That Epic Games’ founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney, says that photo realistic games are only about 10-15 years away may be welcome news to some of you, but not to me. The whole point of playing video games is to escape the doldrums of everyday life. Fantastic settings, characters who can punch boulders at will, etc. The more realistic these games tend to be, the less interested I tend to be in them.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Sweeney, who was talking to the fine gents over at Gamusutra, said that graphics quality was largely a function of Moore’s Law. That is, as the river of time flows downstream, computing power increases so much so that we’ll be looking at “completely realistic lighting with real-time radiosity, perfectly anti-aliased graphics, and movie-quality static scenes and motion” in just a few years.
That said, what still isn’t within touching distance, Sweeney says, is something like artificial intelligence. That, unfortunately, will continue to be rubbish for some time.
Back to my point, that photo realism isn’t necessarily a good thing in and of itself. I’m thinking of the difference between Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto IV. How many of you had more fun playing IV? I can appreciate the scale of Liberty City, how “alive” it is, but I’ll be darned if driving around the more cartoonish Los Santos wasn’t a more fun experience.
Of course, what’s “fun” to me may be boring to y’all; it’s a subjective quality that cannot be measured. All I’m saying is, just because something looks a little more realistic doesn’t automatically mean it’s the better experience. You’re welcome to disagree.
I welcome-ly disagree :)
I’ve enjoyed the improvement in graphics. I hope for more of what Sweeney says will happen. (though it’d be nice to have AI move up just as quick)
Just because graphic capabilities become more ‘photo realistic’ doesn’t mean every game released will be of ‘photo realistic’ quality. It all depends on the engine, team, style their shooting for and budget.
Certain games want to immerse you in the world as much as possible. What better way to immerse a player into a game than to have realistic graphics, something the player can instantly relate to?
I think if violent video games looked exactly like real life it may make kids(arguably only the moronic ones) feel as though it is ok to mimic the game in real life.
I have a friend whose kid brother wants a “sniper rifle” because he plays farcry… His christmas list was and I quote:
“iPod
headphones
sniper rifle
tank <yes a tank…
pants
shirts
hoody”
I’m with you on the realism.
-Dubbs
Why is a kid that still writes a christmas list playing Farcry in the first place.
haha good call
“Fantastic settings, characters who can punch boulders at will, etc. The more realistic these games tend to be, the less interested I tend to be in them.”
Photo realistic games wouldn’t mean that they would make every game like real life. Just look like it. I can’t come up of any reason why photo-realistic games would be a bad thing. Every game designers art is different.
I agree, but I think that we can have photo-realistic games and yet have those escapist types. Right now, we have games like Call of Duty 4 which are incredibly life-like, and yet Team Fortress 2 has a tremendous following of players, and its very cartoonish and fun. We’ll always have TF2s and Wind Wakers and Marios that are not photo-realistic to complement the more realistic games.
Vertigo:
I don’t have any idea. He is addicted to games. I haven’t seen the kid without a controller in his hand anywhere except church. I believe he is in 8th grade and may or may not be passing his courses.
To his defense, the christmas list wasn’t to Santa. It was to his family. But a freaking tank!?!
Maybe epic will focus on making their shoddy computer versions actually run before focusing on better graphics. UT3 was a freakin’ joke. I still can’t believe that one of the bugs that plagues thousands of users and makes the game 100% uplayable has gone unfixed to this day.
is 8-24xAA not realistic enough with Quadfire/TriSLI?
I dont really care that much for realistic games. I just really want my textures to be of the highest quality. We have 512MB+ VRAM for a reason right?
One thing no one has brought up here: No one said that photo-realism will prevent us from having games where we can punch boulders in or inflate our bodies. In fact, the charm of photo-realistic graphics will be to illuminate these real-world impossibilities. Fantastic settings with actual realistic graphics: LOTR, Star Wars.
I don’t see why having photo-realism limits the style of the game.