Next leap in graphics?

[Jeff7181]

Seems to me that the graphics in games has only had marginal increases in quality for the past year or so. There are some good looking games out there, but when can we expect the next big jump in graphics technology, similar to the time when Far Cry, Half Life 2 and Doom 3 came out?

Euclideon's demo looked kinda promising. I just think since it hasn't gone anywhere very quickly that there's some barrier preventing that type of technology from being used today.

 

[jpiniero]

- Consoles at historically long gap between refreshes, and when they get refreshed the difference won't be as dramatic as people expect.
- Content Creation getting too expensive
- Mobile (iOS)/Social becoming more popular

 

[Dark Shroud]

The problem is we've had very big leaps in technology since the current consoles have come out. Once the PS3 & Xbox3 come out and update to a modern basic hardware level we'll see updates to the game engines.

 

[imaheadcase]

Did you say doom 3 was a big leap in graphics? hehe

More game types than graphics it seems now, all the "graphic improvements" you have been seeing are just shortcuts to make games look better.

 

[Gloomy]

I would like it if an APU accelerated physics API were released.

 

[blastingcap]

I would like it if an APU accelerated physics API were released.

Very interesting suggestion and I would like it if an otherwise unused embedded GPU did something useful while my discrete card did the heavy lifting....

 

[Dark Shroud]

If Intel wanted too they could probably get Havoc to do that. But their IGPs are not the best for OpenCL. When AMD switched over to all APU chips sporting on-board GCN cores something could probably be done with them.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Just wait for next gen consoles

 

[tigersty1e]

We're just getting diminshing returns now.

I play a lot of older games from 2008 era and they still look awesome. Back in 2004, the games that came out in 2000 looked like crap.

 

[toyota]

We're just getting diminshing returns now.

I play a lot of older games from 2008 era and they still look awesome. Back in 2004, the games that came out in 2000 looked like crap.

with RAGE, we actually went backwards in graphics quality.

 

[Subyman]

Unreal engine 4 will probably come out in 2013 with the new consoles. Check out the samaritan demo.

 

[3DVagabond]

Unreal engine 4 will probably come out in 2013 with the new consoles. Check out the samaritan demo.

You can add as much geometry detail as you like. Unless the lighting and shading improves dramatically it's still going to look like a cartoon.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

We're just getting diminshing returns now.

I play a lot of older games from 2008 era and they still look awesome. Back in 2004, the games that came out in 2000 looked like crap.

True

 

[puppypusher]

We're just getting diminshing returns now. I play a lot of older games from 2008 era and they still look awesome. Back in 2004, the games that came out in 2000 looked like crap.

correct

 

[BrightCandle]

And yet we are still a very long way away from decent graphical quality in real time. We aren't yet even ray tracing for lighting effects, its all still badly simulated and precalculated which puts a lot more work on the developers and artists. Its not even as if Ray tracing is particulary high quality, really what we want is Phong lighting and we are a very long way from that. Both of these would fix the shadows problem, but ray tracing produces harse shadow edges without a fudge factor where as phong produces correct soft shadows.

We need a lot more performance before they look real. The tricks currently played are nice but not quite enough to fool our eyes into thinking its real.

 

[Jaydip]

The current GPUs are too slow for real time Ray Tracing.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

The current GPUs are too slow for real time Ray Tracing.

Honestly, we moved a lot more from 1998 to 2002 (mafia) than we did from 2002 to 2012

 

[SickBeast]

I find that some parts of Battlefield 3 look almost photo-realistic, in particular the scene where you walk through the aircraft carrier and get into the fighter jet.

So, we already have great graphics in games, plus it's getting harder and harder for nVidia and AMD to make significantly faster GPUs. Then there's the fact that the consoles are holding us back.

The new consoles will bring us a jump for sure.

 

[Jaydip]

Honestly, we moved a lot more from 1998 to 2002 (mafia) than we did from 2002 to 2012

Agreed.

 

[Arzachel]

The next breakthrough in graphics will not happen due to more beefy hardware but through the industry finding and embracing ways to make content generation easier reducing the load on artists. It takes around two weeks to make a single high quality 3d model for a single person working on a AAA game iirc. I bet we'll see more emphasis on procedural generation.

 

[Grooveriding]

We've gone nowhere in 5 years now. Crysis/Warhead still has the bar set. Even with all the DX11 features it has done nothing to move us past a five year old game from Crytek.

BF3 looks about on par in some scenes, but there is nothing that has raised the bar like Crysis did 5 years ago similar to the way Far Cry did before that or BF2.

There used to be a strong push for bigger and better visuals in games until the console became the big money maker. Now hardly any devs could care less about visuals any more. If anything they focus on keeping them the same rather than pushing them forward. We lost the big dev that was pushing PC graphics forward (Crytek), who are now churning out console-port turds with tacked on excessively demanding and unimpressive features for the port to PC. (Crysis 2)

Look at the situation today. We could run anything, even at ultra high resolutions, on the last gen 40nm hardware. 28nm has done nothing but bring an excess of unneeded power for the available games unless you are running high resolutions in a few games and want to use 2 cards instead of 3. It's a sorry state of affairs.

If 28nm were not so dissapointing in the performance gain it has brought, it could of at least brought single gpu performance that could play anything @ 1080P at a high framerate. Unfortunately as yet nvidia and AMD have not released anything impressive in big performance gains over 40nm on 28nm yet.

 

[SirPauly]

I would like it if an APU accelerated physics API were released.

I agree Physics as a whole and believe more dynamics and physics is more-so where games may make a jump in realism.

 

[Jeff7181]

I think I agree that physics need work still.

Human movement also needs work. People still look stiff and jerky. Facial animations, especially when speaking are horrible.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

I think I agree that physics need work still.

Human movement also needs work. People still look stiff and jerky. Facial animations, especially when speaking are horrible.

This

 

[shortylickens]

QUANTUM COMPUTING!

:awe: