Tag: graphics

Evolution of the Digital Man

Doom ManSaw this while browsing Maximum PC the other day. It’s a quick look at some essential games with 3D characters from the last 19 years (gosh I feel old now) The focus is on a picture system starting with Wolfenstein 3D from 1992 moving up to todays big hitter of Crysis 2. It’s a cool history of how 3D characters have changed over the years, giving you a good look at the evolution of character graphics.

33 Key Stages in the Evolution of (Virtual) Mankind

Just wanted to share this with the community. What do you guys think of this change over time? Any thoughts or complaints on how designs have changed?

Source – Maximum PC

GamerSushi Asks: Photorealistic Graphics?

LimboOver the weekend, I’ve been dabbling a bit in a couple of newly release titles. One is, obviously, StarCraft 2, but the other is Limbo, newly up for purchase as part of X-Box LIVE’s Summer of Arcade. I didn’t really follow the story of Limbo that closely, but I knew it was a side-scrolling platformer with a unique look. I tried the demo and immediately bought the full game, mostly because of how much the art style appeal to me. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Limbo, check out the trailer. Among other cliched terms, I’d call it hauntingly beautiful and very atmospheric. In addition to looking as gorgeous as a game that dark can it also features some slick puzzles and grotesque punishments for failure (seriously, you get messed up).

The game’s visual presentation got me thinking, though. The farther into the future we get with game consoles, the closer to life everyone seems to want their graphics. While some big-budget titles stretch the limit of what is acceptable by our real-life standards (Gears of War’s improbably bulky protagonists come to mind), video games are getting closer and closer to emulating what we perceive through our own two eyes. Games like Limbo, Braid and many similar titles show us that we don’t have to constrain everything to an Earth-bound package. Perhaps one of the barriers to the “games as art” argument is that this visual medium doesn’t add anything that movies have already done in this respect. That’s probably why Braid got tossed around a lot when this issue got brought up the first time; it looks like a painting come to life, much like Limbo. So I ask you guys this: do you want more games to stretch the graphical barrier and start using different ways to interpret what we see? Or do you think that sort of experimentation is confined to downloadable titles? Fire away!

More Photorealistic Graphics, Please

gow2Epic 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