The way that old guy looks is bothering me, he looks 80 and 16 at the same time. I like how the zombie monster things looks a little different from each other, and not just clones.
On the other hand and just to nitpick, only the SC2 screenshot above in undoctored
Um, did you take a look at the shadows under the bulletin board... (borderlands) it can't be that doctored up... I was mostly just looking for screen shots that showed off the are stylized, a lot of those games (Brink/APB) don't really have much for decent in game screen shots.
My thoughts are that Moore's Law slows down on game graphics because of something akin to a squared/cubed ratio...
Basically, IMHO, every time computer technology reaches a notional "cube" of a previous benchmark, so many different aspects of game graphics have to be improved (physics sims, hair/cloth/water, etc; polycount; texture size; etc etc) that the overall visual improvement is only "squared", IF that.
And there's also the notion that a tool is only as good as the hands wielding them. In ten years graphics have improved, but ovrall game design and concept design haven't improved as much, because we're only human. Culturally speaking, the methodology and such are still in their infancy. Yes, the artists are amazing, and pump out stuff that just blows my mind in many ways. But we're still feeling our way, and pushing along trying to find out what we can do to begin with. Once we have finally explored what we CAN do, then I expect to see an explosion in HOW we do it, and game art will become even more varied, stylized, and simply amazing.
Regarding visual evolution, what really got me excited recently is the idea of games being run on a server, and streamed as video feedback to the player meaning that any gamer can enjoy the most striking experience regardless of computer spec, as long as the internet connection is fast enough to send the player input in a timely manner.
You have to lower your standards a LOT for that. Most games are 30 fps and the input lag is barely tolerable already, especially if your TV does a lot of post processing and has no "game mode". Adding the latency of sending your input to the server, compressing the frame, and sending it back, on top of all this, is going to make almost everything but turn-based strategy games unplayable.
Talking about graphics the current methods(raster based) is a dead end anyway. Its not going to get much better with this method, especially shadows. The trouble is everyone is invested in this tech the way it is. I cant see anyone taking the jump on the pc anytime soon. Possibly the only way we will see realtime raytraced graphics would be on a console.
Well Varga I dunno. Considering that David Perry is behind this I keep my hopes high! http://www.gaikai.com/
Zac, I meant that the other shots are either doctored or staged. Like, you place the camera very carefully, put characters exactly where you want them, and so on. I don't remember seeing anything that clean and readable in any Borderlands videos - if you chat with an NPC he's likely to be right in the middle of the screen, not on the side, and so on.
personally, i dont expect graphics to get much better than what they are. besides making it 3d or a holograph. but, thats not really the graphics as it is the delivery of the graphics.
for video games, graphics wont imrove much more. Once the hardware catches up with the graphics done in todays games, then we`ll start seeing games that look like pre-rendered cut scenes, but those graphics are already out today... just not practical in terms of real-time play.
Buuut, we still have to consider that the hardware of the xbox360 is quite old, so imagine the stuff we can do with the technology availble today, several years later, the hardware 10 years after quake3, not 6 years after q3 when the xbox360 was released.
Imagine what we could do would we have a promised 1gb+ video ram and a 2gb+ system ram, instead of the 256+256 of the modern consoles.
Imagine the crazy gpu of the recent nvidia hardware, compared to that of the old ones in the modern consoles.
The truth is, we're making the majority of games for hardware released 6 years after q3 was made, not 10 years.
although the hardware is frozen, don't underestimate the "extras" you get when working with much more access to hardware than you have on PC. Look at how good "shadow of the colossus" or "resident evil 4" looked on their very limited hardware.
the hardware in the consoles is even older considering you have to take production planing and all that into account.
@calabi, "dead end for rasterization" not sure, they surely got a long way with stuff. And in straight-forward raytracing the shadows would not be smooth either, they need to do several tricks to get them smooth and fast as well. Raytracing is not "the solution", as mentioned before even in film, where they arguably could afford fancy stuff, they don't use these things all the time. I'd say given the next round of hardware and it's programmability, we probably get hybrid pipelines and more diversity again (at least I hope so). But cutting off something that works really well and efficient most of the time, would be stupid.
Speaking of great looking console games - I highly recommend anyone interested in gameart to load up FFXII and MGS3 in a ps2 emulator on a decent computer. It really is impressive, a true lesson. I guess one could call that good scalability ? BTW these two run at 60fps
Today equivalent of these games would be Bayonetta. It has better lighting and normals + spec ... but besides that, not much more and I think this is totally enough to make great games!
Hehe wll I agree but did you try it ? I wasn't very appealed by it until I tried the demo first hand. Some sights are gorgeous! And quite FF-esque in a way...
(Sorry bad cam picture of my screen)
haha the env is nice, but those proportions hahaha awesomely bad
na seriously i should give the demo a shoot when i find the time, its funny how all screens i found on goodle just looked bad and yoz just tooke one with a cam from your screens and its way better, besides bayonetta, he is just a thai hooker
Pior, once again, I give creds to awesome artists
tricks like in ff12, mirroring, reusing, smart angles.. things artists should know to get more out of what they have to play with.
the day the technology scales how good something looks, then we'll be out of jobs.
neox, they've clearly taken some deliberate steps on the crazy awesome porportions, I thought we tried to go stylistic these days rather than realistic
looking at the env... well... hmmm... i don't get your point
be it for stylistic reasons or not, in my oppinion and thats highly subjective, the proportions are a bad decision, others are different oppinions and well i thought my work would show that i'm not the biggest fan of too realistic art directions ^^
Well you know Bayonetta really is a strange case. Her proportions are obviously very stretched as seen on screenshots and it looks silly, but in the game it actually works especially with that extreme fashion catwalk-style walkcycle she has. Oh and she can shoot bullets from her high heels, standing upside down on her hands. And she grows butterfly wings when she doublejumps. Really.
BTW if you try the demo, that falling tower level is worthless. I would suggest going straight to the other one, and also make sure to follow the tutorial, it's alot of fun!
Replies
I say we've come quite far
Um, did you take a look at the shadows under the bulletin board... (borderlands) it can't be that doctored up... I was mostly just looking for screen shots that showed off the are stylized, a lot of those games (Brink/APB) don't really have much for decent in game screen shots.
Basically, IMHO, every time computer technology reaches a notional "cube" of a previous benchmark, so many different aspects of game graphics have to be improved (physics sims, hair/cloth/water, etc; polycount; texture size; etc etc) that the overall visual improvement is only "squared", IF that.
And there's also the notion that a tool is only as good as the hands wielding them. In ten years graphics have improved, but ovrall game design and concept design haven't improved as much, because we're only human. Culturally speaking, the methodology and such are still in their infancy. Yes, the artists are amazing, and pump out stuff that just blows my mind in many ways. But we're still feeling our way, and pushing along trying to find out what we can do to begin with. Once we have finally explored what we CAN do, then I expect to see an explosion in HOW we do it, and game art will become even more varied, stylized, and simply amazing.
You have to lower your standards a LOT for that. Most games are 30 fps and the input lag is barely tolerable already, especially if your TV does a lot of post processing and has no "game mode". Adding the latency of sending your input to the server, compressing the frame, and sending it back, on top of all this, is going to make almost everything but turn-based strategy games unplayable.
http://www.gaikai.com/
Zac, I meant that the other shots are either doctored or staged. Like, you place the camera very carefully, put characters exactly where you want them, and so on. I don't remember seeing anything that clean and readable in any Borderlands videos - if you chat with an NPC he's likely to be right in the middle of the screen, not on the side, and so on.
for video games, graphics wont imrove much more. Once the hardware catches up with the graphics done in todays games, then we`ll start seeing games that look like pre-rendered cut scenes, but those graphics are already out today... just not practical in terms of real-time play.
Xbox 360's average launch title
Imagine what we could do would we have a promised 1gb+ video ram and a 2gb+ system ram, instead of the 256+256 of the modern consoles.
Imagine the crazy gpu of the recent nvidia hardware, compared to that of the old ones in the modern consoles.
The truth is, we're making the majority of games for hardware released 6 years after q3 was made, not 10 years.
the hardware in the consoles is even older considering you have to take production planing and all that into account.
@calabi, "dead end for rasterization" not sure, they surely got a long way with stuff. And in straight-forward raytracing the shadows would not be smooth either, they need to do several tricks to get them smooth and fast as well. Raytracing is not "the solution", as mentioned before even in film, where they arguably could afford fancy stuff, they don't use these things all the time. I'd say given the next round of hardware and it's programmability, we probably get hybrid pipelines and more diversity again (at least I hope so). But cutting off something that works really well and efficient most of the time, would be stupid.
Today equivalent of these games would be Bayonetta. It has better lighting and normals + spec ... but besides that, not much more and I think this is totally enough to make great games!
one of the worst looking games these days *shudder*
comparing it to these gems is very bad
(Sorry bad cam picture of my screen)
na seriously i should give the demo a shoot when i find the time, its funny how all screens i found on goodle just looked bad and yoz just tooke one with a cam from your screens and its way better, besides bayonetta, he is just a thai hooker
tricks like in ff12, mirroring, reusing, smart angles.. things artists should know to get more out of what they have to play with.
the day the technology scales how good something looks, then we'll be out of jobs.
neox, they've clearly taken some deliberate steps on the crazy awesome porportions, I thought we tried to go stylistic these days rather than realistic
be it for stylistic reasons or not, in my oppinion and thats highly subjective, the proportions are a bad decision, others are different oppinions and well i thought my work would show that i'm not the biggest fan of too realistic art directions ^^
BTW if you try the demo, that falling tower level is worthless. I would suggest going straight to the other one, and also make sure to follow the tutorial, it's alot of fun!