for the last 10 years people have claimed one game engine or another were "frighteningly real" (DOOM, Quake, Quake II, Quake III). I believe this will continue on into far of the forseeable future. Is it trully possible to achieve photorealism? Even if we had a gigantic computer that rivalled even the one that ran The Matrix, we still have Quantum Mechanics to deal with - we can''t really determine the position of each Photon, and until we figure out how the world REALLY interacts (in the RW, there is no seperate graphics module, no seperate phsyics module - everything is tied together), we will be stuck approximating it. Any ideas?

simply, photorealism means that you cannot tell that it is a computer graphic.

there are ''levels'' of photorealism. To someone with bad eyesight, the original quake was probably quite realistic. As realism and sharpness in graphics increase, it fools a sharper and sharper eye. Although I dont know if we could ever really perfectly model and render the optical world, we can produce images of such sharpness and quality that we can fool even the sharpest eyes. Pre-rendered stills have already gotten to this point in some instances, there are a few images on the internet ray tracing competition website (www.irtc.com) that unless you didn''t know better, you''d probably believe that they were photographs.

http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2003-04-30/incubus_.jpg -- This one in particular stood out as one of the most realistic renderings i''ve ever seen. I''ve linked a few friends to that rendering and told them it was a picture i took of an apartment, and they were easily fooled, they had no idea its not a real picture.

I believe it only a matter of time before we see such realism in real-time.

quote:Original post by Cipher3D
for the last 10 years people have claimed one game engine or another were "frighteningly real" (DOOM, Quake, Quake II, Quake III).

I believe this will continue on into far of the forseeable future.

Is it trully possible to achieve photorealism? Even if we had a gigantic computer that rivalled even the one that ran The Matrix, we still have Quantum Mechanics to deal with - we can''t really determine the position of each Photon, and until we figure out how the world REALLY interacts (in the RW, there is no seperate graphics module, no seperate phsyics module - everything is tied together), we will be stuck approximating it.

Any ideas?

Sure we can... Just model string theory .

Of course we will. At first only with very constrained environments, later with more complex ones until we can no longer discern from reality. We always were very good at displaying a unlit, windowless room (black) - don''t laugh it''s just a very powerfull contraint. At the moment I''d say water is a problem, volumetric structures like fog, gas are being conquered as we speak.

But there are some psychological aspects you have to consider. As long as we are bound to that pathetic flat surface called monitor (which as the name implies only lets you monitor, which is far weaker than view), our mind has a very easy job finding reasons why this is not real.

So photorealism is not only a question of the available processing power, data and alogrithms. Our monitors can not display every color, currently used color-models cannot describe all natural colors.

Startrek''s holodeck is still a long way off, but we will arrive there one day. But not in my days and I''m not that old yet.
at least I''m positive that some kind of volumetric viewer will be available within the next 10 years

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I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up

At some point in time I do believe it would be possible.

Hardware that raytraces for instance would go along way, but there is still a long way, especially if you want to see "photorealistic" humans (but thanks to pioneer works by LucasArts refined by the people behind LOTR CGI lighting scheme we are on the way).


Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

William James (1842 - 1910)

quote:Original post by Rocket05
http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2003-04-30/incubus_.jpg --

Thank you for making my point. If you hadn''t wold me that this image had been rendered I might have been fooled. But since you told us, I can''t get my mind to accept the image as a photograph anymore. Some tiny aspects just feel wrong, and I can''t put my finger on most of them.

quote:Original post by Dreamforger
Startrek''s holodeck...

Damn, that would be sweet to live to experience that.




Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

William James (1842 - 1910)