Will games ever look realistic?

[CookiezFort]

I can only think of Kojima Productions since they uploaded a video about it. I don't know about other developers who do this or mentioned using 3D scanning. Maybe the guys at Activision since Kevin Spacey's looks like Kevin Spacey albeit video game-ified along with Bioware inserting er... Jessica Chobot?

 

Anyway, I think we will get to a point where games look like real-life. The big question is when. For me, as games are another form of art, it's how well we can trick others into believing it's real. Photos, portraits, etc., are just illusions created by pixels, lines, and different colors. My only issue is when games involve more aquatic life... I have a phobia of fish so it'll be a problem for me. That said, I hope that other art styles don't die out. We need more Transistors, Child of Lights, and Wind Wakers.

i know 2 more games and they are simulators (racing). iRacing and Assetto Corsa both use laser scanning

[Almercenary]

I think we're closer than we think. I saw a thing on LA:Noire and it was amazing all the stuff like facial expressions that they could use. I think power and the actual engines are holding stuff back.  Hardware in general. PC's consoles just aren't powerful enough. I think it will be a lot longer before we see it on mainstream, but games like ArmA and rFactor ect may be early adopters. Sim's in general.

[wng_kingsley7]

But I think we have hit a point where the game devs wont go much higher unless they need to sure the quality got much much betetr because hardware got faster but think about how long it takes to model all the game assets and texture them and all that then try and 10x the detail.

Well then...they're open to joining the console to the pc. I don't see why bungie/343 ind hasn't done so.

[exyia]

hardly any of this is on the game developers

 

creating "realistic" graphics is still a matter of interpreting "visuals" - lighting, color, shadows, how they all interact...not to mention the advanced particles like fire and water

 

give the best people in the world the strongest supercomputer in the world and it wouldn't matter - nobody thus far has been able to 100% accurately "translate" how something complex like water or fire acts in terms of math (for a computer to render)

 

lighting is at the point where it's easy now. just wikipedia all those fancy settings you see in games to see what they actually are - you can find full descriptions and formulas on how something like "SSAO" or "Volumetric Lighting" etc etc works. It's amazing how people have managed to translate the intricacies of light and shadows into formulas of math.

 

but really advanced stuff like water and fire? jeez, just thinking about it hurts my head

 

nvidia is actually pushing these technologies and development (haven't seen AMD do anything remotely impactful or interesting since TressFX) - all that boring stuff that most people here are probably skipping over in their press conferences - that stuff is important to making graphics development EASIER for the end developer. stuff like real-time lighting and illumination - stuff like that had to be done BY HAND

[LawrenceBarnes2013]

so close to realizing that judging by say, Crysis3, it's not so far, a bit more work on the Anti aliasing and the other special effects like the shadows and it will hit it, but i think the question should b' would Games ever Feel Real ?

[Nineshadow]

Considering CGI is already more than fucking realistic,of course.

-This is computer generated

Also,look at this animation(computer generated too).

[Jumper118]

life is a game. it is real. games are already realistic.

[kungfury7]

I just want to talk to you guys and see what you think. Personally I don't think games will ever look realistic because the game developers won't be bothered to put that kind of detail. Think about it game trailers look super nice but theres no reason why a really high end gaming system can't look nearly as good or lets say some time from now we have computers 100 times more powerful then we have now even then will a developer want to spend 30+ hours designing a quiver of arrows that is insanely detailed for a game? I do think that the rendering side of it will look super awesome but the level of detail will never be there. This is just an example but look at Crysis 3, The rendering is pretty nice (even though its not "realistic") but there are tons of in game assets that the game developers simply did not put as much time into. One might say its for optimization reasons and sure sometimes it is but when a game has an Ultra setting in its graphics I feel as if no detail shoudl be left out and so far we have yet to see any games like that. I love watching Pixar movies and other stuff like that because sure the animation is really nice and sure the rendering is really nice but the environments are so detailed its almost like they have taken them right out of reality sometimes and I just can't see game developers putting that kind of money or time into the game.

 

As long as Nvidia and AMD keep pulling out their year long "flaccid dick" product launch competition like this, it will never reach that level.

[TheRetiredSlave]

Skyrim looks bad even when it's modded.

 

I wasn't saying that Skyrim looks as good as real life, I was saying that it can look good enough that most average people (i.e. not tech enthusiasts and/or graphics junkies) would have a hard time telling the difference between a Skyrim screenshot and a photo taken from an average camera.. I completely agree that Skyrim doesn't look anywhere near as good as a photo from a good DSLR (or in the case of the photo you posted, ray tracing) and it definitely can't come close to real life, because after all it is a game from 2011..