Epic Games, the dudes behind Unreal and Gears of War, are probably some of the biggest graphics whores in the industry. I mean, with all the eye candy they constantly throw at us in their games, it’s hard to doubt that they love making games, and love making them look good. But can they look better?
While the graphics are great in games that use the Unreal Engine, photorealistic graphics aren’t quite here yet, even with this generation’s powerful hardware across consoles and PC games alike. However, Epic’s Tim Sweeney, in a recent interview with Gamasutra, has a couple of ideas about when we’ll see photorealism in real-time:
We’re only about a factor of a thousand off from achieving all that in real-time without sacrifices. So we’ll certainly see that happen in our lifetimes; it’s just a result of Moore’s Law. Probably 10-15 years for that stuff, which isn’t far at all.
Even though I’m not much of a graphics guy (I feel gameplay is way more important), this idea is pretty interesting. I’d like to see what kinds of new art directions developers take with that much graphical power at their disposal. What do you guys think?
Source- Gamasutra
Sounds awesome! But 10-15 years? We’ll still probably be waiting for Duke Nukem Forever then. And then they’ll decide to throw away everything they’ve done and start again using these graphics, and well have to wait another ten to fifteen years. Oh well.
But anyway, this sounds awesome! Photoreal all the way 😛
OH! and first!
Pass. I am totally not interested in this at all.
I know what people look like. I don’t need to see people in my video games.
I prefer more fantastic graphics, stuff I have never seen before.
That is my theory on why FF: The Spirits Within failed so epically. People wanted Bahumut and Dragons in CGI and all we got was people…big deal. I see people every day.
If they use that graphical power to make stuff like Prince of Persia or Wind Waker, I am there.
Content. Jet Set Radio Future was an awesome game and it was Cell Shaded, something I considered to be nasty looking. Graphics are awesome though 😀
[quote comment=”6813″]Sounds awesome! But 10-15 years? We’ll still probably be waiting for Duke Nukem Forever then. And then they’ll decide to throw away everything they’ve done and start again using these graphics, and well have to wait another ten to fifteen years. Oh well.
[/quote]
Duke Nukem Forever is shut down… isn’t happening. http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1127
I could not be more ambivalent about this. Graphics are fine the way they are, give us more unique and interesting games. Plus, this means that graphics haven’t stopped improving, and I’ll have to upgrade my computer again in 10-15 years.
As long as gameplay is not sacrificed then bring on the pixels!
Sure, photorealism would be awesome, but we must remember all of the bright and colorful games that were plentiful in the last 3 generations. I REALLY don’t want photorealism to mean that we can’t have something that isn’t ‘realistic’, if you understand what I mean.
Yeah, probably in 20 years, we won’t be able to tell the difference between our games and our lives – or lack thereof. 😀
[quote comment=”6817″]Pass. I am totally not interested in this at all.
I know what people look like. I don’t need to see people in my video games.[/quote]
Ding ding ding! My thoughts exactly. For movies and stuff, I think photorealistic CG is fine, but I want my games to show me another way of interpreting reality.
That’s why I’m excited for Boderlands. It could have been just another post-apocalyptic FPS/RPG a la Fallout 3, but the cell-shaded graphics make it look very interesting. (Plus it’s co-op which is a bonus.)
Well, if the story is rounded out, and the gameplay is fantastic then I hardly notice the graphics unless they truly are groundbreaking. If the devs dont sacrifice the key ingredients for Graphics ( .. Crysis anyone??) then I’m fine with it. It’s really only a matter of time anyways.