When will we reach the point that graphics and performance will no longer be a important aspect of a game?

[xXPCMotherDunker69Xx]

gameplay and story are already pretty important, but when will we reach the point that shit optimisation will be acceptable, graphics will be perfected and story and gameplay will be the most important aspects, and maybe just AI ghost writers?... the future of gaming is a weird and a still developing one.

[aisle9]

AI ghost writers, sure. Perfected graphics? Not as long as Jayz2Cents is around to bitch about them.

[emosun]

About 10 years ago when games looked similar to todays games but then you wouldnt be purchasing new crap which for nvidia is a no no.

[Mihle]

Story ang gameplay is the most important thing today and have been for a while.

 

But graphics will never reach "perfect". I hope it continues to improve as much as possible.

[Gimmick21]

3 hours ago, xXPCMotherDunker69Xx said:

gameplay and story are already pretty important, but when will we reach the point that shit optimisation will be acceptable, graphics will be perfected and story and gameplay will be the most important aspects, and maybe just AI ghost writers?... the future of gaming is a weird and a still developing one.

It depends on the games.

Nobody wants Super Mario in realistic graphics, or other side scroller, top-down-hack&slay, card games (like hearthstone) or shooters. Shooting perfectly real NPCs? No, thanks.

 

But perfectly real racing/flight sims? Hell yeah!

 

That beeing said: Some games already reached "perfect" graphics. They look like art without any flickering or glitches or stuttering. For most games the "perfect graphics" would be something that makes perfectly sense to the players brain, is eyepleasing and without any bugs.

[Kronoton]

Wrong question.

 

Right question: When will even big studios have trouble justifying the cost with creating all those GFX assets needed to fully load a RTXxx90 on an AAA titley the know will sell in 8 figures.

 

Already the case for anything considered "Indy" and even those often run in the millions.

 

AI might mitigate the issue in which case we might have to wait till we can't tell if a cutscene is prerecorded of done in-engine.

[Blue4130]

12 hours ago, xXPCMotherDunker69Xx said:

gameplay and story are already pretty important, but when will we reach the point that shit optimisation will be acceptable, graphics will be perfected and story and gameplay will be the most important aspects, and maybe just AI ghost writers?... the future of gaming is a weird and a still developing one.

Shit optimization will never be acceptable. Why would anyone ever think that is ok?

[thrasher_565]

there stagnation in games now. nothing really pushing anything atm. just remakes.

when people stop buying the broken games... or spending $90 a game...

vr would be the way to go but too costly for most and still not many games.

[ToboRobot]

Game engines will continue to get more complex and increase the realism of simulation as hardware gets better.

I can't wait for atomic physics engines with fully destructible environments and I have been waiting for over 20 years.

[tikker]

3 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

I can't wait for atomic physics engines with fully destructible environments and I have been waiting for over 20 years.

Still waiting for this to come back. I miss mowing down palm trees in Crysis.

 

11 hours ago, Gimmick21 said:

It depends on the games.

Nobody wants Super Mario in realistic graphics, or other side scroller, top-down-hack&slay, card games (like hearthstone) or shooters. Shooting perfectly real NPCs? No, thanks.

And even then comparing something like Sunshine to Galaxy to Oddysey we can see that even the cartoonish style games can make good use of improvements of graphical capabilities.

 

15 hours ago, xXPCMotherDunker69Xx said:

when will we reach the point that shit optimisation will be acceptable

In spirit never, in practise... we deal with it and complain on forums if it gets too bad.

15 hours ago, xXPCMotherDunker69Xx said:

graphics will be perfected

This will vary with games for me. For one game that could mean perfect realism, while for others something that just fits the vibe. Something like Gris or Abzu have nearly "perfect" graphics, despite their simplicity. It simply suits the games well. For RE4 Remake the character models look amazing, but you could argue that because shrubbery and such was "compromised" on the graphics are far from perfect, even though the game still looks great.

15 hours ago, xXPCMotherDunker69Xx said:

and story and gameplay will be the most important aspects

They kind of already are, but for me it again falls in the "it depends" category. You can have the most beautiful game in the Universe, but if there is no gameplay or story it is little more than a tech demo. Doom Eternal is super linear and while Doom guy's story is cool, I wouldn't call it super interesting in the sense of complex and deep, but gameplay is absolutely killer. Stuff like The Last of Us has the opposite. Gameplay is your basic standard shooty bang bang with some resources and crafting mixed in, but the story and graphics are great. Things like the Far Cry series or the recent Assassin's Creed games look good, but may feel repetitive, because they are the Nth installment of the same concept and story in a different world/setting.

[tkitch]

17 hours ago, emosun said:

About 10 years ago when games looked similar to todays games but then you wouldnt be purchasing new crap which for nvidia is a no no.

if you really think games from 2013 look like today's titles?  
I have questions about your eyesight.

[ToboRobot]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

Still waiting for this to come back. I miss mowing down palm trees in Crysis.

 

 

Red Faction blew my mind, I've been waiting for that sort of gameplay to return.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Faction_(video_game)

[emosun]

1 hour ago, tkitch said:

if you really think games from 2013 look like today's titles?  
I have questions about your eyesight.

and if you think gta5 looks like pong from the 70s then i have zero questions for you

[tkitch]

36 minutes ago, emosun said:

and if you think gta5 looks like pong from the 70s then i have zero questions for you

your logic leap just went somewhere into outer space.  LOLWUT.

[emosun]

8 minutes ago, tkitch said:

your logic leap just went somewhere into outer space.  LOLWUT.

oh I'm sorry are you the majority shareholder in game graphics futures or something? Or are we just on nvidias payroll and need to get our buy-a-bunch-of-crap quotas up.

solid member of the lens flare in an fps community i suppose

[tkitch]

13 minutes ago, emosun said:

oh I'm sorry are you the majority shareholder in game graphics futures or something? Or are we just on nvidias payroll and need to get our buy-a-bunch-of-crap quotas up.

solid member of the lens flare in an fps community i suppose

And you wouldn't know how to have a reasonable conversation if you were paid to.

[Kisai]

21 hours ago, xXPCMotherDunker69Xx said:

gameplay and story are already pretty important, but when will we reach the point that shit optimisation will be acceptable, graphics will be perfected and story and gameplay will be the most important aspects, and maybe just AI ghost writers?... the future of gaming is a weird and a still developing one.

That was reached in 1991. The problem isn't the graphics, it has never been about graphics. The problem has always been about meeting peoples expectations on the platform.

 

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Super Nintendo was the only game console ever created in the 90's, and nothing else was invented to play games on that didn't have the same visual and audio quality of the SNES (so basically the GBA, Wonderswan Color and Game Gear might have existed, but are all less capable than the SNES.)  Advancements in expansion chips and storage capacity would eventually lead to much larger, probably multi-banked games.  So fast forward to the advent of the "3D accelerator", the SNES would be on SuperFX 4 or something, effectively having a 64-bit SoC plugged into a 16-bit console that just provides the I/O and power. The entire limiting factor of the SNES is the 256x256 resolution it uses. There is no need for a higher resolution, because the NTSC television it's expected to be played on doesn't support anything higher than 480i (240p) anyway.

 

So let's assume absolutely nothing between the SNES and the iPhone was invented. Now suddenly there is a real competitor in the mobile space, takes up a lot less space, and has the visual fidelity far surpassing the SNES (the original iphone was 320 pixels wide by 480 pixels tall. So it effectively could port SNES games to it with zero loss in resolution. Might look a ugly due to aspect ratio.) No physical cartridges, so now things are 100 times cheaper to distribute. The SNES, up to this point was making massive amounts of money, and then it suddenly drops to zero as this new device sucks makes things impossibly cheap to develop for.

 

If you were a SNES developer, you'd have to switch gears really quick to adapt, or you are going out of business.

 

So everyone hops on the iPhone train, sure the device is 3 times more expensive, but the games now start at $2 each instead of $60 like the SNES. Everyone loses their mind and wants to get their software/shoveware/games/apps/tools/toys on it. 

 

Now the expectation from thereon is that if your game isn't on the iPhone, you don't want to to make money at all.

 

This is effectively how the world works. Whoever owns the market, makes the rules. So if you own the market and everything on that platform is a 16-bit color palette 256x256 pixel style graphics with 16-bit midi-style music, you can't make something that isn't. That's not what people want on that platform. 

 

This is why mobile games are generally lootbox-gacha-microtransaction hellholes. That is the expectation for that platform. That was never the expectation for the any other platform. Yes, the DS/3DS/Wii/WiiU/Steam/PS3/Xbox360 jumped onto some stupid microtransactions, but the overall expectation from these other platforms is that you are buying a complete game, where as a mobile game you are buying a "live service" that may be taken away from you at any time.

 

So to go back to the question itself. When would we reach a point where graphics and performance don't matter. And the answer to that is simple. Never. As long as there is some improvement to be had in performance, there will be a push to squeeze more performance out of the platform without dragging the visual and audio quality down, or making the input tedius.

 

I'm sure you've run into the occasional game that, despite having been released a decade ago, still performs terribly on existing hardware.  This is because CPU's haven't really "gotten faster" except in synthetic benchmarks. CPU's selectively overclock themselves for a few seconds, long enough to make a benchmark go "hey yeah this runs 20% faster than the last CPU", but in game performance, only has maybe a 2% improvement. Because most games have been designed, for better or for worse, to work on a dual-core 1Ghz processor, because the power management will turn it into that, even when it's not Intel U-series chip.

 

The GPU has been the sole deciding factor for games since DirectX9. Which came out in 2002. You can, today, build a game that targets DirectX9, and you will again be crippled to having limited shader support. When you build a game to target Vulkan or DirectX12, you've made a conscious decision to minmax the hardware, and thus a dual or even a quad core processor might actually be insufficient to drive a high end GPU. With the Intel 12th gen parts, a new monkey wrench has been thrown in where not all cores are performance cores, and if a game decides to use the non-performance cores, you might get some very weird results.

 

So the overall answer is, we already hit a point in the 90's where we had an expectation, and then 3D threw everything out with the bathwater and we had to start over building up a decades worth GPU technology before we reached a stable expectation across all platforms.

 

So you might not care that overall there has been no improvement in graphics since 2010 (When DX11 was released, but most games were still using DX9.) But developers do. 4K screens have been around, 3D Televisions have been around, HDR has been around, Raytracing has been around, VR has been around, and all of these are competing in the "What is the best use of the GPU power" contest. For me, a 4K experience is notably better than a 1080p experience, but the tradeoff often isn't worth it if the game was not designed to have a native 4K UI. Like there are a few games where , yes, they allow you to select 4K rendering, but the GUI ends up being microscopic and unusable at 4K. But would a I prefer a 1080p experience that gives me Raytracing and HDR? No, not really.

 

And I think that's the problem in asking the question. We already, multiple times, have hit points where things were good enough. The difference between the Atari 2600 and the NES was night and day, and likewise between the NES and the SNES, but nothing after the SNES was as big of a leap, and in fact despite the GBA having a more powerful CPU, it had a much less capable GPU than the SNES, with as much as a third resolution and half the audio quality. If you played a GBA port of a SNES game, you were always disappointed by the washed out colors and gross lossy audio. Yet, games produced for it originally? You got exactly what you expected.

 

To that end, we've seen that happen in the PC and Console space. A new console is released, and it's not significantly "better" than the last one, but because some parts are better, we can get a better experience from it. A PS3, PS4 and PS5 are not remarkably different in CPU performance, only GPU performance, so a game ported from the PS2 to the PS3, PS4 and PS5 effectively unchanged, still feels like the PS2 game, only now maybe runs at 1080p60. It still has those low-poly models of the PS2.

 

What I expect (and have largely seen this in the Vtuber space, both in Live2D and 3D models) is that we might see a change in priorities to high-detail game models that actually look nice when seen from the front close up, and not merely their backsides (in third person,) or never (as in FPS games.) So there will always be some room to improve as long as GPU power doesn't plateau. 

 

A game released in 2010 that runs in 1080p60 then, still looks fine today, and if you are immersed in the story and not seeing ugly pixelated textures on a high polygon model, you might be fine where we are.

 

But when you see this, you're kinda like... what... what the crap is that?

This is from FFXIV. A game originally released in 2010. Overall the game is fine, but then you get into a cutscene that zooms up close to some characters and suddenly they're wearing a 32 pixel towel.

 

 

[emosun]

4 hours ago, tkitch said:

And you wouldn't know how to have a reasonable conversation if you were paid to.

hey if you want to pay people to talk about how great new crap is they're trying to sell you than i'd suggest floatplane.

[tkitch]

@Kisaiis correct.

 

Look at most SNES Games, they look like absolute ass.  Pixelated messes, because that's what the console could do.

 

BUT then look at Super Mario RPG?  HOLY SHIT did that look amazing!  

 

AS for FF14:  Exactly.  There's a reason you can find mods for graphics upgrades for the game (that you're not supposed to use) that are literally more than 400% the size of the game itself.

[Spindel]

We have allready reached the point where graphics aren’t important in games.

 

Unfortunally a big chunk of the population are magpies that are attracted to shiny things instead of gameplay which makes big developers keep focusing on graphics detail (that you won’t notice anyway if you actually play the game) instead of solid gameplay.

 

Indies are where it’s at generally nowadays (and then big publishers some times schock us with titles like Bethesdas Hi-Fi Rush).

[Montana One-Six]

16 hours ago, tkitch said:

if you really think games from 2013 look like today's titles?  
I have questions about your eyesight.

I do agree with the general statement @emosun made but I would push the date up a few years and say in the last 8 years (since ~2015) there haven't been much graphical improvements compared to the 8 years prior (~2007 to ~2015). If you look at the last 20-25 years of gaming. From ~2000 to ~2015 the graphics generally got noticeably better each year at least on PC. Since ~2015 there hasn't been that much of an advancement in that regard imo. Sure games form today usually look better than games form ~2015 in screencaps but if you are actually playing you will not notice that whereas in games from before ~2015 you noticed that even when playing.

 

Some examples:

BF3 and BF4 still look good even today. Compared to newer BF games the graphical advancement isn't nearly as apparent than compared to older ones like Bad Comapny 2.

 

Tomb Raider 2013 looks dated compared to Rise of the Tomb Raider which is only 2.5 years younger. Now if you look at RotTR and compare that to the 2.5 years newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider the graphical difference isn't nearly as apparent.

[8tg]

Our current technology is capable of making a playable game that looks and feels like a conventional “real life”.

Think Squad with top of the line animations and the most up to date graphical engine and a massive development team making it look pretty. It’s by all means possible.

But very few people actually want that and making something like that is insanely expensive and time consuming. There’s more to “graphics” than realistic effects and lighting.

I highly advise looking at Noodle’s video on why the Halo remaster sucks visually. You can add all the fancy textures and lighting and different geometry if you want, it isn’t the same result as what’s given by true artistic intent. 
You can make CSGO look like real life, the engine is capable of it, grass blowing in the wind, set your RTX 4090 on fire Ray tracing and all. Except there’s a reason why some objects on Dust 2 have seemingly out of place positioning and coloring. There’s a reason why there’s big red arrows pointing you towards bomb sites. There’s a reason the character models are designed with aggressively chunky and contrasty geometry and texturing. 
Advance graphics don’t always make a good game visually, it’s a game, not the real world.

 

As well “realism” doesn’t have to be high fidelity, check out Unrecord:

This game manages realism not by super high resolution detail and effects, nothing super special is happening behind the scenes graphically. What makes this look like actual real life is:

1) perspective

2) animation and movement

3) filtering

4) sound design

5) world design

Basically making the game look like it’s bodycam footage, the rusting of clothes when running, microphone peaking causing distortion with gunshots, blur, slowly reacting contrast like a cheap cameras auto exposure adjustment, washed out coloring and inconsistent lighting. The world of sorts it’s in is designed to look messy, not exactly detailed, but messy. And messy covers up a lot of the visual indicators of “video game”. You can’t see perfectly smooth transitions between planes off wall-floor when there’s a pile of blurry garbage in the way and flaking paint on the walls. Take the filtering, perspective, and animation away and what you have is a fairly regular shooter that would have a similar level of graphical fidelity as any other semi modern shooter.

 

So to answer your question, I don’t think it will ever happen, because graphics aren’t something that needs to improve for all of video gaming to get better in any way. Some games lend themselves to visual design that’s based around the technical level of detail. But most games don’t. 

If rockstar never released GTA IV, and just sat on that finished product until today, and released it as is for current platforms. People would of course rip on the fact that it looks like a game from 2008. It’s 15 years graphically out of date, the animations are sloppy at times, vehicles are floaty, material deformation is oldschool design…

but it’s still a masterpiece of story, character design, gameplay and world building. It would still be praised for its strong points rather than its theoretically 15 year out of date graphics. The graphics aren’t nearly as important as a fun to play game.

[Giganthrax]

Eventually, realistic game graphics will look basically undistinguishable from real life. I'd say we're definitely going to get this sometime in the next 20-30 years or so.

 

Since processing power is unlikely to max out in the same way (you cant really make a game more detailed than real life), we're eventually going to reach a point where a device's performance is no longer a factor when it comes to running games that look exactly the same as real life. When this will happen, who knows, but I wouldnt be shocked if it happens during our lifetimes.

[97hummer]

To me that’s already possible and has been for long time, but that will be down to the individual players. My favorite game is Rimworld with its basic graphics and it’s not very well optimized but it doesn’t need to be any better to me as I enjoy every bit of it as I make my own stories. 

[Quackers101]

Performance will always be a mess the next 5-10 years, until they find something to make things easier to run.

So would assume maybe 10 years or so, as there is so many parts that is changing or evolving. Maybe 20 years if one wants every aspect of todays gaming, if not one are just cloud gaming at that point.

 

As there is physics and simulation to be considered, then there is AI systems, NPCs, etc.

For graphics, 4K resolution or to that of VR, scaling, how much in your scene is needed to reach "realism", textures and if there is changes needed, lights, shadows, details, shaders, etc. As beyond a certain range, details not being visible or low resolution wouldnt matter, and as we see with micro mesh, to nanite in unreal.

When there is less pop-in, less noise, and a stable experience. One could also add foveated rendering to the mix and good screens/panels to run all of this.

 

So yes, tech is not there yet. It sort of can be, but still far away for a average consumer, but then games can change too, needing more stuff to process.

Depending on game, standards, and so on.