I'm not sure if this is the best place to popst it, but it seemed pretty good. We all know that game graphics will become photo-realistic in a matter of only years. Just look at the change in graphics quality from three years ago to what we have today and you will see what I mean if you hadn't already. But the question is, what will happen *after* graphics become as good as possible? They have to expand somehow, but so far, pretty much the only 'advancements' in graphics has been to make them look more realistic. So which direction will game developers and artists take games next? You can actually see a close parallel to this in more traditional arts like piantings and sculptures. (I'm no art expert, but this is what I have seen from going to art museums two or three times) In the medieval times(and before) the paintings were far from realistic. There was no perspective, they merely squished things out upwards as it got farther back. Before that, even more things were not done right. Then in about the time of the renaissance, paintings began to become very life like. Suddenly, artists could create pictures that were perfectly realistic. But obviously, art has not remaind the same for the past several hundred years, even though we have reached the peak of perfection. Artists like Pablo Picaso and dozens of others began to turn to less realistic methods in their paintings and sculptures. Soon, that grew into its own art form. Now we have 'modern art' which is extremely realistic, yet many people find it exteremely pleasing to look at. Will video games go this same path that art took? I find it likely. You can already see some aspects of this. Have you ever played a cell-shaded game? They are far from realistic, but they can be beautiful in their own way.(cell shaded graphics are just copying comic book pictures, but it still shows that people are not just looking for hyper-realistic graphics in their games) What about Physconuats? That game had an extremely silly graphical theme that was in no way realistic, and but its art fit with the game, and it worked well. Movies, too have been going this path. Some examples of movies that have sacrificed that extreme realism for an equally good looking approach could be Wallace and Grommit to Tim Burton's movies. Where do you think that video game art will go and when will it go there?

Pure art has always had a more mature audience, meanwhile videogames have a large percentage of audience in kids... you just need to see it in console titles... so I think the future of graphics will be heavily influenced by young people feelings and tastes, this is radically different than pure artwork, where a "guru" artist or a movie director can influence the whole art scene, even if it is not liked by the average audience.... I can't think of kids watching Sin City and liking it (hey!, it's in black and white!)

But sure, you can do surealistic videogame experiments too... just see the game "REZ"

And I don't think we're so close to achieve perfect realism in so few years... realism is not only a matter to have a superb graphics engine with a top notch video card.... you also need a top notch artist to be able to release realistic art... and not everybody here can hire Steven Stahlberg.

Realistic graphics will be achieved when development tools will allow to create realistic art with the same amount of work required to do a Quake2 model these days.

Quote:Original post by vicviper
I can't think of kids watching Sin City and liking it (hey!, it's in black and white!)

actually, with the huge amount of foul language and violence I'm sure most will love it (if mommy and daddy lets them watch it).

I think it will still take a very long time for games to become photo realistic (if ever). Just look at special effects etc in movies, you can often still tell when something is real and not and they have huge render farms crunching away for a long time for those scenes, instead of a home PC or console.

Quote:Original post by Ezbez

But obviously, art has not remaind the same for the past several hundred years, even though we have reached the peak of perfection. Artists like Pablo Picaso and dozens of others began to turn to less realistic methods in their paintings and sculptures. Soon, that grew into its own art form. Now we have 'modern art' which is extremely realistic, yet many people find it exteremely pleasing to look at.

What is this modern art you're talking about? Video games? I don't see a lot of "modern art" in museums that is extremely realistic.

And forget the chair, what about the person sitting in it? Do you actually think soon we'll be controlling a De Niro clone that can do the kinds of things with its eyes and mouth that Bob can? Or a 3d model that could stand in for Gwenyth Paltrow in a movie? And what's next after that? Real-time virtual larnyx acoustics? Chomsky deep structure dynamic language generation?

And all this improves gaming how, exactly? Not to mention the millions of lines of code needed to generate a realistic AI (you'd probably need real, academic AI) controlling these bodies; after all, what good is photorealism and (beyond)wooden acting?

Photorealism isn't happening anytime soon. Not only that, but it isn't going to do anything for gaming and gameplay itself besides look pretty. I'd rather have games that play well. And does anything look worse than yesterday's attempts at "realistic" 3d graphics? I'd rather play River City Ransom.

The fetish for polygons is such an unneccessary tragedy.

[Edited by - abstractimmersion on November 29, 2005 3:03:26 AM]

Since they've modeled graphics to look as similar to real people as possible, perhaps we can shift gears and focus our attention on modeling real people to make them look more like modeled graphics. :)