was even close.
When I first saw Crysis I was like amazing. Looking at it now... yeah it's still very nice, but not that impressive any more. In a couple of years, it too will just look dated and anybody who reckoned that it looked super life-like will probably find it amusing they did when compared Crysis 2017.

Read real old gaming articles, where you'll find people back then were praising the graphics for looking "amazingly close to the real thing" when to us now, they look nothing like the real thing.
I remember seeing games way-back-when thinking "man that's SO realistic"...

Of course I am talking real-time here as there are architectural renders I've seen that are immensely hard to differentiate from a photo/film.
But I've not played any game that even comes close to me not being able to distinguish it from a film.

On the other hand my father visited me once, and I had my PC running with some game on it and he asked me what film it was.

[ambershee]

Lol, if anyone thinks that could be a photo, they need to get out more - it looks and feels very computer generated. But it could indeed be a render / still from a film.

[JohnDoe641]

Originally Posted by ambershee

Lol, if anyone thinks that could be a photo, they need to get out more - it looks and feels very computer generated. But it could indeed be a render / still from a film.

Indeed.

Though I'll go a bit further and say that anyone who thinks that that is a photo is either close to blind or has some type of problem distinguishing reality. :/

[Phopojijo]

Reality is only dependent on how far away you are from the image.

As computer graphics are getting more sophisticated, we're able to get closer and closer to an image and still look like it's "real" ((if stylized)).

[cosmix]

Larrabee.
Wait until 2010 and you will get this (nice) picture 10 times better in realtime. Cya NVIDIA and cya ATI...

[KillerSkaarj]

See, I have a theory that all reality is is just a massively complex computer game run in a different reality. Eventually, the computer game strives to develop its own absolutely realistic games, who will in turn strive to make their OWN absolutely realistic game. It explains why the universe is tailored to be EXTREMELY precise so that everything can exist and not explode in a mass of charged particles.

I call it the "Hyper-nerd Theory"

[Cowlike]

This corner of shangrila looks pretty nice doesn't it

[GreatEmerald]

It would be, if not excessive bloom...

[Jordan L]

The racing game GRID for PC has amazing visuals if you have a card that can run the game on High/Ultra settings. These screenshots lost some quality from hosting on photobucket, but their still pretty good. Ignore the crowd in the last photo, normally they react to whatever the car is doing but for some reason their not in the photo.

[N1ghtmare]

Static images from games always look nicer than in the actua game itself.

[Jordan L]

That may be true for most games, but believe it or not, this particular racing game looks better full screen and in motion. You cant really see the true reflections, particles, smoke animations, and textures without it being in motion in game.

[Phopojijo]

Yeah... racing sims are about the easiest games to make look pretty. GT4 on the PS2 looks awesome in spite of it being a PS2 game...

[Beelzebud (Satanas)]

I hate to bring up another engine, but there are certain areas in Crysis that really look photo realistic. I guess it's not total blasphemy considering Mischa the Sled Dog works for them.

[Jordan L]

Crysis Warhead looks pretty good, especially in the areas near the water. The game runs great to, Crytek optimized it good.

[GreatEmerald]

The racing game also has too much bloom, but pretty nice anyway. Especially the first picture.

[KillerSkaarj]

Originally Posted by Beelzebud (Satanas)

Mischa the Sled Dog works for them.

HUH. I. WHAT. SINCE WHEN!?! I thought Myscha quit working on video games? Someone should go over there and blackmail Myscha to come back to Epic and help create Unreal 3 should it ever be conceived in the future XD. Or not. Whatever. But still, I think Crysis just got 100 times more awesome for me just because one of the original Unreal devs are now on the Crysis developing team. Too bad my computer can't even play games like Doom 3 thanks to the half-death of my 6200 (R.I.P).

Oh yeah, and the reason Racing games look so good is because the game doesn't have that much to render. It only has to focus on the race track itself, and the cars themselves, ultimately allowing the devs to pump up the graphics with only little background objects. With increasing graphical power, however, FPS games are quickly reaching the threshold of Racing game graphics. Too bad the same thing is happening to the racing games as well. We're more likely to have photorealistic racing games before we finally have photorealistic FPS games.

EDIT: Ok, we already have photorealistic racing games (except the cars look like toys...), we just need photorealistic FPS games. No, scratch that, we don't NEED photorealistic, we WANT photorealistic.

Wait, why are we striving for photorealistic games anyway? Whatever happened to fun? Are we trying to do that because we can't do those things in real life (when do you think you'll ever fight an alien wielding a triple barrel rocket launcher with a plasma gun with a beam that fries your enemies and helps your friends?) and they want to make us feel that we are?

[Dogger]

KillerSkaarj arguing with himself again

No hes not!

Yes he is.

[Grobut]

Originally Posted by GreatEmerald

What do you think will be next? Will we get to the point we already got with audio: there's basically no place we could advance further? What will we research then?

We will get there eventually, yes, but there is much more to do for games, AI can definately be improved, even expand to include more wildlife and other such non-gameplay-critical AI, worlds can become bigger and more complex than they are, controls, use of camera and interfaces can become better, as can story telling, core gameplay and lots of other things..

Actually it would be good for games when developers can nolonger push the visuals any further, as systems become more powerfull it would leave them lots of free system resources that can be used to make better physics, use more and better AI, larger worlds with less loading and so on.