So what comes after photo-realistic graphics???

Bloodgod42

Gawd
Joined
Nov 20, 2005
Messages
592
Im just curious what people here thought was the next evolution in gaming.
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(the following is just a rambling I had while posting this...feel free to skip it, but please leave your 2-cents) ;)

I mean, we have made great leaps from the 8-bit days, and now that we 'almost' have photo-realistic graphics, the holy grail in gaming (at least at one time).
If we say that: great game-play, a well written, professionally voice acted, excellent graphics are a givin, then where do we go from here???

Whats the next BIG main-stream "thing" to bring more immersion to gettin' our game on!?!

Realistically, it's based on what can make companies money. What i mean there is that it has to work on a "main-stream" pc so that they can sell more, and currently, the "main-stream" pc is not that great. Good news is that it's getting better expodentialy, and within 5 years I'm bettin that the average pc will contain 5+Ghz cpu (multi-cores combined, but giving that all the developers will get on-board and code to utilize them, we're golden). I think 2/4GB DDR2/3 will be in the majority of pc's, as well as 512MB-1GB gpu's. We'll have super fast, and more importantly, affordable, solid state drives. So my point to all this is that they finally have some 'horsepower' to work with and Im wondering where's it's gonna lead us. 3-D? Virtual Reality? The Matrix? (4-D? once we fire up the LHC, lol)

My guess is that after they take the graphics to the limits (about 5 years, fingers crossed) they will improve the way the image is received by the brain. That could be something as simple as a monitor thats curved, or a "good" video head-set that doesn't look "super" geeky (or make you cross-eyed), all the way to human implants that can send the video directly to our brain without any monitor at all.

So anyways, what are all YOUR thoughts/guesses/premonitions?
 
Im just curious what people here thought was the next evolution in gaming.
.
.
.
(the following is just a rambling I had while posting this...feel free to skip it, but please leave your 2-cents) ;)

I mean, we have made great leaps from the 8-bit days, and now that we 'almost' have photo-realistic graphics, the holy grail in gaming (at least at one time).
If we say that: great game-play, a well written, professionally voice acted, excellent graphics are a givin, then where do we go from here???

Whats the next BIG main-stream "thing" to bring more immersion to gettin' our game on!?!

Realistically, it's based on what can make companies money. What i mean there is that it has to work on a "main-stream" pc so that they can sell more, and currently, the "main-stream" pc is not that great. Good news is that it's getting better expodentialy, and within 5 years I'm bettin that the average pc will contain 5+Ghz cpu (multi-cores combined, but giving that all the developers will get on-board and code to utilize them, we're golden). I think 2/4GB DDR2/3 will be in the majority of pc's, as well as 512MB-1GB gpu's. We'll have super fast, and more importantly, affordable, solid state drives. So my point to all this is that they finally have some 'horsepower' to work with and Im wondering where's it's gonna lead us. 3-D? Virtual Reality? The Matrix? (4-D? once we fire up the LHC, lol)

My guess is that after they take the graphics to the limits (about 5 years, fingers crossed) they will improve the way the image is received by the brain. That could be something as simple as a monitor thats curved, or a "good" video head-set that doesn't look "super" geeky (or make you cross-eyed), all the way to human implants that can send the video directly to our brain without any monitor at all.

So anyways, what are all YOUR thoughts/guesses/premonitions?

A cock force-feedback accessory.
 
A cock force-feedback accessory.

LMAO, they say the porn industry is what won the blu-ray/HD-DVD war!:D

I think destructable environments will become a standard, as well as accurate physics down to the last pixel. We have pc's now that can do it, granted they are 'super-computers' but once that tech trickles down i think we will be set.
 
Better AI and the ability to provide more choices and paths. Not open world, open story.
 
Better AI and the ability to provide more choices and paths. Not open world, open story.

I love the open story concept. I hope that once the graphics are nailed we are going to see a ramp up in the content and interactiveness of the games. They will have major hollywood directors and actors that scan thier bodies in, down to the pore, and then do 'quality' voice overs to be used in games, and they will get paid royallties. Of course, that could put them all out of business if we could could recreate them digitally. :p
 
I think were still quite far away from 'photo-realistic' graphics but we're already at the point where improved graphics isn't going to delivers us any new possibilities in gameplay.
The general form of gaming hasn't changed in the last 25 years - recieving information by looking at a monitor.

I think the two 'big things' that already happened are the internet and online play, and Wii's new approach on immersive gameplay.
Who knows whats next
 
I will tell you whats next, games will get worse and worse just like mainstream music. Every publisher will try to invoke some sort of MMO business model. Micro-transactions will become the norm (they are already). Basically it will get more expensive and offer less innovation. I am going to make a bold prediction here : EA will enter the console business using steam as it's backbone.
 
now that we 'almost' have photo-realistic graphics

We're a long, long way from photorealism. And even ignoring the massive technological limitations, consider how much AAA production costs have escalated just to get to where we are now.

But that aside, what I'd really like to see is bigger environments, with much longer draw distances, and without zones or portals and especially without mountain ranges etc strategically placed around the edges.

And I'd also be interested in seeing some advance in 3D tech, because that's come a long way since the red and blue glasses days. Especially with the more recent motion-tracking stuff made popular by the Wii hardware.
 
A cock force-feedback accessory.

Sadly, they have them, lol

I was watching the Adult Entertainment Expo on G4 awhile back, the cock simulator hooks up to your pc via USB and simulates what happens on the dvd!!!!!!

Like 500 bucks if i remember correct lol
 
crysis made a good leap, only some parts of crysis look photo realistic. When your in-game at a resolution like 1680x1050 and you see grass and sand in detail, its not so "photo-realistic" looking. If you look at screen shots that are small like 1024x768 it looks photo realistic, but when you get up close like I said....not so much.

I think graphics could go a lot more. You know those CG game trailers, like the one of WoW lich king for example. I want those kind of graphics... Another example, the frontlines fuel of war CG trailer.

We could go way beyond crysis, how about having realistic environments where if a mortar hits the ground, it makes a huge hole you can jump into, along with their being a hole how about creatures in that hole, like little earth worms and bugs. How about flys that are so detailed you can look at one and see its eyes and legs, not just a black blob on the screen.

What about water that reacts, like if your swimming and you look down at your clothes and they look wet, instead of being static. How about the flame thrower in farcry 2, instead of the grass just looking dead, how about making it crisp, like if you walked through burned grass it would be like you walked through snow, leaving your foot prints.

Crysis is just a little slice of the pie.
 
Every publisher will try to invoke some sort of MMO business model.

You just depressed me because you're absolutely right. Some 60 year old corporate douche is going to sit there cawing about how all the "kids" are into these "online games", so everything is going to be an MMO, just like it appears to be going now.

It seems like you can't even buy a title anymore that doesn't have a gimped single player game just so there could be more dev time for 2 extra-special multiplayer maps that all of five people in Arkansas care about. Warhead, I'm staring at you.
 
Photo Realism << Near Life Like Physics << Destructible Environments

Photo Realism still can go a long way.
(I would love to see Nvidia Physx implemented in a lot more games hopefully)
 
Better AI and the ability to provide more choices and paths. Not open world, open story.

Definitely. We are a long way away from photorealistic graphics. But I do believe we are starting to see diminishing returns on graphics. There are three things that are very underdeveloped and will result in huge game play payoffs when we see some real breakthroughs.

AI: The lack of improvement in AI hurts not just FPS games but more so role playing games. As Mcatrage said, open story. The reality is there has yet to be a single real role playing game on any PC. So far they have all been hack/slash and collect games with varying degrees of a branching story and menu dialogues. They are the equivalent of the &#8220;Choose Your Own Story Adventure&#8221; books created back in 1979. Until the AI improves to the point to allow for open ended story then there is no role playing going on.

Also imagine a FPS where the AI is so good that a single opponent actually is challenging not because of additional powers, armor, weapons or other artificial advantages for the computer advisory but simple because of intelligence of your digital opponent.

Physics: This one of the elements that constantly breaks immersion. The tree that cannot be cut down, the door that can&#8217;t be broken, etc. But also the more objects that can have physics applied also has a huge visual payoff. The potential for physics to play into game play will only increases and designers are not limited to only limited number of physics enabled items.

Input: The keyboard mouse works just fine for action games like FPS etc. But imagine the benefits in game play once your PC is able to read facial expressions and you have a controller that responds to your thoughts. Both of these techs are in their infancy now but it would be a game changer for role playing games. A dialogue with a NPC would take a whole new element that would be way beyond "Fishman". But would have benefits for all games, imagine if a game was able to adjust its pace based on your excitement level? You are starting to get bored, so the game ramps up the action, etc.
 
5 years for graphics to be photorealistic is way too optimistic. If I had to put a date to when you can't tell the difference between a video of walking down a street in a game and somebody walking down the street with a camera, I'd say 15 to 20 years.
 
Better AI and the ability to provide more choices and paths. Not open world, open story.

Although I agree, that's not going to happen, while people keep praising games like HL2 or CoD4 type games, where we are given a specific path, from which we cannot deviate. The industry will not change much, if the gamers choose to be guided all the way through a game, instead of choosing their own path or making a decision, that changes the way the story proceeds / ends.

Besides that, Physics also play an important role, if we want a more realistic gameplay experience, in how the world reacts to our actions. Crysis was/is a great leap in that regard. All that's left for it to be perfect, is terrain destruction and cloth physics, as we've seen in NVIDIA's PhysX demos.

Crysis was also a big leap in terms of graphics. There are many areas in the game, that could be mistaken with a real photo and no game provided that before, so I would venture a guess, that completely photo-realistic graphics aren't too far off, in terms of tech evolution, but obviously for us, that still means 10-15 years.
 
When they get gameplay up to par i will start caring about graphics/physics/destructable environments.

Some of the most fun i've ever had playing a game were back years and years ago. The game makers keep pushing graphics/physics/whatever when all i want is a fun game. I don't care if it looks like "hello kitty happy island adventures" with 2d sprite graphics if it is fun to play.
 
When they get gameplay up to par i will start caring about graphics/physics/destructable environments.

Some of the most fun i've ever had playing a game were back years and years ago. The game makers keep pushing graphics/physics/whatever when all i want is a fun game. I don't care if it looks like "hello kitty happy island adventures" with 2d sprite graphics if it is fun to play.


This.

Obviously, having the super graphics are a selling point to get the game into hands as fast as possible. Remember, we live in the "instant gratification" age. However, some of my favorite games have shotty graphics. When game designers KNEW they couldn't produce half-decent graphics, they went out of their way to provide a great gaming experience. Hell, even text-based adventures were a lot of fun.

Give me a good gameplay experience, and then the graphics can come second.
 
Let's wait until we actually have photo-realistic games first. We are a VERY long way from that.
 
Less games that suck ass!!

and pron didn't win the HD / BR war - Sony did, pron won the beta / VHS war.

anyways ya, i don't want photo realistic games - if i wanted real i would go outside.....
 
I'm thinking Matrix or Johnny Quest style gaming. Die in the game, die in real life (Good way to control population at least). :rolleyes:
 
Every game is either prolonging a life of something/someone, or destroying something/someone, or both. That's it. That's all gameplay is. Unlike graphics, there really isn't much room for any gameplay advances. Look at how guns alone impacted games over the years. There really isn't a plethora we as gamers like to do besides shooting, slicing, or blowing up things.

The best we can hope for is the best proven gameplay with more immersion factor. I personally want better in game acting, storylines, better graphics of course, better music scores, and overall just give me that great feeling I get watching a movie like The Dark Knight at IMAX but with the feeling that I'm in control.
 
AI is one field that just doesn't seem to have improved over the years and is long overdue for a upgrade.

It's sad when 'good' AI just means that the enemy ducks behind crates when fired upon.
 
A.I. is number one on my list also. Next would be destructible terrain; a rocket shouldn't be stopped by tissue paper, even two ply. Believable physics would also nice; ragdolls physics is a cartoonish joke. Persistent environment, things shouldn't just magically disappear unless of course you cast a magic spell that makes them disappear. I want all the different elements that create a realistic environment, or at least movie realism. Photo-realism alone doesn't cut it.

BTW, I wouldn't call current graphics photo-realistic.
 
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