How have 3D graphics changed since Quake?
I agree, Toji. Photorealism is cool and all, and of course every graphics programmer is going to do his or her best to achieve it, but really, it just comes down to making things look really sweet. If it doesn't look real, who cares? It looks sweet!
Right now we have direct lighting and I can't wait for indirect, realtime global illumination technique like radiosity/photon mapping to become feasible. I'm not into raytracing in games. However, what I think has happened is that devs are using static lighting/shadowing with the new hw to push many polys to create detail worlds. That in fact is a good tradeoff because scene dynamicity isn't all that necessary to enjoy the game. I've noticed we're adding more foliage into the games to spice things up. All this hw horespower also gives us different gameplay opportunities like ability to go pretty much anywhere not being constrained by invisible walls, etc. Or take a train ride thru a detailed city like in gta3. It opens up the size of the gameworld which is a new venue to explore instead of gfx.
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No let me make myself clear. I'm looking for total realism.
Will texture mapped polygons ever even be capable of this?
theoretically if you had a fast enough computer, and enough money to put into detailed artwork, you could make things look as real as you'd like. the science behind computer graphics is actually quite sound(based on radiometry, a branch of physics) the problem is the more complex the lighting, the longer it takes to compute. another aspect is animation, compared to rendreing it's a baby science, making someone walk in a very natural way without motion capture is actually quite a daunting task, it is not exact science, but one day it may be. ever seen the total cgi scene of the animatrix? it's crazy tight and you can use it as a measure of gaming in the future, offline techniques of the past will become realtime if you wait long enough. you'll notice that while the graphics is close to perfect in this movie, you'll notice the thing that makes it look fake is more the animation then the graphics, in particular, the skin doesn't act as if it's got a skeleton under it, ie it's to stiff, but it's still very nicely done.
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I don't think the graphical advances made in the last 10 years have quite yet taken games to the next level beyond Quake and that time.
one thing you could look at the advances in photorealistic rendering over the past 10 years, this gives us an indication of what games might be capable of one day. personally I see a lot of advancement in videogames over the past 10 years, namely more accurate physics like rigid bodies, more accurate lighting, detailed surfaces, etc, etc. what more do you want? if your lighting/surfaces/physics get more and more accurate how is that not advance? you have only to repeat this trend over and over again and eventually you're gonna have games that look like movies.
Tim
Quake really represented a new paradigm for computer games. It was among the first widely popular polygon based games, certainly its the first I remember. Until now, advancements in 3D games and in particular FPSs have larely been by bolting new technologies(ie shaders) onto what is essentially a quake style engine. Today, we are coming into the next era of 3D graphics where next generation engines such as Unreal 3 will be the first to truly be designed around GPU programmability. In conjunction with the radical increase in GPU pawer we've seen over the past 3-4 years these new engines will leave many of the old "faked" methods used in the past. Finally we have the power for true per-pixel lighting, real shadows, HDR and the like. These new engines will take advantage of it all and I think will look distinctly different.
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Ravyne, you sould like the first person to have kind of agreed with my inital point. (Not that that's all I'm looking for!)
I think the Voodoo rendering of Doom 3 backs this up.
I think it will be interesting to see. If photo realism is an unrealistic goal for now then 'distinctly different' would be enough to satisfy me.
Quote:Until now, advancements in 3D games and in particular FPSs have larely been by bolting new technologies(ie shaders) onto what is essentially a quake style engine.
I think the Voodoo rendering of Doom 3 backs this up.
Quote:These new engines will take advantage of it all and I think will look distinctly different.
I think it will be interesting to see. If photo realism is an unrealistic goal for now then 'distinctly different' would be enough to satisfy me.
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I can't resist....
Yeah, Doom 3 makes judicious use of black.
Quote:Colors other than brown?
Yeah, Doom 3 makes judicious use of black.
Just a quick heads up -
Another article was linked to by Slashdot just now that is, I beleive, highly relavent to this subject. I definately recommend giving it a read through!
http://modetwo.net/users/nachimir/vga/index.html
Another article was linked to by Slashdot just now that is, I beleive, highly relavent to this subject. I definately recommend giving it a read through!
http://modetwo.net/users/nachimir/vga/index.html
Quote:Original post by Barn Door
I think it will be interesting to see. If photo realism is an unrealistic goal for now then 'distinctly different' would be enough to satisfy me.
You wouldn't call the stuff we linked to earlier in this thread "distinctly different?"
Maybe you need some Llamasoft games.
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