Can Graphics get much better?

[GoaThief]

ray tracing

Prepare to have your mind blown;


The major difficulty with implementing ray tracing into current tech is that graphics cards are geared to work in a totally different manner, on my mobile so it's hard to get decent links but a quick google/wiki of Quake Ray Traced gives some more insight, as will Intel's now canceled Larrabee chip/entry into the graphics card market.

 

[Bifford]

As long as I can tell the difference between game engine footage and live action motion picture footage, there will always be room for improvement. I remember in the latest Need for Speed commercial I could see the exact moment when they cut from live action footage to in-game footage.

 

[Thoric485]

If people had that attitude 15 years ago, all those indie games of today would take a team of 50 and several million to make.

Yeah, gaming development budgets have grown, so has the whole goddamn industry. Diablo 2 selling a million copies in two weeks was a Guinness world record, now it's pretty much guaranteed for every game that warrants a review in a major mag. And developers make more per sold copy now than they ever have, especially with digital distribution.

Besides, gameplay won't suddenly become better and more complex as we tread in one place. Quite the opposite - it becomes more limited and linear as developers try to squeeze as much as possible from outdated technology to be competitive with the better-looking titles on the market.

 

[janjotat]

I would rather they spend more time making a game more fun rather than looking pretty.

This. How about improving and expanding on gameplay, complexity/depth, more content ?

Better graphics are cool, but def not at the cost of hampering more important things.

It takes a lot of time and a lot of money to create good graphics. That is why indie studios generialy don't have very good graphics. You need to be AAA and have lots of money to do so. The better the graphics the more money unnecessary. I was saying devs should focus their attention more upon game play, complexity/depth, more content i.e. making it more fun.

 

[MrFalconfly]

Sure we can.

Question is should we?

I mean sure photorealistic graphics are great and all but look back at some of the past games.

Half Life and Deus Ex were as photorealistic as they could be and today they look arse, while games that had stylized graphics usually still look good to this day.

 

[Legion]

Of course they can, but developers would be better off working on aesthetic improvements rather than raw graphical ones.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

For better graphics i just hope that the next console generation keeps what the last promised.

Real HD and games without compressed textures and clipping would be a nice start. Having high quality animations is almost as important as those other qualities (one main reason why i love the euphoria engine), same goes for high detailed/destructable/interactive enviroments which i would love to see more of and not just in shooter corridors.

 

[Whitbane]

Hell, they could keep the same graphics as Saints Row 2/GTA IV on this gen when they get the new consoles and I could care less. I just want a bad ass, slightly realistic, open world zombie-apocalypse simulator.

Please!

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I've read a lot of discussions of what the next-generation of gaming will be like, and I wonder if we really can improve on gamings graphical capabilities. I've seen what the current consoles have to offer, and I don't know how much graphics can get much better from here.

Are you kidding? This current gen is awful. Pathetically small levels because consoles have too little RAM, and most textures only barely standing up to passing glances, let alone careful scrutiny. The textures in Dishonored, and vanilla Skyrim are a washed out blurry mess even before you get close to them.

Considering the higher quality of rendering in DX11 and the HQ texture packs available in many mods for PC games, the original question is not only demonstrably and observably a yes, it begs the question why something so easily observable needed to be asked. This generation is 7 years old, there are mobile phones now almost on par with this console generation for heaven's sake.

 

[Mister K]

Of course it can. But why would it? Games look good enough now. I'd prefer if devs concentrated on mechanics, design and narative.

 

[Vivi22]

We might not necessarily see a huge spike in budget sizes. Think about it; extra processing power means that certain work arounds no longer need to be implemented.

I wish I could believe that, but the reality is that your statement would probably be more accurate if we amended it to say "for a while" at the very end. Yeah, developing better tech like the Unreal Engine 4, with substantially improved development pipelines will help alleviate some of the budget pressure, but how long developers can get away without heavily optimizing titles and finding workarounds to get the hardware to do something they want which it isn't quite powerful enough to achieve is a simple factor of time. The longer they spend working on static hardware, the more likely they'll need to do those things. And if the previous generations are any indication, they'll be at it in 2 years or less.

Now granted, it's not a completely bad thing. It is a matter of essentially building on years of development experience so companies do get better over time, but you can only be so efficient when dealing with HD quality art assets, and the complex programming going on with AAA games these days. Better pipelines make some tasks easier, but making it faster and more efficient for developers to produce these titles really just means that the bar on what they can do for the same budget is raised, and they'll be pushing it to the limit again soon enough.

 

[IronMit]

Graphics on consoles need improving. There is poor draw distance, frame rate drops, lighting/reflection/refraction, ambience limitations. 720p at 30fps max instead of 1080p at 60fps. Then detail as well.

But graphics are the least important factor (but still a bit important)

A more important factor is AI:

How do enemies react to you, if you kill their friends do they get scared or fight differently. If they investigate a shadow or noise do they tell their comrades who will get suspicious if they don't come back. Enemies on patrol go back and forth in the same pattern which is nothing like real life.
I read someone in Dishonoured stopped time took out 3 guys, chopped ones head off and threw it at the 5th. The 5th guy didn't react any differently- just attacked as normal.

Honestly I would prefer to play a linear game where enemies truly react to you instead of Deus ex:HR with generic limited AI (although still v good game).

An example of an improvement is the MGS3;

If you get seen you can take out the guy before he calls out to near by guards
If all the guards are alerted you can take out the radio guy before he calls reinforcements, if he lets out half a call then dispatch will still become suspicious and they send someone to investigate.

Hitman 2 innovated for its time too;

Disguising as someone from a small organisation (villa bodyguards) gets you detected faster
Holding the wrong gun while in disguise gets you detected faster depending on your proximity and if the guards are already on alert


dark souls;
Im enjoying the balance of dark souls- when you drink a potion you drink it in real time.
You can't pause the game to conveniently change to a more resistant gear mid battle. It also helps balance everything out unlike skyrim where you have regenerating health and potions you take instantly?? Love the game but some severe balancing issues...do the makers want me to take magic potions half way through a dragon fight, is this how the game is balanced 'cos i kind of don't want to do that.

What i'm trying to say is before improving graphics (which takes a crap load of money and man hours) they should spend that time improving AI, game mechanics etc. It will make the game so much better.

But it won't happen. I see user reviews where they focus in on the 'textures' of Dishonoured, 'omg that's not good' even though they made the game levels massive-relatively speaking. sigh

 

[Mr F.]

Yes.

Well, that was quick.

Course they can, and will, we are not at the peak of technology now, nor (Unless we become extinct) will we ever be. That is what is awesome about humanity.

Graphics will continue to get better. Hopefully budgets will start to slide down again once the tech is more standardised and cheaper.

 

[Angie7F]

I think my eye and brain will need an upgrade before we get better graphics.
Even after LASIK I will cant handle HD.

 

[Mordekaien]

I don't think there is enough room to make the graphics better without making all characters look like bad androids.
Errant Signal did an episode about graphics and gives a few interesting points.

 

[Plazmatic]

I've read a lot of discussions of what the next-generation of gaming will be like, and I wonder if we really can improve on gamings graphical capabilities. I've seen what the current consoles have to offer, and I don't know how much graphics can get much better from here.

Look at a PC, the end...


Crysis is infinitely better on the PC than console, and you can clearly see a huge graphical improvement, getting real close to reality. Your games haven't gotten to this level yet, and programmers for games are generally lazy, and also don't get paid much, so they aren't taking advantage of resource saving techniques as much as they should even on consoles.