Why are we not impressed by modern graphics?

LawGiver

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By we I mean me which I assume means a lot of me's out there. I mainly blame Half LIfe 2 and original crysis. I still look at a new game like say Metal Gear Solid V and and go meh, half life 2 looked almost as good. A refresher for those who may have forgotten.

Sure if we focus on a particular spot, say someones face the difference is bigger. But overall I just haven't felt that wow factor in a loooooong time. Maybe since 2007 when crysis came out.

Am I just expecting too much for 2016? Anyone else?
 
100% agree. In almost ten years since Crysis came out I have yet to see any game look noticeably that much better. I hope some game developer tries to push the boundaries like what HL2 and Crysis did.

Maybe Valve will finally end the wait and put out HL3 with some awesome visuals and gameplay so we can justify building a new PC.
 
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Companies keep adding more textures and it does nothing except give you more eyestrain.
 
Pixel shaders was the last HUGE jump.

Parallax mapping is definitely up there though....

Last games that really blew me away were heavily modded Oblivion and of course, Crysis.
 
100% agree. In almost ten years since Crysis came out I have yet to see any game look noticeably that much better. I hope some game developer tries to push the boundaries like what HL2 and Crysis did.

Maybe Valve will finally end the wait and put out HL3 with some awesome visuals and gameplay so we can justify building a new PC.


You can't push graphics though in today's age. People will complain about how the game is unoptimized, because their 7 year old technology in their computer (BUT I BOUGHT MY GEFORCE 280 LAST YEAR, SO IT MUST BE TOP OF THE LINE!) can't run a game on Ultra. And it doesn't matter if they could run the game on low. Low is for peasants, and not my computer! I should be able to play the game on Ultra settings @ 8k resolution and 240 fps. There have been games which have looked awesome that have come out, and people just complain.

Assassin's Creed Unity is still one of the best looking games on the market, but was blasted from a bunch of back seat graphics developers. Was it buggy? Sure. But it still was a great looking game. Unfortunately, the graphics also came at the cost of needing a high end machine. CS:GO runs on Ultra, so why can't AC:Unity? Unfortunately, Ultra doesn't mean anything as graphics are not created equal. It's just a word, and high end graphics on something like CS:GO might be low end on The Witcher 3. Even Crysis, when it came out, had tons of people complaining about how the programmers were second rate and created an unoptimized game because their computers couldn't run it maxed. So Crytek decided to relabel the labels of low, medium, high, ultra (or whatever they were called) to labels which sounded great, such as Gamer, Enthusiast, etc.

And because low end games sell, companies make games for low end computers. Sure, you could make graphics which required Geforce 980 TI SLI minimum, but you'd get nothing but complaints, even if the game could run on older hardware. So high end needs to target old hardware like a Geforce 780 for Ultra graphics. People just aren't upgrading their computers anymore. You brought up Half Life 2, but that came out during the end of the age when computers were skyrocketing in speed every year. The same thing with older games. But a key difference is that non games, like business software, also benefitted from upgrading your computer. Most computers are business computers. And if mom and dad become more productive because Office runs 50% faster, it's time to upgrade. But today, who really complains about the speed of their productivity software? For example, Word 6 takes roughly 90 seconds to load on my 486. Word 2016 opens up pretty much instantaneously. When I went into college, 450 MHz was the fastest computer you could get. When I graduated 4 years later, we were at nearly 2 GHz. And Half Life 2 came out only a couple years or so after that. Today, people are still using their i7 2600k because they see no reason to upgrade, and games aren't going to push any further because people aren't upgrading.
 
Witcher 3 and Rise of the Tomb Raider look fantastic.
It might help you to get a better gfx card if you want games to look their best.
 
On the other hand, there is a /lot/ of poor optimization out there. 980Ti SLI and a i5 quad at 4.6Ghz can't maintain 60FPS in your title? And it looks significantly worse than many other games that run just fine on lesser hardware? Might want to head back to the lab for a bit.
 
On the other hand, there is a /lot/ of poor optimization out there. 980Ti SLI and a i5 quad at 4.6Ghz can't maintain 60FPS in your title? And it looks significantly worse than many other games that run just fine on lesser hardware? Might want to head back to the lab for a bit.

That's not what optimization is though. I could easily write a very highly optimized program that just draws triangles and will bring your 980Ti SLI and i5 quad @ 4.6 GHz to it's knees. For AC:Unity, a spot that was unoptimized was the Church, before the patch, where the frame rate plunged, while you were only staring at a window. Maybe stuff was happening outside the window (though it was a bug in their program), but optimization wouldn't draw what you can't see. That's not always the case with computer graphics though. The best way in my opinion to judge is to ask yourself, has someone done something like this game is doing, but runs faster? If you can find something comparable, in terms of graphics, open world-ness, AI, etc. (remember, graphics aren't the end all be all), then it's unoptimized. Otherwise, unless you're part of the group writing the game, I probably wouldn't comment. It might be unoptimized (and it's true that practically everything is to a certain degree), but it might also just be unrealistic expectations.
 
The thing with HL2 and Crysis...They had to be developed on their own original engines to push things beyond what was done before, and beyond the state of current hardware back then. That was half of what was jaw dropping about those 2 games. No one had ever done in graphics what those games did, because the state of game graphics coding didn't permit it, and the hardware of the day could *barely* run it.

Today....


NO ONE needs to do that kind of original coding effort to push the envelope. You license CryEngine, or Frostbite, or Gamebryo, or Source (2), or Unreal....and go to town making your own game in your basement and it can be as amazing or not as you like. NO need for original development effort, because that costs lots of money and EA doesn't want to spend money they want FIFA or NFL or NCAA to sell SELL SELL.

Further games have gotten good enough looking that graphics are far less important than gameplay. Look at Minecraft.
 
Hell, we're still chasing the level of realism from games like Riven back in 1997. :D

ss-001.jpg

riven_03.jpg
 
One major change is the level of detail in the scene. Take the HL2 city you posted and compare it to TheDivision's city. There's props everywhere (trash/cars/etc).

I think another major issue is the console's held everything back when their last gen being deployed for so long and then the lackluster improvement in hardware for the refresh. There's no real game developers focused on just PC anymore, everyone is controlled by a console-centric publisher. It's held the GFX advancements back.
 
Add more smoke to hide stuff! :p

On the graphics front, the only game engine I see as next gen is the Frostbyte engine. Lots of top end lighting calculations and optimizations were done there so it doesn't kill performance in the process! Killing performance for marginal visual gains we see too often in other engines.
 
Theres a point of diminishing returns where the graphics look real enough. We reached that point, so now we're scaling back a bit to make it look unreal on purpose. VR is definitely the next step.
 
Theres a point of diminishing returns where the graphics look real enough. We reached that point, so now we're scaling back a bit to make it look unreal on purpose. VR is definitely the next step.

Think about how and why 3D phones with 3D cameras, and monitors, and TVs never took off for a second. Then revise that statement.

VR is only the next gimmick. Until/If we have holodecks a la star trek.
 
VR is a gimmick only in that we have to strap it to our faces. When we have the tech that our screens become 4D or as you say holo, it will stop being a gimmick.
 
I think a lot of it has to do with the Uncanny Valley effect. Mainly, the closer you get to emulating realism, the less real it tends to look.

Most of the big gains in graphics have been more or less realized, now it's the long slow march to refine all the little details that are computationally expensive.
 
Developers mainly are focusing in consoles and this would be limiting PC game development, Crysis was mainly a PC only game and then they decided to make consoles version
 
Also keep in mind that when Half Life 2 was out, 1280x1024 was considered pretty high resolution, and 1600x1200 was just awesome. I ran the game at 1024x768 with my Radeon 9700pro and I thought I was doing good! :) These days, 1920x1080 is now the defacto minimum that gamers shoot for. Since the new minimum has 1.25 million more megapixels than the old minimum of 1024x768, you have to compensate for that. I actually played through Doom 3 on my spare rig with a GTX-550ti over the weekend. At 1920x1440, there were still a couple of occasions where the GPU could not maintain a constant 60 fps (Granted - 95 percent of the time it was a rock-steady 60fps, but you get my point). I was using Ultra settings and no AA.

Think about it. What single GPU in Doom 3's time could run 2560x1440? Nothing. Not even close. 1600x1200 was still the king of the hill back then, and the only way you went higher was if you edited the config file. Yet now days you don't even need the king of the hill video card to play 2560x1440. You can even add AA to it!

Assuming it's really-well coded, what would a game look like if it could bring a GTX-980TI to its knees at just 1920x1080?
 
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I was personally BLOWN AWAY by Ryse: Son of Rome. Too bad the game didn't have a ton of depth: it was actually quite fun while it lasted.

image.png


MGSV is another one that had beautiful visuals.
 
It's a shitty game, but SW Battlefront has some pretty awesome graphics. Crysis 3 and Witcher 3 are pretty impressive as well.

But it is kind of sad that Crysis 3 came out over 3 years ago and is still one of the most impressive games graphically that we have.
 
Personally, I haven't been overly impressed by realistic graphics probably within the last 15 years. When someone does some inventive and stunning with limitations and with a different art style, that will impress me. I doubt I will ever be impressed by this push to make games look real. There are games that look beautiful but it takes a lot to impress me on that front. Hyper Light Drifer after sort of impressed me. I love what the did with that art style and how good they made it look.
 
One reason for this is because game engines are much more scripted and much less hard-coded. Methinks.
 
The jumps in graphic fidelity are going to become less and less noticeable over time. You can even see it in the consoles. I don't think we'll ever see a jump in graphics like we did between PS1 to PS2 or PS2 to PS3. Those were huge jumps in graphics, but nowadays it is not so much of a difference. Graphics can only ever get so good, and the future of gaming will be determined by HOW we play games rather than how they look; hence VR. Interaction will trump graphics.
 
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Why can't we get something like that?
The machines should be able to get close to that? Right?
 
Why can't we get something like that?
The machines should be able to get close to that? Right?

3D-wise, machines probably couldn't do that in real time. In 2D, they could, but that would still take a lot of money to make, and I doubt a AAA company is going to waste it on a 2D game, which would probably not make it's cost back, because it's 2D.
 
3D-wise, machines probably couldn't do that in real time. In 2D, they could, but that would still take a lot of money to make, and I doubt a AAA company is going to waste it on a 2D game, which would probably not make it's cost back, because it's 2D.

Well, with limited 3D and parallax scrolling backgrounds you could perhaps focus the processing on foreground detail and make it work.

I would love to see a Indie game create something this beautiful and perhaps other dev companies would get the message that people love great art and color and style.

Trine is a great example, I would love a MMO with Trine artwork.
 
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I think it's because the improvements have been very gradual lately. After the huge jump from the original Quake engine games to ones like Source, subsequent improvements have been a lot smaller.
We *are* getting closer to photo realism, too. Just looking at that Metal Gear shot above, that's not that far from real life.
I think we misremember how good older games looked, too. Some (like HL2) really did look pretty amazing, but some likely don't look as good as you remember. While Crysis had a huge list of graphical checkboxes that it filled, the game never really looked THAT great for how much horsepower it took.
 
For me, the graphics look fine. What makes things look much better or worse is the lighting. Give accurate lighting and it can make everything look much better. Shade, sun, cloud shadows, reflections (not the shitty ones)... That, and physics on things - smoke, dust, rain. They add up enough to make me stop and just look around and appreciate the scenery.

VR may be a gimmick, but it's a welcome one for me. It isn't just viewing 3D content. It's interacting in that virtual world. You're much more immersed in that world. Gimmick? Fuck yea. But, I'll definitely take that gimmick! Holodeck? Gimmick as well. But, I'd love to play with one of those, too!
 
IMO momentum is slowing down, sorta like this:

Untitled_1.jpg


...and by "photorealism" I mean the capacity to trick 100% of people 100% of the time... with VR it'll be easier to test, but basically it's a slower crawl as we figure out what tech will replace transistors to push out much better performance.
 
IMO momentum is slowing down, sorta like this:

Untitled_1.jpg


...and by "photorealism" I mean the capacity to trick 100% of people 100% of the time... with VR it'll be easier to test, but basically it's a slower crawl as we figure out what tech will replace transistors to push out much better performance.

The answer is vacuum tubes!

:p

However, I think your graph is fairly correct. They can't even fool 100% of the people using pre-rendered techniques, so it's going to be quite a while before they can do it on the fly.
 
There will be a huge jump if/when we can ever get hardware capable of doing real-time ray tracing in games.

I would say that, as far as rendered effects go, we are getting pretty close to indistinguishable from reality in high-budget movies.
 
There will be a huge jump if/when we can ever get hardware capable of doing real-time ray tracing in games.

I would say that, as far as rendered effects go, we are getting pretty close to indistinguishable from reality in high-budget movies.

Getting there, but not quite there yet. I agree though, realtime-ray-tracing hardware would be a big step in the right direction.
 
The answer is vacuum tubes!

:p

However, I think your graph is fairly correct. They can't even fool 100% of the people using pre-rendered techniques, so it's going to be quite a while before they can do it on the fly.
People tend to notice someone has put a headset on them, you need to do it while they are asleep.
 
I tried playing some HL2 Lost Coast on a friend's 4K TV earlier this year, and wow that game hasn't aged anywhere near as well as I thought. Looks like ass compared to most of what I've been playing lately.

Witcher 3
AC Syndicate
GTA5
Ryse (same engine)

We're finally starting to see some games that edge out Crysis for being the best looking game ever, and the newer ones are open-world too which makes them much more demanding than the corridor level design of older games. I dunno, I think modern games are getting pretty awesome lately.
 
Getting there, but not quite there yet. I agree though, realtime-ray-tracing hardware would be a big step in the right direction.

I've made this argument before, but it bares repeating: You will NEVER see Real-Time Raytracing (in its classic form) as a mainstream interactive rendering technique. It will always be behind traditional graphics rendering in terms of efficiency and fidelity-per-cycle. Look at the raw power we have now: Our PC's could EASILY render a 2000's era offline raytraced movie like Toy Story 2 or Final Fantasy TSW in REAL TIME. Why don't we? Because those graphics look like trash when compared to what traditional graphics engines can accomplish with the same processor load. This will ALWAYS BE TRUE. In 20 years, we will have PCs that can render today's ultra-detailed offline hollywood special effects in REAL TIME, but today's raytraced Hollywood effects will look like trash compared to what traditional graphics pipelines will be able to render in that day.

Raytracing is by nature incredibly inefficient, requiring an order of magnitude more processing horsepower than traditional rendering to accomplish the same level of fidelity (not accuracy, fidelity).The traditional artistically approximated rendering techniques will ALWAYS, ALWAYS be ahead in terms of visual fidelity and ability to suspend disbelief in real-time.
 
A lot of the realism also tends to be compromised by other things like janky animation, physics effects which may look cool and make the game world more interactive but aren't necessarily realistic, efficient but clunky cheats to animate tree wind effects, all that sort of thing. That's why you sometimes see some jaw-dropping imagery from companies like Naughty Dog when they give presentations of their character rendering or whatever, but see it in the context of the actual game and, while pretty, it still ends up looking like "just" another game.
 
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