Are the graphical elements of gaming starting to peak?

[Admiral Huddy]

How can anyone who has played Far Cry2 not be impressed by its stunning seamless graphics. The awesome terrain, draw distance, textures and shadowing are pretty realistic in terms of what we have ever seen before. But is the technology starting to peak?

When you look back on older games, such as original Far Cry, the graphics now seem some what dated which is to be expected but it wasn’t that long ago really. In those days, the games hardware requirements pretty much dominated your upgrade path and both HL2, FarCry, to name a few, really tortured pretty much everyone’s hardware at the time. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

For example, my 2 year old graphics card can easily play all* the latest titles at their highest settings, including FarCry2. Therefore, any upgrade to newer card since would be a complete waste of time.

Surely, there has to be a point where by the games themselves have little or no more room for graphical improvement and I think we are starting to see this.

Discuss.

[Davey_Pitch]

I think until we see games that have in-game graphics that are the equal of the FMV in some games, there's always room for improvement. I do wonder how long it'll take us to get graphics that are obviously superior to what we have now as they are quite frankly amazing compared to what they were 2 years ago.

[petemc]

Exactly. Pre-rendered is always going to show us that next step up. Always room for more detail, better physics, AI, more detailed textures etc. I think we will reach a point where by it'll be like the animation industry. You could have a highly detailed world but theres a lot of fun in less is more.

[Streeteh]

Sorry to sound like an utter nonce, but if farcry 2 blew you away you should see crysis on ultra high detail. Completely different league. I reckon crysis levels of graphics (but with acceptable framerates) will be what to expect on the next generation of consoles

God knows where PCs will be by then.

Look at this for example: (in game)



Stupidly detailed face

[Matblack]

'Tis impressive however I suspect there comes a point where the cost of art becomes higher than the cost of programming/ level design. the more detail you can get in I presume the more design needs to be get detail into the graphics. At somepoint the cost of that must get prohibative surely?

MB

[loki]

I don't think we have reached the peak of graphical development yet. What I think has happened is that the consumer is demanding content over graphics or a greater balance of graphics vs content. Some of the very best and absorbing games rely more on game play than they do on eye candy.

World of Warcraft being a classic example. This can be played on a pretty basic machine with limited graphics yet the players will tell you that it is the day to day experience and interaction that keeps them coming back. Conversley you had Krytek develop Crysis and even on a really poweful system, it was a lottery if it ran well. Their emphasis was more on graphics and game engine than an absorbing storyline

I think the days are gone whereby you have to invest a big ammount of money to play the latest games. When HL2 came out I chuffed just short of £300.00 on an ATI Radeon 9800GTX. Nowadays I don't feel the need nor do I have the need to keep upgrading my system in order to play the latest games at high settings. My 4850 runs everything at high settings.

It's also worth recognising that there has been a lot of convergence in the Graphics market with Nvidia and Intel, AMD & ATI. There is a lot going on behind the scenes with their respective R & D departments merging.

[Streeteh]

I believe that as the development time for textures etc grows too great for games developers to do alongside creating games it'll get outsourced much like game engine development is.

Think about it, one company develops a set of textures for several objects, these could then be bought by games developers and applied to their games with different levels of lighting and effects applied to get their 'look'. As i said, this is already being done by engine developers so i see no reason why companies couldn't specialise in just creating resources to be used within games. It would become like the next 'unreal engine release', every few years a company releases a new set of even more detailed life-like textures ready to be pasted all over the game models.

[NokkonWud]

Originally Posted by Admiral Huddy

How can anyone who has played Far Cry2 not be impressed by its stunning seamless graphics. The awesome terrain, draw distance, textures and shadowing are pretty realistic in terms of what we have ever seen before. But is the technology starting to peak?

When you look back on older games, such as original Far Cry, the graphics now seem some what dated which is to be expected but it wasn’t that long ago really. In those days, the games hardware requirements pretty much dominated your upgrade path and both HL2, FarCry, to name a few, really tortured pretty much everyone’s hardware at the time. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

For example, my 2 year old graphics card can easily play all* the latest titles at their highest settings, including FarCry2. Therefore, any upgrade to newer card since would be a complete waste of time.

Surely, there has to be a point where by the games themselves have little or no more room for graphical improvement and I think we are starting to see this.

Discuss.

Hardware is coming to its peak, yes, the abilities of artists etc.. is far beyond what we currently see though.

[Joe 90]

on a side note - i think the next area for change in games is physics and animation.

I've just found out about a new football game (Backbreaker) that has no pre defined animation, everything is animated by the physics engine according to the specific situation. sounds pretty awesome, basically no two tackles will ever be the same \o/

if you combine that kind of thing with the ever improving graphics and games are set to get pretty awesome

[Admiral Huddy]

Originally Posted by NokkonWud

Hardware is coming to its peak, yes, the abilities of artists etc.. is far beyond what we currently see though.

I'm not sure.. the 8800GTX has been way ahead of it's time.


There surely comes a point too where the media becomes more of a interactive video than a game. The difference between what's real and what isn't is only separated by the imagination. Take that away how do we distinguish between the two?

When you play older games such as RTCW, you have a sense of nostalgia but at the same time, you know you are playing a game. FarCry2 to me is an experience more than a game.

I might not be putting over too well what I'm trying to say or of course that I might be talking complete rubbish