Photorealistic Games

[Lexar]

Interesting because consoles for example won't have to get any better anymore, and eventually we will all have 1 console. Could happen. Anyway it's a bet I have with a friend. He doesn't believe me, but I really think so. What do YOU think?

[Stratadrake]

I gotta take a stand against the time and cast my vote NO.

Computer photorealism is, at its core, a mathematical simulation/model of how light behaves. Granted, these models are very complex nowadays. But they're still [i]models[/i].

Only a ray-tracing can duplicate the essence of the real thing.

At first I thought this was a contest about "should" games vie for photorealism? Id've answered that a stout "NO!" with no if's, and's, or but's.
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[Paru]

My vote is no. I don't think games will or should be photorealistic. Where's the fun in that? (that's what tv is for)
And also, if we only wound up with one console, that would have to mean the end of the "Console Wars." Without game companies constantly trying to one-up each other, I really do think the world would end.
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[UltimaMewtwo]

My vote is Yes.I've already heard that XBOX 2 is gonna have graphics that's like the Lord of the Rings's.
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[Stratadrake]

Call me old school. Photorealism may have its place, but when it comes to the games I want to play, especially RPG's, I like the cartoony, sometimes spritey appearance.

Like Final Fantasy X, I haven't played it but I've seen quite a lot of it. Sure they're going for realism, but it makes it feel less... I don't know, less "gamey". To me, it looks [i]boring[/i].

Not to mention that photorealistic graphics are more likely to show artifacts like texture 'shimmering' (when a finely-grained texture is mapped to a much smaller object, then when the camera moves, the texture appears to "shimmer"). FFX had probably the worst case of this I've ever seen in a game. On the other hand, take a game like Kingdom Hearts, sure the graphics weren't as photorealistic but they were a lot smoother, and since most of the textures were soft tones like solid colors, there was virtually no shimmering to distract from the scene.

Another RPG I picked up was Legaia 2 from the bargain bin. As a game it's fine (not great, just fine), but the graphical style of it is, well..., "z-z-z-z-z". Booooring.

It's like, the more you try to make the graphics look photo-real, the more it restricts what types of things you can and cannot do with those graphics.
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[Sirius]

[quote]Not to mention that photorealistic graphics are more likely to show artifacts like texture 'shimmering' (when a finely-grained texture is mapped to a much smaller object, then when the camera moves, the texture appears to "shimmer"). FFX had probably the worst case of this I've ever seen in a game. On the other hand, take a game like Kingdom Hearts, sure the graphics weren't as photorealistic but they were a lot smoother, and since most of the textures were soft tones like solid colors, there was virtually no shimmering to distract from the scene.[/quote]


Err yes but most of the new graphics chips have incredible levels of anti-aliasing.
It's not inconceivable that in 10 years you'll hardly notice that at all.

[Stratadrake]

True, that is a gripe about [i]current[/i] hardware. My other gripes still stand though ^_^
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[chux]

I wouldnt mind better lip synching, but I prefer cartoony games, they dont have to live up to anything.
Wind Waker looks near perfect, but only because its a cartoon, and most 'realistic' games have some bad flaws...

meh

[TomtheMighty]

I think we a alot closer to photo realism than you think. Just take a look at The Chronicles of Riddick for the XBox, Vin Deisels model looks scarily realistic. And the UnReal 3 engine...it looks nearly as good as mid 1990's movie special effects, no joke. What they are using to make games look this good is a technique called "normal Mapping" what you do is make an extremely high polygon and high resolution model , let's say 3 million polygons, then you remove the texturing, then you reduce the number of polygons on the model to around 5 to 10 thousand and last you replace the texture map. What you get is a very detailed model with a reduced cost to system power. not photorealistic, but it is as close as we are going to get in this console generation. Of course though, games are only going to be as realistic as the artists working on them choose them to be, I'll bet that they can make photorealistic graphics on any current system. But the system's hardware sacrifice would be enormous and the game would be unplayable.