Graphics in games

[LiamApex]

So we are at the point now where games are looking realistic enough but will they ever get to the stage where they are realistic to the scratches and dust particles and if so when we get there what will happen to the likes of nvidia and amd becuase a New gpu wont be needed surely becuase you cant make graphics better that what we see evryday right ?

[Jack.EXE]

So we are at the point now where games are looking realistic enough but will they ever get to the stage where they are realistic to the scratches and dust particles and if so when we get there what will happen to the likes of nvidia and amd becuase a New gpu wont be needed surely becuase you cant make graphics better that what we see evryday right ?

 

There are many other ways to increase the visual fidelity of an image vs more polygons & higher res textures.

Like bigger maps.

Longer LODs

Higher Resolutions

There will always be a need for higher framerates.

 

But as for the will they?

Gaming visuals are an asymptotical curve, meaning that they will never reach the 0 (an asymptote is caused by dividing by 0, which results in infinity, but getting closer and closer to does not, as long as you dont hit 0 itself)

But you have to cross uncanny valley first.

[SeanBond]

Of course, I believe in 10 year games will be indiscernible from reality. Look at crysis 3 screen shots. If you look at them on a phone the screen shots of characters look like pictures. And that game is 2 years old. Think about where we were 10 years ago from that.

[theodoro]

You can't make it "realistic enough" (at least we are not going to see anything like that in our lives). The technology of displays will change and Nvidia & AMD will have to create new hardware as well. 
However i think VR is going to be future of gaming... 

Interesting topic though...

[Lord Pantaloons]

we aren't there yet

[LiamApex]

Of course, I believe in 10 year games will be indiscernible from reality. Look at crysis 3 screen shots. If you look at them on a phone the screen shots of characters look like pictures. And that game is 2 years old. Think about where we were 10 years ago from that.

exactly so it will get to the point where they will have to start making somthing else

[Guest]

Holy fuck, punctuation please.

With that out of the way, games are still far off from looking "realistic". Textures are still just that, textures. If you come close enough they will look worse, grass still looks terrible in many games, etc. We won't hit a wall in terms of graphics any time soon, especially with higher res displays.

[Briggsy]

if you use the 90/10 analogy, where the first 90% takes 10% of the effort, and the last 10% takes 90% of the effort, we are definitely in the last 10% for computer graphics. every improvement now is minuscule and barely noticable, and takes a lot of horsepower to pull off. 

 

The whole industry is rapidly moving toward wearable tech and augmented reality. AMD have come right out and said they are investing heavily in that sector, so has Nvidia. Intel are a wild card but you can bet they have a lot of back room research going on. Augmented reality is the natural progression, so these companies are not going to stop any time soon.

[SpaceCore]

I'm expecting to see more realism. even if it is not due to a higher pixel count.

I thought Crysis was impossible. I expected a minimum of 5 more years before we got to see something like that.

 

also, this talk is about the future. It's hard to predict because some technologies aren't even developed yet that might be added into the current mix of "visual techs".

Like if you go back in time and tell a cotton farmer that in 20 years they would have huge machines powered by fossile fuels that did the job of the slaves much more efficiently than they do. he'd call you crazy for sure

[Johannes_Lazor]

Id say The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter are pretty near real already..

[undeadchicken]

If only they could start making better stories again though, remember when having 10 hour stories was considered short? (Final fantasy series, mgs, etc...) In my personal opinion I think devs focus too much on graphics nowadays and not enough on gameplay / story and definitely not on innovation (except the odd company)

[LiamApex]

if you use the 90/10 analogy, where the first 90% takes 10% of the effort, and the last 10% takes 90% of the effort, we are defintitely in the last 10% for computer graphics. every improvement now is minuscule and barely noticable, and takes a lot of horsepower to pull off. 

 

The whole industry is rapidly moving toward wearable tech and augmented reality. AMD have come right out and said they are investing heavily in that sector, so has Nvidia. Intel are a wild card but you can bet they have a lot of back room research going on. Augmented reality is the natural progression, so these companies are not going to stop any time soon.

thats true but nvidia and amds cards will advance so much that they will be able to do 4k like a gtx980 can play 90's games 

[profesorfrink42]

Something I think still needs a bit more of though put into it (optimization, mostly) is hair and clothing physics. This isn't exactly graphics, but it really adds to the experience.

 

Also, a better and more natural DoF implementation. The human eye can't perfectly see all the details of an object that's (relatively) far away. If I look at the wall that's 5m from me I see it flat, without any imperfections. As I come closer, I can start to see speckles and imperfections on the painting.

 

I haven't really seen any game that does this correctly: it's either full details from any distance or a crap ton of blur in anything that's not a 30º viewcone.

[LurzKesh1138]

I honestly think texture quality is already good enough, what I think needs to catch up animation quality. I mean I've still never seen a game that can accurately represent how a mouth actually works. Also, lighting quality, I don't feel like it's very realistic, and most of the time it just looks like i turned my brightness down

[LiamApex]

I honestly think texture quality is already good enough, what I think needs to catch up animation quality. I mean I've still never seen a game that can accurately represent how a mouth actually works. Also, lighting quality, I don't feel like it's very realistic, and most of the time it just looks like i turned my brightness down

yeaa i know what you mean but do you think there will be a point when all of theese things are perfect

[undeadchicken]

Something I think still needs a bit more of though put into it (optimization, mostly) is hair and clothing physics. This isn't exactly graphics, but it really adds to the experience.

Also, a better and more natural DoF implementation. The human eye can't perfectly see all the details of an object that's (relatively) far away. If I look at the wall that's 5m from me I see it flat, without any imperfections. As I come closer, I can start to see speckles and imperfections on the painting.

I haven't really seen any game that does this correctly: it's either full details from any distance or a crap ton of blur in anything that's not a 30º viewcone.

The best implementation of the physics is through physX but as we know Nvidia won't share this with AMD, this won't advance very far and so will probably cause a halt in thay industry until cpus are able to do with little to no performance hits like a gpu sucks that patents ruin the industry.

As for effects like that I think the dof thing (and heck even motion blur) could be done better but will be limited due to the fact its artificial

[ManOfDisguise]

But what if...real life will be a video game/video games. You know you will have your keyboard and mouse and your monitor will be your window and you will be controlling characters and the environment will be the real world outside of that window or some twisted thing like that

[undeadchicken]

But what if...real life will be a video game/video games. You know you will have your keyboard and mouse and your monitor will be your window and you will be controlling characters and the environment will be the real world outside of that window or some twisted thing like that

So like the sims adverts?

[LiamApex]

So like the sims adverts?

haHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA

[Zweihander]

There will always be a need for higher framerates.

 

Not when "WE" are in the game.

[undeadchicken]

Not when "WE" are in the game.

But the eye cant see more than 30fps right anyway right? #sarcasm#

[Klerk]

Having a bit of experience with 3d rendering I could say that we are still so far away from being close to realism. A lot of lighting effects in game are mostly pre-baked and not rendered real time and shadows are close to being realistic. It usually takes hours to render a single frame of 3d renders with realistic lighting and 3d rendering engines are still improving so I doubt we will come to a point where gaming graphics doesn't get better.

[LiamApex]

Having a bit of experience with 3d rendering I could say that we are still so far away from being close to realism. A lot of lighting effects in game are mostly pre-baked and not rendered real time and shadows are close to being realistic. It usually takes hours to render a single frame of 3d renders with realistic lighting and 3d rendering engines are still improving so I doubt we will come to a point where gaming graphics doesn't get better.

hmmm not in our gaming lifetimes then ?

[undeadchicken]

Having a bit of experience with 3d rendering I could say that we are still so far away from being close to realism. A lot of lighting effects in game are mostly pre-baked and not rendered real time and shadows are close to being realistic. It usually takes hours to render a single frame of 3d renders with realistic lighting and 3d rendering engines are still improving so I doubt we will come to a point where gaming graphics doesn't get better.

I come from the same background and know this to be true. Even after hours of rendering, there are imperfections such as fireflies etc and heavy calculations such as volumetrics and physics in most cases... whilst game data relies on pre baked maps, animations and often volumes for physics etc... even things like subsurface scattering is only just becoming optimised for games and thats really only on higher end pcs

[Klerk]

hmmm not in our gaming lifetimes then ?

I can't really say since I have no idea on how fast graphics tech will move forward in the future. All I can say is that it will take a pretty long while to get somewhere where we can't tell what's real and computer generated. Though graphics in games today are pretty good visually and it will only get better so I would not worry.