How close are we to photorealism?

Oh, definitely. I think nothing of Call of Duty games, while Okami is one of my most beloved of all time.

Though I think that graphics that are photorealistic in capability can help more representational abstract games.

I guess it's parroting what "proffesor" just said, we want photorealism for photosurrealism. Okami wouldn't be Okami without Play Station 2 graphics. "Photorealism" here means not being a landscape that doesn't contain dragon, it means being able to see the scales on the dragons with heavy and believable detail.

And cartoony stuff will always have a place in games. But progressing in what developers can do in terms of "realism" with graphics is certainly helpful for many types of games. As well do they push forward more cartoony types of games.

Genkidama for Japan, even if you don't have money, you can help![1]

Not that photorealism and realism aren't related. One of the desirable goals would be to have the tech to make photorealistic imagery of fantastic settings. Probably the closest example I can think of is Avatar.

Home of CBR Rumbles-in-Exile: rumbles.fr.yuku.com

It's ''The'' Proffesor, thank you.

But yeah, it would be cool for a game like Mass Effect to have aliens that look real. Photorealism would be awesome if you could throw it in without making the other stuff worse.

Avatar is a great example of photorealism. Something like that in games would be incredible.

edited 17th Jun '11 9:55:43 PM by TheProffesor

Fuck photorealism. I want better AI. THAT is the next frontier.

Jonah Falcon

We'll get photorealism faster than smart AI. Graphics have always been the spear head of innovation with video games.

@Re: Animation: That's probably the biggest hurdle for realism in games outside of production costs. There are so many tiny, subtle movements whose presence or absence can be the line between 'Whoa, that's computer animated?!' and 'HOLY FUCKSHIT WHAT IS THAT THING?!' that it's really easy to make something that looks realistic in screenshots look terrifying in motion. And then you have to worry about things like interactions with scenery, because the moment people start clipping through the ground, or, god forbid, each-other, things take a plummet right into the Uncanny Valley.

edited 17th Jun '11 10:32:52 PM by Miijhal

Probably has something to do with the fact that graphics are far easier to advertise than AI.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

AI is far harder to do. Graphics are just numbers. AI is... well, thinking.

Jonah Falcon

Indeed. I'm speaking more of priorities than of accomplishments.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

There, that's what we've all been trying to get at.

Genkidama for Japan, even if you don't have money, you can help![1]

I don't think it would look creepy. Because it wouldn't look like anything at all. Because it is impossible. If something is in manga style, it can't be photorealistic. If something is photorealistic, it can't be in manga style. The one thing excludes the other.

People aren't as awful as the internet makes them out to be.

The hell you talking about, I played that on the wii.

The Blog The Art

Fixed it for you.

I hope we get photorealism soon, so that developers can focus on something else - like AI as JAF mentioned, and interesting things like procedural generation of worlds. I'd strangle an orphan to play a modern Daggerfall.

> Graphics are just numbers. AI is... well, thinking.

I am slightly amused at the fact that I do understand a thing or two about game development more than a guy who has a career in VG journalism.

Sorry but it is not actually the case. Graphics means the whole visual part, usually. Now that's where the problem is: it is not simply a matter of drawing more polygons. There's a matter of collision detection, reflection, and what have you, and making an engine that would be capable of swallowing that can easily be much more complex in essense than developing a simple bunch of genetic algorithms that make A.I.

edited 19th Jun '11 6:01:31 AM by Aminatep

   I will consume not only your flesh, but your very soul.   

However, making those AI algorithms *good* is another story. You mention genetic algorithms, but they aren't really all that feasible to run on consumer software in realtime yet. So, any usage of them to build AI has to be done in the design phase. And since for genetic algorithms to work, you need repetition and assessment, you still need man-hours of labor to make them work.

And then your genetically-programmed AI starts doing vaudeville routines in the actual release copy, because human players in large numbers are unpredictable.

Home of CBR Rumbles-in-Exile: rumbles.fr.yuku.com

Making anything good is another story.

There's an obvious difference in that graphic engines don't need to be developed every time from scratch, but there're pathfinding (oh god do I hate writing pathfinding) procedures readily avaliable as well.

> they aren't really all that feasible to run on consumer software in realtime yet.

Now that's a huge problem of programming in general. We have commonplace multi-core processors, but we don't have any sort of real multiprocessing. Programming is stuck in the *** eighties!

edited 19th Jun '11 9:49:11 AM by Aminatep

   I will consume not only your flesh, but your very soul.   

Graphics is just NUMBERS. Seriously. It's calculation of how light interacts with textures and how it reacts.

AI, true AI, requires fuzzy logic.

So, no, you hardly know more than me because I deal with developers themselves and have discussed this with them. Thank you, and good night.

Jonah Falcon

I thought this is normal.

People aren't as awful as the internet makes them out to be.

When it comes to graphics and how it relates to the game, it's a matter of integration with the rest of the engine, the efficiency of the programming, the complexity of the algorithms, the range of capabilities...you don't just make numbers, you have to take into account how flawlessly those calculations interact with an engine.

If improving graphics was as simple as you imply it to be, Nvidia would probably never need to update their graphical card drivers.

edited 20th Jun '11 12:20:02 AM by RocketDude

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

You fry my insightful brain on so many levels, Jonah.

> Graphics is just NUMBERS

Guess fucking what, everything digital is NUMBERS.

> AI, true AI, requires fuzzy logic.

Fuck yeah, that'd measure technological process.

You do understand fuzzy logic is first and foremost a mathematical theory, right?
What videogame AI is actually absolutely reliant on is decision theory.

> So, no, you hardly know more than me because I deal with developers themselves and have discussed this with them.

My major is not in liberal arts.

edited 20th Jun '11 2:49:56 AM by Aminatep

   I will consume not only your flesh, but your very soul.   

Why should I believe you? You're Hitler! -raises mirror-

Except [condescending response follows]. Because [sarcasm here]. You do understand [snark], right? POTHOLE TO SARCASM MODE

^^Yeah, if you want to improve game AI, you'll have to read about logical reasoning and more philosophical stuff because computers and AI work on reasoning (abductive, deductive, etc).

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel