Are games ever going to have photorealistic graphics?

[MichaelEmouse]

There are some games which come close (e.g.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU91RqO_0fI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivoSi2VvqA and http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-...comparison.jpg) but they never seem to actually be mistakable for the real thing.


Is that failure inherent in computer graphics?

Is it simply not worth it for developers today because only computers would be able to run those games and most of the market is on 6-7 year old consoles? Might it happen in 1 or 2 console generations?

Would it be possible to film actual objects from many angles and create games out of that?

[Yorikke]

"Ever" is a very long time. So yes, eventually.

Joe

[Zabali_Clawbane]

Bear in mind, game designers have to contend with the Uncanny Valley too. There is a program that I have recently (within the past year) seen that lets you insert an image into a 3D environment that is quite realistic. I just gotta find its name again. When I find the name I will be back with information about it.

[Kinthalis]

Of course, but we're not there yet, and we won't be for a while.

The most important parts we need to improve are the very complex interactions with light we take for granted and therefore become essential in order to sell the scene as realistic. The nuance in texture detail from one object to the next, and the complexity of the 3D mesh, both in detail, and in it's ability to be modifed in real-time (desctruction).

Which bring up another important fact - animations. Animations for the ambient 3D world/scenery, the characters and the little details that come up when the two interact. Nothing breaks immersion more than swords sticking through walls, feet not angled against the terrain properly, etc.

[Zabali_Clawbane]

Ok, so I didn't remember all the details correctly, but this is still big news for the game industry too. Mind-Blowing Research Into Inserting Artificial Objects into Photographs Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs
A video explaining the method. Edit: Kinthalis, my links deal with the challenge of lighting.

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by Zabali_Clawbane

Ok, so I didn't remember all the details correctly, but this is still big news for the game industry too. Mind-Blowing Research Into Inserting Artificial Objects into Photographs Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs
A video explaining the method. Edit: Kinthalis, my links deal with the challenge of lighting.

Oh, we can do better than that.... assuming we're not talking about rendering the image in real time... actually at least 30 times per second.

That's a big limitation of games, they need to render everything, as well as update all of the engine logic (collision detection, pathfinding, animation, physics, AI, etc) multiple times per second.

We can create graphics that are a heck of a lot better than whats on games, but each frame can take hours for an entire server farm to render.

[Jragon]

Yeah, I mean once all computing is on the cloud, and by that I mean there's an atom-sized 3.5 YottaHertz processor attached to literally every water molecule in every cloud, we can have Crysis 927 which realistically simulates billions of photons every millisecond, but even the best radiosity matrices are going to look slightly off. One of the main problems with simplification of lighting is that unless you use tricks and depth limiting (which undermine quality even further), you get infinite recursion problems with reflective surfaces pointing at each other. And we're not talking about that two opposing mirror awesomeness (well, that too, but we can actually handle that pretty well nowadays), I mean how basically everything is a little reflective.

Yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit, I'm sure we'll find some trick eventually that's basically close enough that the difference is imperceptible to any human eye, but I don't think we'll have real time photo-realistic lighting in an arbitrary scene for a long time. (Also, Teeth have a long way to go, I've never seen video game, hell, CG movie teeth that didn't distract me).

[Kobal2]

I doubt it, for one simple reason: reality has clutter. Lots and lots and lots of clutter. Also uniqueness, for lack of a better word - look at, I don't know, a tiled bathroom closely and you'll see that no two of these tiles are exactly alike. But in a video game, they will be because it saves computing power. And unless they pay level designers to go over every inch of a level to add bird shit, and dead ants, and a discarded shoe, random cigarette butts, make unique textures for every square inch etc... no computer-generated environment is ever coming close to the clutter and "asymmetry" of a real one.

The Crysis still shot is a very apt demonstration of this: look at that shack. Look how it's all straight lines, clean & crisp textures, edges and flat surfaces when the real thing is all beat to shit, covered in rust and mold and water marks and whatever that white gunk is on the chicken wire fence.
And that's just the man-made stuff. I have yet to see even a single believable tree in a video game. Not one.

Look at the grass in the Crysis shot - see how every tuft is exactly the same as the one next to it ? They're forced to do this (or something close to it - Skyrim for example has multiple variants of each bit of primary flora, but not enough that you won't notice you're always seeing the same 3 bushes all the time) because otherwise the engine would have to load inordinate amount of resources just to display the fucken ground, even if artists could find the time and motivation to model hundreds of different tufts of grass. And even rendering, lighting, shading that one piece of Crysis grass in real time over and over puts most computers on their knees past a certain point.

I won't say what we've got now is the best we'll ever have, because we're still seeing tremendous progress in all fields. But I honestly doubt we'll have even a close approximation of reality - something a casual observer might mistake for a movie - any time soon.

[Rubixcube]

I think that we are going to hit the endgame for graphics advancement soon. That is to say that graphics will cease to have massive improvements in the way they have from say 2002 to today, but will instead be about shoving more particles and animations in the backgrounds. Those will make the games look better yes, but not always in an immediate way. The new Unreal demo is a good example, the graphics and environments in and of themselves are no more impressive than most of what's available today, all of the visual improvements come from real time lighting and particles. My hope is that this actually helps to avoid photo realistic graphics, I would much rather see beautiful and visually interesting worlds than an even more realistic look at the boring dirt and sand that's so common in games recently.

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by Rubixcube

I think that we are going to hit the endgame for graphics advancement soon. That is to say that graphics will cease to have massive improvements in the way they have from say 2002 to today, but will instead be about shoving more particles and animations in the backgrounds. Those will make the games look better yes, but not always in an immediate way. The new Unreal demo is a good example, the graphics and environments in and of themselves are no more impressive than most of what's available today, all of the visual improvements come from real time lighting and particles. My hope is that this actually helps to avoid photo realistic graphics, I would much rather see beautiful and visually interesting worlds than an even more realistic look at the boring dirt and sand that's so common in games recently.

You are confusing technical graphics capability with artistic design.

You can have a beautiful ruined castle in the sky with color rainbows and vast, deep green forests which look extremely "realistic", or in other words, where the graphics "sell" you on the scene.

That would be achived by a combination of the technical capabilities of an engine, and the artistic design behind it.

You seem to think that better graphics (more photo-realistic graphics) must equate to Call Of Duty clone, all grey/green world.

That's not true.

The more tools the artists have the more they can do with them, and the more they can get done. Half of what better graphics bring to the table are purely to empower the artists.

[Kinthalis]

EDIT: Oops wrong thread!

[Airk]

Originally Posted by Rubixcube

I think that we are going to hit the endgame for graphics advancement soon. That is to say that graphics will cease to have massive improvements in the way they have from say 2002 to today, but will instead be about shoving more particles and animations in the backgrounds. Those will make the games look better yes, but not always in an immediate way. The new Unreal demo is a good example, the graphics and environments in and of themselves are no more impressive than most of what's available today, all of the visual improvements come from real time lighting and particles. My hope is that this actually helps to avoid photo realistic graphics, I would much rather see beautiful and visually interesting worlds than an even more realistic look at the boring dirt and sand that's so common in games recently.

I would argue that we've pretty much already hit this as far as the 'common man' is concerned. Yes, there are graphics enthusiasts who are still very impressed with the latest bump mapping advances, and things will still look visibly better in an "all settings turned on" vs "default" side by side comparison, but fundamentally, it's just not making people stop and go "Whoa! Look at that!"

I took hope that sooner or later, we'll get over our self destructive obsession with photorealism (Hint: Film is not "photorealistic" either - untouchedup/filtered/blahed stuff on film looks like crap. Photorealism is not the goal.) and get one with making art.

[Rubixcube]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

You are confusing technical graphics capability with artistic design.

You can have a beautiful ruined castle in the sky with color rainbows and vast, deep green forests which look extremely "realistic", or in other words, where the graphics "sell" you on the scene.

That would be achived by a combination of the technical capabilities of an engine, and the artistic design behind it.

You seem to think that better graphics (more photo-realistic graphics) must equate to Call Of Duty clone, all grey/green world.

That's not true.

The more tools the artists have the more they can do with them, and the more they can get done. Half of what better graphics bring to the table are purely to empower the artists.

No, my point was that the increasingly "realistic" graphics that have become the standard will hopefully fade away once improvement rate of graphics slows. "Realistic" graphics are popular right now because they wow, but once the leaps and bounds stop they will cease to be impressive. You can see this to some extent now, with more and more gamers grumbling about the bland browns of gaming. My hope specifically is that soon once the tech on its own stops impressing more games will focus on more artistic worlds to wow in new ways.

[Jophiel]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

look at, I don't know, a tiled bathroom closely and you'll see that no two of these tiles are exactly alike. But in a video game, they will be because it saves computing power. And unless they pay level designers to go over every inch of a level to add bird shit, and dead ants, and a discarded shoe, random cigarette butts, make unique textures for every square inch etc...

Remind me to stay out of your bathroom.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

How much of this alleged "graphics improvements slow down" will be attributed to some type of diminishing returns from hardware hitting the "it can't get any smaller or faster" wall?

[Little Nemo]

I think we're getting very close: Emily.

[Terr]

To tell you the truth, when I play, I don't want "realistic" graphics. I don't have time to do it anymore, but when I played WoW, I did it to get away from reality, not to immerse myself in it. If I wanted reality, I'd step outside. The cartoonish oversaturated WoW pseudo-reality was fine.

[Rubixcube]

Originally Posted by FoieGrasIsEvil

How much of this alleged "graphics improvements slow down" will be attributed to some type of diminishing returns from hardware hitting the "it can't get any smaller or faster" wall?

I don't think it will be from a slowdown of tech advancement, rather I think it'll be from diminishing returns from the improvements themselves. Once you've got a certain number of polygons and particles in a game adding a few more will only look so much better. Yes games will continue to become more impressive visually, but eventually we'll get to a point where the average person probably won't notice. At this point I think the major hurdles will be more dynamic lighting and water effects, and it looks like the next generation of engines will be working on those areas in particular.

[Jophiel]

Originally Posted by Terr

To tell you the truth, when I play, I don't want "realistic" graphics. I don't have time to do it anymore, but when I played WoW, I did it to get away from reality, not to immerse myself in it. If I wanted reality, I'd step outside. The cartoonish oversaturated WoW pseudo-reality was fine.

I think there's a place for both. I can appreciate and enjoy art styles like those from WoW or Team Fortress 2 but some games really benefit from an immersion standpoint. I enjoyed my random wanderings in Skyrim or Fallout 3 due in large part to the realistic looking world.

[Airk]

Originally Posted by Jophiel

I think there's a place for both. I can appreciate and enjoy art styles like those from WoW or Team Fortress 2 but some games really benefit from an immersion standpoint. I enjoyed my random wanderings in Skyrim or Fallout 3 due in large part to the realistic looking world.

I would assert that both of these games would benefit from not being "realistic" so much as a sort of "superreal" that is actually LESS realistic. Gorgeous vistas, truly blighted landscapes, etc that capture the feel of realism without actually being there. And I daresay these games are actually doing it - probably the same way film is. Stepping the colors up or down, adding bloom or lens flare or 'unnatural' lighting effects, etc.

Games should aspire to film levels of realism, not to reality levels of realism. Of course, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but mostly I think we need to focus on animation more than rendering right now - most game models actually kinda look like arse in motion right now, if you look at them in any sort of objective way. There are far more 'realism' gains to be gotten there than there is in "look how realistic and well rendered our mud is".

[garygnu]

The truth is "Reality!" is getting firmware updates just as quickly as video games are improving.

[Blaster Master]

Originally Posted by Rubixcube

I don't think it will be from a slowdown of tech advancement, rather I think it'll be from diminishing returns from the improvements themselves. Once you've got a certain number of polygons and particles in a game adding a few more will only look so much better. Yes games will continue to become more impressive visually, but eventually we'll get to a point where the average person probably won't notice. At this point I think the major hurdles will be more dynamic lighting and water effects, and it looks like the next generation of engines will be working on those areas in particular.

I have to agree with this. Presumably we'll continue to have improving hardware and rendering advances that at some point in the future we'll be able to render in real time environments that are more and more difficult to distinguish from reality. It seems that for a while there as there was major advancement in graphics that game developers were more interested in trying to make their graphics hyper-realistic and they lost the sense of artistic design that makes the game interesting when those graphics become outdated or that help to cover up the flaws in the current state of the technology.

That's where the approach of something like WoW is interesting. From a technical standpoint, it's pretty far behind a lot of other games on the market, but it makes up for that with good aesthetic design. A game like Skyrim has far more realistic graphics, and it succeeds even more for very much the same reasons, because of careful aesthetic designs. Whereas some of the more modern FPS games I've seen, while surprisingly realistic, just are boring to look at

I like the comparison to movies as an end goal. Sure a movie with obviously outlandish ideas (fantasy, super heroes, etc.) can often get away with particularly grandiose effects where another movie may not, but even war movies, which one might think would benefit a lot from authenticity, have a particular aesthetic that is important to maintain.


I kind of got away from my point there. The thing is, there's a massive fall off in terms of the amount of effort to create and processing power to render when compared to the result. We're reaching the point where even doubling or quadrupling the processing power may have only barely noticeable improvements. Are people going to want to continue to shell out big bucks to upgrade their hardware every few years and to pay for more and more expanded art development? I think we're getting really close to the point of diminishing returns such that we'll start to see graphics pretty much plateau.

[Kinthalis]

I think you guys are nuts.

We are no where near the point of diminishing returns.

When games look like this during actual gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBQNtlzaomM

(Skip to 1:14).

We can talk about being close to the point of diminishing returns. Actually even then, there's plenty of room for improvement.

You do know we film live action movies in you know, the real world. Do movies like the Lord of the Rings lack artistic quality because instead of cartoon Frodo it's Elija Wood? Or because instead of polygonal-y trees with a flat green texture there are actual trees?

[Vinyl Turnip]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

I think we're getting very close: Emily.

That's pretty interesting, but even if I didn't know it was animated I'd do a double-take at a couple of points. Something disturbingly Clutch Cargo-ish about the mouth.

[Jophiel]

Originally Posted by Airk

I would assert that both of these games would benefit from not being "realistic" so much as a sort of "superreal" that is actually LESS realistic. Gorgeous vistas, truly blighted landscapes, etc that capture the feel of realism without actually being there.

That's true. And I picked two games by the same studio using the same engine so it's even more pronounced. Really, I was just expressing that there's a time and place for notably unrealistic but still appealing art styles and a time for much more "realistic" (even if artificially forced) styles.

TF2's cartoonish style, for instance, gives me a much different feeling (mainly one of "Don't take it so seriously and just have fun") than the styles used in the latest generations of military based first person shooters. Both good with their place but not really interchangable.

(And the two are not always mutually exclusive, such as FO3's retro-future aesthetic mixed with an attempt at realistic looking places/objects)

[Airk]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

I think you guys are nuts.

We are no where near the point of diminishing returns.

When games look like this during actual gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBQNtlzaomM

(Skip to 1:14).

What? The creepy cartoony uncanny valley person? I was much more interested by cool art style on the demon just before that.

I guess you're right, we have a loooong way to go.

You do know we film live action movies in you know, the real world. Do movies like the Lord of the Rings lack artistic quality because instead of cartoon Frodo it's Elija Wood? Or because instead of polygonal-y trees with a flat green texture there are actual trees?

The amount of effort that went into making Elijah Wood look less like a real person is nontrivial.

[Jragon]

Originally Posted by Vinyl Turnip

That's pretty interesting, but even if I didn't know it was animated I'd do a double-take at a couple of points. Something disturbingly Clutch Cargo-ish about the mouth.

At one point near the end they show the real Emily they filmed for a minute. Her mouth is exactly the same, so it's actually an issue with the model, not the tech. The problem with the tech is that it seems to just be a replication of exact real-world acting in digital form, if you're going to take the expense to do that you might as well just make a damn FMV game.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

I think you guys are nuts.

We are no where near the point of diminishing returns.

When games look like this during actual gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBQNtlzaomM

(Skip to 1:14).

We can talk about being close to the point of diminishing returns. Actually even then, there's plenty of room for improvement.

You do know we film live action movies in you know, the real world. Do movies like the Lord of the Rings lack artistic quality because instead of cartoon Frodo it's Elija Wood? Or because instead of polygonal-y trees with a flat green texture there are actual trees?

When are entire games going to look like the cinematic trailers/cutscenes? That's going to be off the chain when they do.

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by FoieGrasIsEvil

When are entire games going to look like the cinematic trailers/cutscenes? That's going to be off the chain when they do.

Who knows. That short sequence took a team of artists months to create, and I'm guessing it took a big fat server farm some time to render each frame.

We need tools and systems that streamline the development of complex animations, complex physics, complex interactions right off the bat. We can't have a team of artists working for months for a 5 minute cut scene, that's for sure. And we need hardware capable of rendering the scene in real time.

We're probably closer to the latter than the former, but we've got a long ways to go to achieve either.

The next big thing studios are doing now are casting actors to do not just voice work, but to actually act out a scene. New tech is being thought up/used to capture as much detail of the acting as possible. This should improve the way characters move and act in games.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

I doubt it, for one simple reason: reality has clutter. Lots and lots and lots of clutter. Also uniqueness, for lack of a better word - look at, I don't know, a tiled bathroom closely and you'll see that no two of these tiles are exactly alike. But in a video game, they will be because it saves computing power. And unless they pay level designers to go over every inch of a level to add bird shit, and dead ants, and a discarded shoe, random cigarette butts, make unique textures for every square inch etc... no computer-generated environment is ever coming close to the clutter and "asymmetry" of a real one.

When I opened one of the links in the OP, I thought exactly this before I got to your post. As the camera ascends the stairway through the arch in "Skyrim," I actually thought "Those bricks look real, except for the fact that they're all identical."

The human mind's ability to perceive and process visual input is staggering in its complexity, and it's awfully good at picking out shit like that even if you're not aware of it.

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Jophiel

Remind me to stay out of your bathroom.

Well, I *am* French, so...

Originally Posted by Airk

Games should aspire to film levels of realism, not to reality levels of realism. Of course, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but mostly I think we need to focus on animation more than rendering right now - most game models actually kinda look like arse in motion right now, if you look at them in any sort of objective way. There are far more 'realism' gains to be gotten there than there is in "look how realistic and well rendered our mud is".

True enough, but then again video games face a problem that movies don't have to deal with (or at least, not as much), namely that the point of view of the player is going to linger on the background a lot more, and stay fixed on one point or scene a lot longer. In a movie it doesn't really matter if a given set looks all wrong and cardboardy, or the matte painting is painfully obvious, or the props are shoddy, or the CGI is half-assed, when the shot only lasts 3 seconds before cutting to another angle with a loud cymbal crash or scare chord to keep your brain busy.

By comparison, even if the player is focusing solely on shooting the nuts off that alien in the middle of the screen, subconsciously he'll still take in every detail of the scenery and how "wrong" it all is. Worse still in a game like Skyrim or an adventure game such as L.A. Noire*, where you'll actually be concentrating on the mud to harvest potion ingredients or pixel-hunting for a missed clue.

* Which did awesome things in the facial animation department, BTW - but since the body animations were not as developed, the whole product was pretty weird. Still a good game but.. weird lookin'.

[Telperion]

Originally Posted by Jragon

At one point near the end they show the real Emily they filmed for a minute. Her mouth is exactly the same, so it's actually an issue with the model, not the tech. The problem with the tech is that it seems to just be a replication of exact real-world acting in digital form, if you're going to take the expense to do that you might as well just make a damn FMV game.

It's a proof of concept, so it's not like the development process ends there. Probably more interesting for a game is the fact that you could theoretically add anything you want to the wireframe model and make it blend in, while still keeping the realistic facial animations. In the demonstration they're using a texture based on the real model's skin tone for comparison, but it could just as easily be metal or snakeskin depending on what effect you were looking for.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

L.A. Noire*

* Which did awesome things in the facial animation department, BTW - but since the body animations were not as developed, the whole product was pretty weird. Still a good game but.. weird lookin'.

God that game was a disappointment to me. I bought it for PC not knowing that the PC version had its frame rates capped at 30fps, which rendered it awful to play, especially when you were driving in the police car when frame rates would drop to about 10-15fps.

I played for about 10 minutes and said screw it. Its still collecting dust somewhere.

[Quimby]

I think sports games are aiming for this and one day will achieve it so you won't be able to tell if someone is playing a game or watching a game.

For other games, I am not sure things like aliens and monsters will ever look photorealistic because unreal things look unreal because they are unreal (is that genius or what? )

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Originally Posted by Quimby

I think sports games are aiming for this and one day will achieve it so you won't be able to tell if someone is playing a game or watching a game.

For other games, I am not sure things like aliens and monsters will ever look photorealistic because unreal things look unreal because they are unreal (is that genius or what? )

Sports games have come so far in the last ten years. Jesus, I don't even have the latest iteration of MLB: The Show (I think I have 2010 for the PS3) and its the most amazing baseball game I have ever seen/played.

Ironically, as a former Madden junkie dating back to the Sega Genesis/PS1 era, I think that particular title has regressed in terms of gameplay, although it looks terrific. I can't stand playing that game any more.

[clairobscur]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

I

The Crysis still shot is a very apt demonstration of this: look at that shack. Look how it's all straight lines, clean & crisp textures, edges and flat surfaces when the real thing is all beat to shit, covered in rust and mold and water marks and whatever that white gunk is on the chicken wire fence.
And that's just the man-made stuff. I have yet to see even a single believable tree in a video game. Not one.

Look at the grass in the Crysis shot - see how every tuft is exactly the same as the one next to it ? .

All you say is true, but if you had linked to the shots for some reason without telling that they came from a video game, I probably wouldn't have noticed they weren't real pictures. Indeed, if you look closely, the most telling is the grass. The rest can easily pass muster.

I must say I'm highly impressed by what we already have. And I once mistook the beginning of an add for some FPS for the real thing on youtube (obviously, it didn't last till the end, but I spent several seconds thinking it was real war footage).

[clairobscur]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

I think we're getting very close: Emily.

Fucking impressive!

[clairobscur]

Originally Posted by FoieGrasIsEvil

When are entire games going to look like the cinematic trailers/cutscenes? That's going to be off the chain when they do.

For a long time (I'm thinking the 90s) the intro of a game sort of announced what the actual content of games would look like maybe 2 years down the road. The differences were striking.

Nowadays, it seems to me the difference between intro and actual gameplay is often quite slim (and the improvement over time not as striking, either).