To put my thoughts simply: - Photorealistic graphics have been achieved in cinema - Gollum for instance. - If Moore''s Law holds, the technology which drives cinematic photorealism will be in our homes and capable of real time rendering in the foreseeable future. - Once graphical sophistication reaches the level where further refinement cannot be perceived by the human eye, "better graphics" in the sense of more realistic or powerful graphics engines will not be a selling point. - At this point, games will be appraised on other criteria - the creativity of their use of graphics hardware, the attention to detail, the use of graphics to convey the overall mood or aesthetic sense of the game, and of course gameplay. - Therefore, to create a game that will last through the ages, stop focusing on the technical sophistication of your graphics system and start focusing on aesthetics and gameplay. Summary: In ten years, Doom 3 will look like Tron - outdated technology supporting a lack of substance. Comment, counterargue, but please do NOT mistake this for a "gameplay vs. graphics" post. The issue is whether sophisticated graphics will continue to be a selling point. - STC --------------------------------------------------- -SpittingTrashcan You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

Moore''s law maybe for CPUs, but its definitly not for GPUs.

A GPU, like a CPU, can only render as much as in the bandwidth of its memory. Memory bandwidth isn''t cheap, so there will always be a finite amount of it. Juggling data to the point where we can fill, but not overfill, this finite amount will be a problem for the foreseeable future.

So even though we can create photo-realistic characters, we cannot have a infinite amount of them, so their placement will always be engine driven, and therefore, sophisticated engines will be important for the foreseable future...

It''s not a trivial prospect to model something so accurately that it can be called photorealistic. To have a photorealistic Gollum requires modelling accurately down to the centimeter, and using displacement mapping to model down to the millimeter. If textures are to look realistic, they must not have a discernable pattern (I assert that Gollum still has a discernable pattern to his skin), which requires at bare minimum pseudorandom alterations (this may not be enough).

Animations can still become more realistic. Veins that stick out when a character flexes his muscles have not been realistically modeled as far as I know. Hand movement (see Final Fantasy) needs some work.

There''s another consideration in that computers use fundamentally different techniques for rendering, and there may be an upper limit in quality for it (probably not). Also, while computers may be able to render one Gollum realistically, I doubt I''ll be able to render an army.

Let''s say I being to realistically render a billion Gollum''s at photorealistic quality. What can I do with a billion monsters? To have them act independently in interesting ways is just as processor intensive. What will probably happen is that whatever obsession there is with rendering billions of polygons will transfer into making billions of different independent actors (Doom 47: Your overcrowded planetful of enemies chases you down from all four dimensions! Fortunately, the BFG 15 Billion has a mind of its own and it''s plowing a path to rescue you.). It''s not much of an improvement.

Or maybe it''ll transfer to physics (Freespace 39: Real string physics! Not only are the projectiles superluminous, they tear your opponent to pieces even while he''s in a local hyperspace bubble. Realistically models the ships and interstellar dust to the string level. No longer will collisions with muon clouds fail to produce neutrino effects.)

After we get ''perfect'' graphics on a 2d monitor, we still have the world of 3d displays to move to, and after that, we can move to nerual interfaces which will probably make everything we''ve done up to that point useles. Displays and graphics still have a long way to go.

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Almost typo-ified using Extrarius'' AUTOMATIC Typo Generator, but I decided to be nice =-)

Graphics are more than just look, they are animation as well.

Even though Gollum seemed realistic, his movements had character to them.

In the Harry Potter movies, they intentionally make things look a little less realistic to keep it within bounds of a children's story.

Then we get movies like the Matrix, to take us to a new reality.

It will be interesting to see the new kinds of imagery that movies generate for us. Perhaps a new form of visual entertainment that has no human characters? Shapes that move about and tell a story that way?

On the note of graphical sophistication being bounded, there really isn't any point in making an image more real than what is real, is there? How can you make what's on a screen more real than what isn't on the screen? Somehow, I don't think that will stop anyone from trying.


[edited by - Waverider on March 4, 2003 12:26:40 PM]

I expect that at some point developers will actually clammer to depart from realism. cel-shading is just the first example of this, but it demonstrates the underlying thought well.

For fantastic games, we don''t want real, we want fantastic!

Just a side note, Websitewill mentioned that games should be designed from premise to engine, also known as top-down design. I think that the underlying theme here would be that given a premise which requires photorealism, and realistic simulation. Can we provide it?

George D. Filiotis

I am a signature virus. Please add me to your signature so that I may multiply.

quote:Original post by Symphonic
[...]For fantastic games, we don''t want real , we want fantastic ![...]

I''d like a fantasy game more if the graphics were photorealistic and the physics was really close to realistic and you could interact with any object, but I would like going ''beyond'' realism and adding in things like magic and the ability to jump 30 feet if you have X stat up to Y etc. I want reality augmented with fantasy =-)

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Almost typo-ified using Extrarius'' AUTOMATIC Typo Generator, but I decided to be nice =-)

To rebut some arguments:

- "The graphics pipeline has physical limits."
But as you mention, reasonably clever algorithms can and do get around these limits. My timeline is meant to encompass advances in software as well as hardware.

- "We still have further to go in photorealism."
Yes, but after a certain point it stops mattering. Once you can''t tell the difference with the human eye, there''s no need to get any better. 1600x1200 screens approach the limit of the human eye to resolve objects - there''s no use in creating subliminal pixels.

- "Certain aspects of reality still aren''t modeled."
That''s often more of an artistic rather than a technical problem. Hand movements in FF: Spirits Within, for instance, look odd because human hands are constantly in surprisingly quick motion, something the modelers failed to note on an artistic level. I agree there''s plenty of room left for increased artistry and more aesthetic algorithms - but at a certain level realism for its own sake becomes gratuitous, see above.

- "You can''t create a billion Gollums."
I wanted to address this one directly because it simply isn''t true. The army of Orcs at Helms Deep was created through computer algorithms, all ten thousand of them, moving in formation but asynchronously. Fooled you, didn''t they? On the real-time rendering end, the Serious Sam 2 engine supports hundreds of enemies on screen at once, at passable if not photorealistic quality.

- "Graphics encompasses more than technical sophistication."
My point exactly. To coin a phrase, the size of your chip doesn''t matter, it''s what you do with it. I''m a tremendous fan of non-photo-realistic rendering and other innovative graphics techniques. I also like games which use their graphics in a consistent and well-thought-out way to convey a mood or aesthetic sensibility, such as Devil May Cry, Jet Grind Radio, or Mario Sunshine.

Extrarius: A comprehensive physics model and photorealistic graphics do not have to go hand in hand. While I agree that a more comprehensive physics/world model would be a great boon to roleplaying games, I actually think that non-photo-realistic rendering and artistic modeling convey a fantastic and exciting world much better. See also: Fable, which hopes to redefine the term RPG with a stunningly comprehensive world model - and no visible stats!

Overall, I guess the point I''m trying to make is that at some point, better graphics alone will not sell a game. For example, there are many many FPSes currently available which sell chiefly based on their improved graphics. There will come a time when the graphics get about as good as they possibly can. I''m saying that time is not far away, and that we as developers should plan for it by placing more weight on features other than graphical sophistication.

Please do continue the discussion, I''m finding it very interesting!

-STC

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".