Epic's Tim Sweeney predicts photo-realistic graphics within 10 years

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polonyc2

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Epic founder and programming legend Tim Sweeney has predicted that we'll see photo-realistic graphics within the next 10 years

"It's continuing to improve at Moore's Law rate," he said. "Things are going to get really interesting. We'll be able to render environments that are absolutely photo-realistic within the next 10 years, like indistinguishable from reality level of graphics."

But, Sweeney noted, it will take much longer for game creators to create believable AI, among other things..."That just moves the challenge of graphics to the problems we don't know how to solve," he said, "like simulating human intelligence, animation, speech and lip-syncing...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...icts-photo-realistic-graphics-within-10-years
 
Judging by the way graphics are given preference over the underlying physical simulation, the graphics will be photo-realistic ten years from now, but we still might not have large-scale dynamic fluids that respond realistically to environmental destruction. That's aside from the AI/animation/speech/etc. issues.
 
Considering the new generation of consoles are just releasing now and will probably stick around for the next 10 years, I don't forsee graphics taking any huge leaps and bounds any time soon.

Hardware and rendering techniques would also have to dramatically change.
 
I'll take slightly worse graphics in exchange for being able to step over that knee-high fence over yonder without running into an invisible wall. That's where I want the graphics horsepower of the future to go.
 
I thought I heard this when the original Crysis was released...is 'indistinguishable from reality level of graphics' even possible?...I remember when playing Half Life 2 for the 1st time and how impressed I was with the facial animation and lip synching...that was close to photo realistic...things seem to have gone backwards since
 
There have been demonstrations of 3D that have tricked most people who watch it into thinking it's real, so it's partly here already. In the gaming real-time realm, however, yea I agree there. Animation really kills it though, even in those Epic videos the run cycles look like they're straight out of a student reel.

What I'd love to see are more tests using that engine, in more realistic setting, compared to real video footage, and seeing what an average person can detect as real or not real. In a handheld/mobile screen, it might be pretty easy to pull off getting most people to be duped, but at HD on bigger screens, maybe not.

I dunno. As a gamer and professional 3D modeler/animator, I'm probably too biased to make a good judgement on this, I just know many non-techy people I go to movies with don't realize certain scenes were actually NOT real-life, and even I am sometimes unsure.
 
display technology also plays a huge part... I mean until we can get to a point where we're not sure if our oculus rift v38 (or whatever) is turned on or not...
 
djsb said:
I'll take slightly worse graphics in exchange for being able to step over that knee-high fence over yonder without running into an invisible wall. That's where I want the graphics horsepower of the future to go.
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YES! One of the biggest things that piss me off in BF3 is getting stuck on a 1ft high piece of debris and dying because my soldier avatar couldn't step over the fucking thing.
 
XamediX said:
YES! One of the biggest things that piss me off in BF3 is getting stuck on a 1ft high piece of debris and dying because my soldier avatar couldn't step over the fucking thing.
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I think he means cheesy map boundaries, not necessarily BF3's famous mountainous molehills. "What do you mean my tank is stuck on a twig?!"
 
Wow 10 years, what a visionary. Sets the bar so low the statement is meaningless if not already obvious. He needs to go back to making games people want to play and stop worrying so much about things he's not exactly shining a light upon as if previously unknown
 
Given the current rate of progress, which may only further slow down as the demand slows while smaller process technology becomes increasingly difficult and expensive, I'd say 10 years is optimistic
 
DPI said:
He needs to go back to making games people want to play and stop worrying so much about things he's not exactly shining a light upon as if previously unknown
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The last game Sweeney made was back in 1993 or so. He's the technical guy, not the game designer.
 
I predict Epic will be out of business in 10 years if they don't make a good Unreal Tournament game. :eek:
 
Krenum said:
I predict Epic will be out of business in 10 years if they don't make a good Unreal Tournament game. :eek:
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I forgot about that game! :p

Sweeney rocks, as do most of these dudes making the tech behind the scenes. Some great games have come as a result of their hard work. Hell, looks at all these games using Sweeney's engines, sure he's more of a director now but the man knows what he's talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games
 
In 10 years, eh Tim? Sure, why not. Not in games, though. Not a chance.
 
TwistedAegis said:
I think he means cheesy map boundaries, not necessarily BF3's famous mountainous molehills. "What do you mean my tank is stuck on a twig?!"
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there has to be boundaries even with the largest maps...you can't allow players to wander endlessly...there needs to be a cutoff
 
polonyc2 said:
there has to be boundaries even with the largest maps...you can't allow players to wander endlessly...there needs to be a cutoff
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Technically, there doesn't have to be a perceptible limit: You can create procedurally generated terrain outside of the "real" map boundaries that goes on forever. If you represent positions with 64-bit integers with a precision of 1/1024 of a meter, you can let players go 2^53 = 9007199254740992 meters from the center of the map before they'll ever reach the limits of your data type.

If you want, you can just let the position type wrap once players go past the edge (undefined behavior for signed integers according to C++, but...). After all, once they get to that point, they've already gone WAY around the circumference of the planet and then some. ;) They'd need an extremely fast vehicle to make it there though, since it would still take 347.740540472 days to get there at the speed of light using Newtonian physics. (We're ignoring relativity here, because it's prohibitively expensive for most game engines to bother calculating. It would technically be possible to mimic it in a single-player game, but it would probably impossible for an online multiplayer game to mimic its effects anyway. ;))
 
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Decreasing gains...

Then again, I'm thinking if a game could handle a proper scale battle of Iwo Jima with 100000 characters, shelling from ships creating craters, real-time weather, massive draw distance... that would be alright.
 
Mini-Me said:
Technically, there doesn't have to be a perceptible limit: You can create procedurally generated terrain outside of the "real" map boundaries that goes on forever
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but what would be the point of that?...seems better to have an artificial boundary rather then an endless black hole
 
DarkSaturn said:
Then again, I'm thinking if a game could handle a proper scale battle of Iwo Jima with 100000 characters, shelling from ships creating craters, real-time weather, massive draw distance... that would be alright.
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You're talking about a fairly massive amount of memory and processing power, but it's certainly possible.
 
polonyc2 said:
but what would be the point of that?...seems better to have an artificial boundary rather then an endless black hole
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Well, procedurally-generated terrain can appear to have plenty of detail and features like lakes, rivers, mountains, flora and fauna, etc. Most players aren't going to wander far beyond the boundaries of the map where "hand-made" content was placed, but allowing them to wander until they get bored helps a little with suspension of disbelief compared to a "YOU MUST TURN BACK" message or an obvious invisible wall placed ten meters from interesting content you know players are likely to visit.

Taking things to the extreme, the procedurally generated content beyond the map boundaries could even be playable and borderline interesting...think Daggerfall. To take another approach, you could discourage players from wandering too far by making raptor attacks more frequent and deadly the farther they get. :D
 
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DarkSaturn said:
Decreasing gains...

Then again, I'm thinking if a game could handle a proper scale battle of Iwo Jima with 100000 characters, shelling from ships creating craters, real-time weather, massive draw distance... that would be alright.
Click to expand...

Exactly. We may be approaching photo-realism in limited small scenes soon, but it's going to be a LONG time before we can combine that with realistic physical simulations and a scale that doesn't burden artists and designers with technical limitations.
 
Mini-Me said:
Well, procedurally-generated terrain can appear to have plenty of detail and features like lakes, rivers, mountains, flora and fauna, etc. Most players aren't going to wander far beyond the boundaries of the map where "hand-made" content was placed, but allowing them to wander until they get bored helps a little with suspension of disbelief compared to a "YOU MUST TURN BACK" message or an obvious invisible wall placed ten meters from interesting content you know players are likely to visit.

Taking things to the extreme, the procedurally generated content beyond the map boundaries could even be playable and borderline interesting...think Daggerfall. To take another approach, you could discourage players from wandering too far by making raptor attacks more frequent and deadly the farther they get. :D
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content beyond the map boundaries such as unbeatable enemy attacks is just another form of a boundary...also some players might not realize that there is no content available in this black hole and would keep wandering endlessly...that's why there is a need for boundaries because it tells the player that you need to move to another area...players have been accustomed to boundaries telling them where they can and can't go....by removing this you are almost tricking the player and making them potentially waste hours on end traveling into an abyss
 
polonyc2 said:
content beyond the map boundaries such as unbeatable enemy attacks is just another form of a boundary...also some players might not realize that there is no content available in this black hole and would keep wandering endlessly...that's why there is a need for boundaries because it tells the player that you need to move to another area...players have been accustomed to boundaries telling them where they can and can't go....by removing this you are almost tricking the player and making them potentially waste hours on end traveling into an abyss
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Raptor attacks are indeed another form of boundary, but they're subtle enough not to be as jarring. Personally, I think hints can be just as effective at conveying the message that you've gone too far (especially if they're backed up by in-game lore) without the immersion-breaking obnoxiousness of invisible walls or HUD messages.

I do think you have a legitimate concern about confusing players about where the valuable content is and isn't, but it really depends on the type of game: If this is an FPS where players want to stay where the action is (within the map boundaries), it's not really an issue. If it's a huge open world exploration-based game like The Elder Scrolls, the in-game map can serve as a pretty good indicator of whether you're "off the edge of the map" or not, along with the lore about the impassable hordes of raptors just beyond the border of...say, Hammerfell. That, or you could have other inside jokes being part of the lore, like, "Scholars agree that nothing interesting can ever be found outside the borders of the province." ;)
 
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polonyc2 said:
there has to be boundaries even with the largest maps...you can't allow players to wander endlessly...there needs to be a cutoff
Click to expand...

polonyc2 said:
content beyond the map boundaries such as unbeatable enemy attacks is just another form of a boundary...also some players might not realize that there is no content available in this black hole and would keep wandering endlessly...that's why there is a need for boundaries because it tells the player that you need to move to another area...players have been accustomed to boundaries telling them where they can and can't go....by removing this you are almost tricking the player and making them potentially waste hours on end traveling into an abyss
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I don't disagree; the key word is "cheesy". Like a 2 foot wall that you magically can't get over. Or a chain link fence you can't knock down with your all powerful handheld nuclear rocket launcher. Stuff like that. I'd just like to see a little thought behind it. Hell, I remember just feeling more immersed when they first took the time to put some custom placed art out of bounds, even if it's just hints of it through, say, impassable rubble in a certain area.
 
TwistedAegis said:
I don't disagree; the key word is "cheesy". Like a 2 foot wall that you magically can't get over. Or a chain link fence you can't knock down with your all powerful handheld nuclear rocket launcher. Stuff like that. I'd just like to see a little thought behind it. Hell, I remember just feeling more immersed when they first took the time to put some custom placed art out of bounds, even if it's just hints of it through, say, impassable rubble in a certain area.
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fences or walls are fine if dictated by the gameplay/story...such as radiation death if crossing too far (like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games) or impassable waterways, high cliffs etc...2 foot walls are cheesy when all it takes is a little imagination by the developer to create more believable boundaries
 
The graphics are just one of many tools that are supposed to immerse players into the game world. But it doesn't matter how photorealistic they are if your immersion is ruined every time you run into arbitrary boundaries outside of the narrow corridor of gameplay the developers intended you to walk on, and you think "oh, stupid game".

What I meant by my original comment is that if game levels stopped being optimized for exactly one set of predetermined viewing angles (enforced by the invisible walls), I would take the slightly downgraded graphics in exchange for being able to diverge from the set path and see what's around the corner (which is absent on many current game levels, on account of not being part of the "script").

It's what makes the difference between a good game, and just another corridor shooter with a fancy "outdoor" tileset.
 
would rather have smarter AI

guessing that smarter AI hasn't received a huge focus though because more players will be frustrated by it than enjoy adjusting / learning to deal with it
 
um...
Don't you all know that the PC will be dead by then? Haven't you seen the reports?
Who is going to display all of this real time photo-realistic graphics?
Your iPad 8 or your ChromeAndroTablet with the add on RadeoForce attachment. Perhaps the PS7 or Xbox Infinity?

Some of you have joked that the prediction is so far out in time that the inevitable achievement makes it irrelevant.
None of you will be using PC's in 10 years to worry about whether the photo-realisitic graphics outweigh the indignity of tripping over twigs in BF12. Or haven't you heard?
How's that for irrelevant?
 
wrangler said:
um...
Don't you all know that the PC will be dead by then? Haven't you seen the reports?
Who is going to display all of this real time photo-realistic graphics?
Your iPad 8 or your ChromeAndroTablet with the add on RadeoForce attachment. Perhaps the PS7 or Xbox Infinity?

Some of you have joked that the prediction is so far out in time that the inevitable achievement makes it irrelevant.
None of you will be using PC's in 10 years to worry about whether the photo-realisitic graphics outweigh the indignity of tripping over twigs in BF12. Or haven't you heard?
How's that for irrelevant?
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lol...you might be right...maybe Sweeney and Carmac have some virtual-reality simulation in mind
 
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