Are PS/Xbox getting less interesting?

[Agonizel]

Hi community,

 

I've been wondering: Is it me or is is console innovation becoming more incremental from gen to gen?

 

I grew up wity the Playstation, so I'll explain using that.

First, the Playstation 1: CDs an not cartridges and lots of new exciting titles: Rayman, crash, tomb raider,...

Then big breaktrough with the PS2: substantial graphical advancements, doubles as a DVD player, beginning of online play, generalization of the analog sticks and so many amazing games especially 2004!

PS3: Significant graphical advancements, wireless controllers, reconceptuzalization of trigger (R2,L2), Bluray DVDs, widespread & massive multiplayer gaming: MW, BF, GTA and utilities such as Netflix...

 

Then the PS4 was announced: relatively little graphical progress, a trackpad?... and... no we gotta pay 50€/year to play online? - That's it, I'm building a PC.

 

I like how nintendo always try to finds new ways to entertain, they're complementary to PC gaming. But I don't see the point in consoles anymore.

 

What do new consoles have to offer?

[minibois]

The graphical advancement can somewhat be answered with this:

I think the PS3 was at the 6000 triangles point.

In my experience, the advancement aren't in general graphics, but more in lighting tech and facial details.

 

Game consoles these past couple of gens have been trying to do different stuff, with motion controls, body tracking, VR now too.. etc. But in general we have reached a plateau for companies to just send out another PC like device running their proprietary OS and running games. Most people will accept that.

 

[Bombastinator]

Hard to know since they’re not out yet.  Increasingly incremental changes seem to me to be something that is endemic to any industry following a major innovation and tends to continue until the next major innovation.  When something changes drastically the implications of such will be explored and false paths followed till they reveal themselves as such.  The last major innovation in the white box computer industry I can think of off hand is heat pipes which changed the usability level of air coolers. There hasn’t been much of one in silicon in some time.  There has been a massive increase in storage speed recently, and there were implications that this might be leveraged by Sony in creating different types of games.  This may or may not happen.  They’re not out yet.

[Ertman]

13 hours ago, Agonizel said:

they're complementary to PC gaming. But I don't see the point in consoles anymore.

 

What do new consoles have to offer?

Not sure how thats different than the evolution in PC gaming. What does PC gaming do that is huge improvement over the last 20 years or so? If its just the games, then there's your answer.

[PlayStation 2]

Welcome to the Land of Diminishing Returns, where the higher you go with... many things, frankly, including hardware, the less notable and noticeable the upgrades seem, look and feel. What this next generation will almost certainly be about is the push for path-traced rendering in real time and the 2160p range of resolutions, much like how the current generation's big push was the 1080p range and things like physically-based rendering, more complex (and realistic) shading techniques and the advances in multi-core utilization for CPU usage.

 

That's still a hell of an advancement, but on its face, it seems less significant without context than, say, the PlayStation's relatively tame and simple rendering techniques at what would normally be 320x240 to a massive upping in resolution to 640x448 (or 512x448, in many PS2 games), being able to push far more polygons and being able to take advantage of many new, more advanced effects with the PS2. 

Same deal with the PS2 to the PS3, yeah, that 256MB of VRAM wasn't great, but the GPU (and CPU) still could push far more graphical data at a higher resolution than the PS2 when utilized correctly.

If the upgrade from the PS3 to the PS4 seems smaller on face value, that's because it is... on face value. Again, this generation was the generation of physically-based rendering, things like screen-space reflections, heavier post-processing (and post-processing anti-aliasing becoming popular) and the upping of resolution from around the 720p mark to the 1080p mark. That wasn't something we particularly imagined throughout the earlier part of the 7th generation, but by the end of it, we started to see more of it pop up, and by the 8th generation, they became commonplace.

[Beerzerker]

17 hours ago, minibois said:

The graphical advancement can somewhat be answered with this:

I think the PS3 was at the 6000 triangles point.

In my experience, the advancement aren't in general graphics, but more in lighting tech and facial details.

 

Game consoles these past couple of gens have been trying to do different stuff, with motion controls, body tracking, VR now too.. etc. But in general we have reached a plateau for companies to just send out another PC like device running their proprietary OS and running games. Most people will accept that.

 

There is also another thing, advancement in displays/TV's to play them on.

I refered to this in another thread concerning with older systems, higher resolution displays/TV's actually make them look worse because it reveals the limitations of the tech as it was when new.
That's a problem with higher resolution displays and older systems but with newer systems it's not nearly as noticeable if at all really. If you have an older system it's best to play it on a display setup like an older one would be or even just find an older display/TV, set it up for exclusive use with the system and go for it - Problem solved.

That's what I have setup with a 27' CRT TV and it's used exclusively for my consoles.

The wife kept bugging me to toss it but glad I didn't because it solves this problem for me.

 

I tried playing Xenogears not long ago on the display I'm using now with my PS3 and it looked horrid - I mean a PSX and it's games TBH never was THAT good anyway but it was playable at least. 

It was bad enough at times I coudn't even tell where I was on the map because everything was so "Blocky" and looked like a jumbled mess graphically.

 

All I can suggest is to try it yourself - Set one up with both, a new and older display and see it for yourself. 

BTW being a certain distance or further away from the screen does help with a PSX game. 

[PlayStation 2]

39 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

There is also another thing, advancement in displays/TV's to play them on.

I refered to this in another thread concerning with older systems, higher resolution displays/TV's actually make them look worse because it reveals the limitations of the tech as it was when new.
That's a problem with higher resolution displays and older systems but with newer systems it's not nearly as noticeable if at all really. If you have an older system it's best to play it on a display setup like an older one would be or even just find an older display/TV, set it up for exclusive use with the system and go for it - Problem solved.

That's what I have setup with a 27' CRT TV and it's used exclusively for my consoles.

The wife kept bugging me to toss it but glad I didn't because it solves this problem for me.

 

I tried playing Xenogears not long ago on the display I'm using now with my PS3 and it looked horrid - I mean a PSX and it's games TBH never was THAT good anyway but it was playable at least. 

It was bad enough at times I coudn't even tell where I was on the map because everything was so "Blocky" and looked like a jumbled mess graphically.

 

All I can suggest is to try it yourself - Set one up with both, a new and older display and see it for yourself. 

BTW being a certain distance or further away from the screen does help with a PSX game. 

Can confirm this firsthand: 6th generation console games look rough on a 2160p display and the further away you are from there, the worse it gets. Mario Kart 64 on native hardware looks dreadful on a 4K TV unless you have something like an HDMI-modded system, but even still, there's no getting around the fact that the game runs at 320x237. 

On the flip side, most 7th gen games look... just fine, if not a little blurry, on a 4K display. I was playing Team Fortress 2 on the Xbox 360 a few days ago and while that game runs at 1280x720 with no anti-aliasing, it didn't look bad at all. Just kinda looked like how I'd expect it to, just with the horribly-compressed textures being a little more obvious.

[kaiju_wars]

I think the tech this gen is more exciting.  A lot more exciting that the Xbox One and PS4 were on launch.  For one they have actual decent specs this time around.

As for consoles.  The Switch is more exciting to me than anything Sony or Microsoft are doing.  I don't need to lug around a laptop, controller or mouse/mousepad, a headset, a charger, and then hope to have a desk to set this all up on if I want to play on the go.  The alternative being, hopefully I have an internet connection and a place to prop my phone up to stream with (and carrying a PS4 or Xbox One controller with me.

Instead with the Switch... I grab the switch.  Minus visuals, uncompromised AAA gaming on the go.  I played my entire NG+ of Witcher 3 on the Switch exclusively. (including DLC).  The visual downgrade compared to when I played on my PC never bugged me.  I could take the Switch out of the dock and play at work on downtime.  I have over 80 hours in the switch version alone.  This is exactly what I've been wanting from a console.  I can play the full AAA game on my TV at home, and then take the console for a handheld experience with me, with the same AAA game. 

 

But for the PS5 and Xbox Series X... Microsoft have the more powerful console.  Looking at the specs they have, if they can hit sub $600 (hell even $600) for the specs they're offering, I think that's really exciting.  

[JZStudios]

The PS4 hardly advanced graphics? Excuse me? When's the last time you actually played a PS3 title?

Look at even just The Last of Us that came out right at the end of the PS3 life cycle, and many would agree is one of if not the best looking PS3 title compared to Infamous Second Son or any other PS4 launch title. Higher resolution, better textures, better lighting, more detailed geometry, better effects, larger worlds. Then compare THAT to a newer, prettier game like Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, God of War, Uncharted 4, and the upcoming TLOU2 and tell me there's barely any difference. The PS3 still had plasticky uncanny valley or unrealistic character models, whereas even the launch titles on PS4 looked more like actual human beings.

 

We're now getting into home consoles literally running real time ray tracing, and no one seems to understand how absolutely absurd that is. Games on home consoles right now are now rendering a higher resolution (By over 4 times), with better textures, physically based shaders, better lighting, better animation, over double the framerate than a $30 million state of the art, first of kind, rendered on supercomputers for hours per frame Pixar film that rocked the entire world. And everything that Toy Story did at the time was insane. The almost 1920x1080 it initially rendered at was considered massive at the time. And that was only slightly over 20 years ago (at the time of PS4 launch.) Games have blasted past the uncanny valley years ago, while Pixar still sticks with goofy cartoonistic characters to avoid the uncanny valley. On a $400 home console.

 

And again, add to the previous paragraph the fact that the next Xbox will be able to do real time ray tracing, even at 1080p30, is mind boggling.

[Bombastinator]

26 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

The PS4 hardly advanced graphics? Excuse me? When's the last time you actually played a PS3 title?

Look at even just The Last of Us that came out right at the end of the PS3 life cycle, and many would agree is one of if not the best looking PS3 title compared to Infamous Second Son or any other PS4 launch title. Higher resolution, better textures, better lighting, more detailed geometry, better effects, larger worlds. Then compare THAT to a newer, prettier game like Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, God of War, Uncharted 4, and the upcoming TLOU2 and tell me there's barely any difference. The PS3 still had plasticky uncanny valley or unrealistic character models, whereas even the launch titles on PS4 looked more like actual human beings.

 

We're now getting into home consoles literally running real time ray tracing, and no one seems to understand how absolutely absurd that is. Games on home consoles right now are now rendering a higher resolution (By over 4 times), with better textures, physically based shaders, better lighting, better animation, over double the framerate than a $30 million state of the art, first of kind, rendered on supercomputers for hours per frame Pixar film that rocked the entire world. And everything that Toy Story did at the time was insane. The almost 1920x1080 it initially rendered at was considered massive at the time. And that was only slightly over 20 years ago (at the time of PS4 launch.) Games have blasted past the uncanny valley years ago, while Pixar still sticks with goofy cartoonistic characters to avoid the uncanny valley. On a $400 home console.

 

And again, add to the previous paragraph the fact that the next Xbox will be able to do real time ray tracing, even at 1080p30, is mind boggling.

Re: mind boggling ray tracing.  The amount of math is indeed mind boggling.  The actual effect is often barely noticeable though.  From what I have seen my guess is ray tracing as used has to get about 6 times bigger before it produces a truely major change.   The key phrase there is “as used”.  Tensor cores are also supposed to be great for AI. My suspicion is hardware ray tracing will possibly find greater use for something other than tracing light rays. 

[JZStudios]

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Re: mind boggling ray tracing.  The amount of math is indeed mind boggling.  The actual effect is often barely noticeable though.  From what I have seen my guess is ray tracing as used has to get about 6 times bigger before it produces a truely major change.   The key phrase there is “as used”.  Tensor cores are also supposed to be great for AI. My suspicion is hardware ray tracing will possibly find greater use for something other than tracing light rays. 

Metro Exodus is the best example of the benefits of ray tracing. The darker scenes or interior areas lit by external lights are phenomonal, but yeah, the ray tracing power needs to increase dramatically for everything to be ray traced. The visual difference isn't inherently noticeable though because they bake in lighting and they've been faking what ray tracing does naturally for so long they've gotten really good at it.

The PS5 is supposed to have a fancy new 3d audio, but I haven't seen any specifics on exactly what that is. Ray traced audio would be cool, and wouldn't be as computationally expensive.

[Lord Vile]

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

The PS4 hardly advanced graphics? Excuse me? When's the last time you actually played a PS3 title?

Look at even just The Last of Us that came out right at the end of the PS3 life cycle, and many would agree is one of if not the best looking PS3 title compared to Infamous Second Son or any other PS4 launch title. Higher resolution, better textures, better lighting, more detailed geometry, better effects, larger worlds. Then compare THAT to a newer, prettier game like Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, God of War, Uncharted 4, and the upcoming TLOU2 and tell me there's barely any difference. The PS3 still had plasticky uncanny valley or unrealistic character models, whereas even the launch titles on PS4 looked more like actual human beings.

 

We're now getting into home consoles literally running real time ray tracing, and no one seems to understand how absolutely absurd that is. Games on home consoles right now are now rendering a higher resolution (By over 4 times), with better textures, physically based shaders, better lighting, better animation, over double the framerate than a $30 million state of the art, first of kind, rendered on supercomputers for hours per frame Pixar film that rocked the entire world. And everything that Toy Story did at the time was insane. The almost 1920x1080 it initially rendered at was considered massive at the time. And that was only slightly over 20 years ago (at the time of PS4 launch.) Games have blasted past the uncanny valley years ago, while Pixar still sticks with goofy cartoonistic characters to avoid the uncanny valley. On a $400 home console.

 

And again, add to the previous paragraph the fact that the next Xbox will be able to do real time ray tracing, even at 1080p30, is mind boggling.

The difference between the last PS3 1st party titles and games launched on PS4 wasn’t that much better. Hell Origins on Black ops 2 on the 360 looked better than most Xbone games at launch. A lot of games on the Xbone and PS4 were 900p st launch and that hasn’t gotten bettet the “by over 4x resolution” is only on the later “Pro” models both of which can’t do “double the frame rate” at native 4K you generally choose between a mix of 4K30, 1080p30 enhanced and 1080p60 normal.

 

Have you watched a Pixar film in the last 10 years? Watch the opening to toy story 4, that is better than ANY video game, hell even braves hair is amazing and that’s 8 years old. They could easily render more true to life visuals but that’s not the point. Technology advances obviously why compare tech that’s 25 years old vs tech now and act amazed that’s its better, no shit Sherlock. 

 

Just because you CAN to ray tracing doesn’t mean it’s any good. The performance penalty you take for a small effect that isn’t even that good is humongous. I mean on the PC side you’re taking a £1000 GPU and it’s struggling to hit 30 everything maxed out at 1080p without DLSS. Really? 

[Bombastinator]

45 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Metro Exodus is the best example of the benefits of ray tracing. The darker scenes or interior areas lit by external lights are phenomonal, but yeah, the ray tracing power needs to increase dramatically for everything to be ray traced. The visual difference isn't inherently noticeable though because they bake in lighting and they've been faking what ray tracing does naturally for so long they've gotten really good at it.

The PS5 is supposed to have a fancy new 3d audio, but I haven't seen any specifics on exactly what that is. Ray traced audio would be cool, and wouldn't be as computationally expensive.

As it happens I have a copy of that game and I went to art school.  My eye is largely gone, but some still remains.

 

There was ray tracing done in that game.  A lot of it.   It merely wasn’t done real time, but was baked into the backgrounds.  This is a major failing of real time ray tracing.  For stuff that either doesn’t move, or moves in a preset pattern, it just isn’t needed.

 

I would replace “naturally” with “by dint of massive computation”.  Ray tracing has potential advantages with randomly moving objects.  It’s very possible to minimize such things though in game design.  Exodus has very atmospheric sets.  Very little in this sets actually move in a non set pattern though.  Most of the time it’s just the player character’s weapon and some water reflections. 
 

What genuinely systemic ray tracing could do is change the play areas so more things could move dynamically.  The look of games would change.  So there is a LOT of potential.  It needs that 6x boost to do it though.   There’s just too much math involved.

 

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

Sony likely went conservative with PS4 because the PS3 almost bankrupted them. Microsoft put out a garbage console in the XBox One because their idiot CEO wanted it to be an HTPC the way so many older people who bought Wii ended up using them, hence the infamous focus on television at their reveal. Next gen though both consoles look very exciting considering they both have octacore Ryzen 2 cpus at good clockspeeds (I think 3.5 GHz for PS5, 3.8 GHz for XBox Series X) and pretty strong Navi 2 gpus. PS5 looks to have something between 2070 and 2080 while Series X something between 2080 and 2080 Ti.

[Lord Vile]

46 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Sony likely went conservative with PS4 because the PS3 almost bankrupted them. Microsoft put out a garbage console in the XBox One because their idiot CEO wanted it to be an HTPC the way so many older people who bought Wii ended up using them, hence the infamous focus on television at their reveal. Next gen though both consoles look very exciting considering they both have octacore Ryzen 2 cpus at good clockspeeds (I think 3.5 GHz for PS5, 3.8 GHz for XBox Series X) and pretty strong Navi 2 gpus. PS5 looks to have something between 2070 and 2080 while Series X something between 2080 and 2080 Ti.

Don’t think the PS3 nearly bankrupted them It was more PS is the only thing keeping Sony afloat and the PS3 not doing too hot put them in danger

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

24 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Don’t think the PS3 nearly bankrupted them It was more PS is the only thing keeping Sony afloat and the PS3 not doing too hot put them in danger

 

Those things were ridiculously expensive to make early on though. They were taking huge losses on every console sold for a while.

[Lord Vile]

4 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Those things were ridiculously expensive to make early on though. They were taking huge losses on every console sold for a while.

What they all do. They did it with the PS3 to win the format war with HDDVD

[Intergalacticbits]

I think anyone would say better graphics are always good but will that sell more consoles then they have in the past?

I don't think so.

 

People get bored with stuff, especially when it is only slightly different from the last generation.

I think that is the biggest problem for them.  How can they increase profits by cutting their costs but also make people want to buy the newest console in crazy big numbers?

 

I think their business goals conflict with and diminish what excites the consumers.

So that is the problem they try to solve while we keep getting more bored and less likely to buy.

 

I dropped out after the 360 and never went back.  I probably never will because of those reasons.  The manufacturers surely want the consoles to shrink to the size of a tiny streaming box. 

 

While I would want them to evolve into a box that is just the opposite.  Having cool texture and designed look with metal and stuff that makes it feel quality.

Have a user interface that can be customized for adults so it would not be so kiddy looking.  If you know what I mean.

Plus a bunch of other stuff that would all increase their production costs and I would want it to be cheaper to buy with all that good stuff.

 

Definitely not going to happen. 

 

Man I wish I ran one of these big companies so I could make some cool stuff that would make people go nuts.   

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, Intergalacticbits said:

I think anyone would say better graphics are always good but will that sell more consoles then they have in the past?

I don't think so.

 

People get bored with stuff, especially when it is only slightly different from the last generation.

I think that is the biggest problem for them.  How can they increase profits by cutting their costs but also make people want to buy the newest console in crazy big numbers?

 

I think their business goals conflict with and diminish what excites the consumers.

So that is the problem they try to solve while we keep getting more bored and less likely to buy.

 

I dropped out after the 360 and never went back.  I probably never will because of those reasons.  The manufacturers surely want the consoles to shrink to the size of a tiny streaming box. 

 

While I would want them to evolve into a box that is just the opposite.  Having cool texture and designed look with metal and stuff that makes it feel quality.

Have a user interface that can be customized for adults so it would not be so kiddy looking.  If you know what I mean.

Plus a bunch of other stuff that would all increase their production costs and I would want it to be cheaper to buy with all that good stuff.

 

Definitely not going to happen. 

 

Man I wish I ran one of these big companies so I could make some cool stuff that would make people go nuts.   

I game exclusively in PCs instead of consoles for a simple reason: controllers suck.  That’s really about it.   There are other various niceties as well, but the killer app for me is mouse behavior.  Vector controllers are awful. 

[JZStudios]

11 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Hell Origins on Black ops 2 on the 360 looked better than most Xbone games at launch.

It definitively did not. Black Ops 2 didn't even look good at it's own launch, just like every other COD game. Spoken like someone who truly doesn't know what he's talking about.

11 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Have you watched a Pixar film in the last 10 years? Watch the opening to toy story 4, that is better than ANY video game, hell even braves hair is amazing and that’s 8 years old.

Did you read the comment that I posted? Uncharted 4 has animated Nate chest hair that blows in the wind and gets dragged down by water.

 

11 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

My eye is largely gone, but some still remains.

...You should probably see a doctor about that.

11 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

There was ray tracing done in that game.  A lot of it.   It merely wasn’t done real time, but was baked into the backgrounds.  This is a major failing of real time ray tracing.  For stuff that either doesn’t move, or moves in a preset pattern, it just isn’t needed.

 

I would replace “naturally” with “by dint of massive computation”.  Ray tracing has potential advantages with randomly moving objects.  It’s very possible to minimize such things though in game design.  Exodus has very atmospheric sets.  Very little in this sets actually move in a non set pattern though.  Most of the time it’s just the player character’s weapon and some water reflections. 
 

What genuinely systemic ray tracing could do is change the play areas so more things could move dynamically.  The look of games would change.  So there is a LOT of potential.  It needs that 6x boost to do it though.   There’s just too much math involved.

 

 

...which is exactly what I said... 

 

Except for the real time weather simulation that changes dynamically and effects the color of rays and the brightness. Interior scenes especially are vastly improved, and NPC weapons are also dynamic. There's also the DLC that added a flame thrower that has vastly improved lighting over standard deferred rendering.

[Lord Vile]

25 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

It definitively did not. Black Ops 2 didn't even look good at it's own launch, just like every other COD game. Spoken like someone who truly doesn't know what he's talking about.

Did you read the comment that I posted? Uncharted 4 has animated Nate chest hair that blows in the wind and gets dragged down by water.

 

...You should probably see a doctor about that.

...which is exactly what I said... 

 

Except for the real time weather simulation that changes dynamically and effects the color of rays and the brightness. Interior scenes especially are vastly improved, and NPC weapons are also dynamic. There's also the DLC that added a flame thrower that has vastly improved lighting over standard deferred rendering.

It was literally the only bit of Blops 2 that looked good and for a 360 game it looked pretty great. You probably haven’t even played the map.
 

Your point? Go watch brave, they literally had a team of animators just for the hair. Games just don’t come close to animation even from the mid 2000’s. You seem to be in love with uncharted and it’s not even the best looking game around. I’d take Arkham knight over UC4 on visuals and that was released a year earlier. Never night newer graphical powerhouses like SoTR

[JZStudios]

5 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

It was literally the only bit of Blops 2 that looked good and for a 360 game it looked pretty great. You probably haven’t even played the map.
 

Your point? Go watch brave, they literally had a team of animators just for the hair. Games just don’t come close to animation even from the mid 2000’s. You seem to be in love with uncharted and it’s not even the best looking game around. I’d take Arkham knight over UC4 on visuals and that was released a year earlier.

Great. I don't care. I mentioned nothing about the movie, I don't know why you brought it up. It has hair, fantastic.

Whatever. You've clearly been in the industry and I'm just a big dumb dumb.

7 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Never night newer graphical powerhouses like SoTR

What?

[Lord Vile]

30 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Great. I don't care. I mentioned nothing about the movie, I don't know why you brought it up. It has hair, fantastic.

Whatever. You've clearly been in the industry and I'm just a big dumb dumb.

What?

You brought up Pixar and their “goofy characters”. It’s really not, it’s still a video game, it has nothing on actual studio quality animation. It’s good for what it is but claiming it’s close to an actual animation studio is laughable. Probably why you had to compare it to a 25 year old movie which was the first computer animated movie instead of anything remotely modern. 
 

Play SoTR, go into the jungle, max settings in HDR. Makes UC4 look last gen. 

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, JZStudios said:

It definitively did not. Black Ops 2 didn't even look good at it's own launch, just like every other COD game. Spoken like someone who truly doesn't know what he's talking about.

Did you read the comment that I posted? Uncharted 4 has animated Nate chest hair that blows in the wind and gets dragged down by water.

 

...You should probably see a doctor about that.

...which is exactly what I said... 

 

Except for the real time weather simulation that changes dynamically and effects the color of rays and the brightness. Interior scenes especially are vastly improved, and NPC weapons are also dynamic. There's also the DLC that added a flame thrower that has vastly improved lighting over standard deferred rendering.

Not really, at least as I read it.  It may have been what you meant though, in which case we agree.

 

As for the “eye” thing I was referring to the artists eye.  Artistic skill is traditionally divided into the “eye” and the “hand”.  The hand gets rusty much faster than the eye does but they both age.  One unrelated example of eye is if you spend a lot of time doing life drawing you can sometimes recognize small skeletal deformities in strangers.  I could usually tell if someone has one limb shorter than the other or has scoliosis.  A lot of medical professionals can do that one with more skill.  Comes from looking at a lot of anatomy.  

[Ship1617]

On 5/1/2020 at 9:54 AM, kaiju_wars said:

 

But for the PS5 and Xbox Series X... Microsoft have the more powerful console.  Looking at the specs they have, if they can hit sub $600 (hell even $600) for the specs they're offering, I think that's really exciting.

Ya the new specs are exciting and all, but I often find myself staring at my game selection just thinking about how bored I am. PC has a lot more developers developing games so you can almost always find something interesting to play. Console has some main developers that create these games that become repetitive and cannot keep people happy. I've always been excited for new consoles, this year....I don't care to waste my money on consoles anymore.