Game graphics and its problem

[Siyano_v1legacy]

With the recent release of Witcher 3 and Fallout 4, I have been thinking that graphic "realism" is getting "crazy" and out of hands.
I feel like the exponential growth of the need of better and better graphic, and hardware, is not something good in general.
By demanding more and more, games become harder to test, strenuous and costly, because more company have to make more hardware and so its become a huge ocean of headache and stupid variation of the "same" stuff. All that for what, what is the % of gamer that really really want to play their games at their fullest? What is really the point of just shooting yourself on the foot just so you can praise your game to be the best in graphic.
Not saying that a large portion of gamer are like me, but I think graphic is becoming something that is less and less something I'm looking for into a game.
Not sure why big AAA is just still trying more and more to push that "high" barrier for the last couple of years and I think its became obvious that most don't really mind graphic in general.
Yes I want a good looking game, but I don't care about 80% of it. Shadows, grass, leaves, sun bloom and similar small bonuses are uneccesary and "useless".

Also, you may want to look at the "wallpaper" effect or the "its new!" effect, my point is, when you put a new wallpaper to your wall, yes its great, you look at it for the first few "hours", but then, you get accustomed to it and its doesn't really matter anymore. To me, its exactly that, since the "realism" or graphic "niceness" peek around 2005 or 06 (to me its almost since Half life 2 and more closely to Fallout 3)

My 2 cents

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Graphics disputes often get bogged down in very personal opinions on art style. For example, a lot of Japanese games are very lacking in terms of lighting, texture quality, animation quality, anti-aliasing, draw distance -- the usual jazz. But people who like the art style of those games tend to defend them simply because they like the art style. A good example would be JRPGs like Final Fantasy XII. Low quality textures, simple geometry, limited facial animation, and heavy, heavy hair aliasing.

Likewise, games such as MGS V, with really iffy visuals in a lot of cases, get praised for their graphics by fans because "art style". Bad texturing, low polygon counts, barren level designs -- none of that matters because "I like the art style".

Then you've got games that are accused of being graphics over gameplay. Like Ryse.

But I don't really agree. Sure, Crytek were mainly known for being basically the best graphics engineers in the industry who pushed technology further than any other developer. But they still made GAMES. Good games. Graphics designers want to push the envelope. Crytek was arguably the first developer to become obsessed with "filmic" graphics. They introduced stuff like chromatic aberration and "soft" postprocessing anti-aliasing methods to the masses.

The lack of... "appreciation" for high visual fidelity is one of my pet peeves. Many games have amazing visuals and get no recognition for it because... basically, some people don't like the art style.

Let's go back to 2013. There are people who looked at Call of Duty: Ghosts, and declared it had "disappointing" and "last gen" and "bad" graphics that allegedly were "no better than CoD 4 from 2007".

There's a level of willful stupidity involved here. Sure, we get it. You don't like Ghost' washed out art style. But that's the style the developer chose. That scene has visuals developers in 2007 could only dream of achieving. Even Crysis 1 isn't this sophisticated. And despite what fanbois will tell you, there isn't a huge technological difference between Ghosts and Advanced Warfare. In fact, Advanced Warfare is MISSING some of Ghosts' graphical features, such as physicalised dog fur.

Likewise, Battlefield: Hardline is one of the best looking game released this year.

But it won't get recognition for its graphics because of how the deck is stacked. It's PS1 vs N64 all over again. PS1 games were pretty much universally graphically inferior to N64 games. There's a fairly simple test for 5th gen graphical fidelity -- count the dynamic light sources in the scene. N64 games often had dynamic lighting all over the place. PS1 games were lucky to have ONE dynamic light in a scene. This is the starkest difference between, say, Banjo Tooie and a Crash Bandicoot game. N64 games had bilinear filtered textures with perspective correction. PS1 games had point-sampled textures with no perspective correction leading to distortion. But because some people prefer "crisp" textures, they believe with all their heart that the PS1 games are visually superior. It's all very opinion driven. It's the same mentality which leads some people to ignore reality and declare that Crysis 1 isn't the worst Crysis from a graphics and engine viewpoint.

edit:
Do audiences care? Maybe not. We're talking about people who willingly bought PS2s instead of Xboxes, after all. We're talking people who bought PS3's, defended them, and then then now proceed to bash the Xbox One with no shred of irony. But game developers care. Game development is an art. And developers are constantly striving to surpass what has come before.

 

[Rattja]

Well personally I do not care how realistic something looks in games, because the moment it does not behave realistic as well the whole illusion shatters.
As long as you can't hide triggers, loops and other normal game stuff it does not really work.

Another thing is that whith the ammount of details we are currently operating with, I am noticing it's getting increasingly harder to tell things apart. Is that a door I can open or just a wall with a door skin? Is that an item or just a part of the desk? With simple graphics these things used to be quite clear. Now they often use things like glowing edges and other markers to make sure you get it, which kinda defeats the point I feel.

 

[Sampler]

Favorite game this year is Broforce, so I'm definitely in the "graphics don't make a game" camp.

Graphics should be a third consideration, good enough to carry the story and gameplay, not a primary consideration.

This way triple-A prices will drop, meaning games can take a chance, rather than being bland enough to appeal to the common denominator - moving away from the blandness of recent triple-a games.

 

[Zhukov]

The lack of... "appreciation" for high visual fidelity is one of my pet peeves. Many games have amazing visuals and get no recognition for it because... basically, some people don't like the art style.

If someone uses the highest quality paint on earth and the most expensive paintbrush to paint a boring picture they really shouldn't be surprised when nobody gives a damn.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

The lack of... "appreciation" for high visual fidelity is one of my pet peeves. Many games have amazing visuals and get no recognition for it because... basically, some people don't like the art style.

If someone uses the highest quality paint on earth and the most expensive paintbrush to paint a boring picture they really shouldn't be surprised when nobody gives a damn.

One person's boring picture is another person's masterpiece. I think where cinema and games differ is there is a quantifiable appreciation for visual fidelity. 2001: A Space Odyssey may be really, really boring, but it's a beautiful film to look at, and a huge part of the film's "experience" comes from that. With games, one person's "great art style that really holds up" is another person's "pixelated mess". (I'm looking at you, Vagrant Story.)

 

[Squilookle]

Graphics disputes often get bogged down in very personal opinions on art style. For example, a lot of Japanese games are very lacking in terms of lighting, texture quality, animation quality, anti-aliasing, draw distance -- the usual jazz. But people who like the art style of those games tend to defend them simply because they like the art style. A good example would be JRPGs like Final Fantasy XII. Low quality textures, simple geometry, limited facial animation, and heavy, heavy hair aliasing.

Likewise, games such as MGS V, with really iffy visuals in a lot of cases, get praised for their graphics by fans because "art style". Bad texturing, low polygon counts, barren level designs -- none of that matters because "I like the art style".

Then you've got games that are accused of being graphics over gameplay. Like Ryse.

But I don't really agree. Sure, Crytek were mainly known for being basically the best graphics engineers in the industry who pushed technology further than any other developer. But they still made GAMES. Good games. Graphics designers want to push the envelope. Crytek was arguably the first developer to become obsessed with "filmic" graphics. They introduced stuff like chromatic aberration and "soft" postprocessing anti-aliasing methods to the masses.

The lack of... "appreciation" for high visual fidelity is one of my pet peeves. Many games have amazing visuals and get no recognition for it because... basically, some people don't like the art style.

Let's go back to 2013. There are people who looked at Call of Duty: Ghosts, and declared it had "disappointing" and "last gen" and "bad" graphics that allegedly were "no better than CoD 4 from 2007".

There's a level of willful stupidity involved here. Sure, we get it. You don't like Ghost' washed out art style. But that's the style the developer chose. That scene has visuals developers in 2007 could only dream of achieving. Even Crysis 1 isn't this sophisticated. And despite what fanbois will tell you, there isn't a huge technological difference between Ghosts and Advanced Warfare. In fact, Advanced Warfare is MISSING some of Ghosts' graphical features, such as physicalised dog fur.

Likewise, Battlefield: Hardline is one of the best looking game released this year.

But it won't get recognition for its graphics because of how the deck is stacked. It's PS1 vs N64 all over again. PS1 games were pretty much universally graphically inferior to N64 games. There's a fairly simple test for 5th gen graphical fidelity -- count the dynamic light sources in the scene. N64 games often had dynamic lighting all over the place. PS1 games were lucky to have ONE dynamic light in a scene. This is the starkest difference between, say, Banjo Tooie and a Crash Bandicoot game. N64 games had bilinear filtered textures with perspective correction. PS1 games had point-sampled textures with no perspective correction leading to distortion. But because some people prefer "crisp" textures, they believe with all their heart that the PS1 games are visually superior. It's all very opinion driven. It's the same mentality which leads some people to ignore reality and declare that Crysis 1 isn't the worst Crysis from a graphics and engine viewpoint.

edit:
Do audiences care? Maybe not. We're talking about people who willingly bought PS2s instead of Xboxes, after all. We're talking people who bought PS3's, defended them, and then then now proceed to bash the Xbox One with no shred of irony. But game developers care. Game development is an art. And developers are constantly striving to surpass what has come before.

That was a genuinely fascinating read. I don't know what you do for a living but whatever it is- keep doing you

 

[Zhukov]

The lack of... "appreciation" for high visual fidelity is one of my pet peeves. Many games have amazing visuals and get no recognition for it because... basically, some people don't like the art style.

If someone uses the highest quality paint on earth and the most expensive paintbrush to paint a boring picture they really shouldn't be surprised when nobody gives a damn.

One person's boring picture is another person's masterpiece. I think where cinema and games differ is there is a quantifiable appreciation for visual fidelity. 2001: A Space Odyssey may be really, really boring, but it's a beautiful film to look at, and a huge part of the film's "experience" comes from that. With games, one person's "great art style that really holds up" is another person's "pixelated mess". (I'm looking at you, Vagrant Story.)

Well, if there were a lot of people who thought the boring painting was a masterpiece then it would have gotten the recognition it deserved, yes?

If a game gets "no recognition" for its boring visuals despite using all the latest graphical toys and tricks then that suggests there weren't all that many people considering it to be a masterpiece.

 

[Casual Shinji]

While it's true games put a lot of emphasis on graphics, sometimes to the detriment of the rest of the game, I feel people tend to slingshot into the opposite direction in claiming graphics don't matter at all. They do. It depends on what style it's going for, but if it's a realistic one it's only natural to try and simulate that realism as best as possible.

Everyone likes to say how graphical fidelity doesn't matter, but whenever a new game gets released with even the slightest of blurry textures, they're all too eager to call it out.

I may be saying something horribly shallow here, but I like my games to looking topnotch. If I'm buying a brand new current AAA game and find out it looks like a standard definition PS2 title, no matter how good it is I'm still going to feel pretty bummed out that it looks a bit crap. That doesn't mean I want all the focus of a game to be on the polygon count, but if you make a game you had best make it look good. It's up to the developer to find the right balance.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

The lack of... "appreciation" for high visual fidelity is one of my pet peeves. Many games have amazing visuals and get no recognition for it because... basically, some people don't like the art style.

If someone uses the highest quality paint on earth and the most expensive paintbrush to paint a boring picture they really shouldn't be surprised when nobody gives a damn.

One person's boring picture is another person's masterpiece. I think where cinema and games differ is there is a quantifiable appreciation for visual fidelity. 2001: A Space Odyssey may be really, really boring, but it's a beautiful film to look at, and a huge part of the film's "experience" comes from that. With games, one person's "great art style that really holds up" is another person's "pixelated mess". (I'm looking at you, Vagrant Story.)

Well, if there were a lot of people who thought the boring painting was a masterpiece then it would have gotten the recognition it deserved, yes?

If a game gets "no recognition" for its boring visuals despite using all the latest graphical toys and tricks then that suggests there weren't all that many people considering it to be a masterpiece.

I'm basically arguing that most people have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when it comes to graphics and often can't think beyond "does this art style seem visually pleasing to me". It's been a problem since the dawn of 3D graphics when, as I mentioned, a lot of people grew up with PS1s and defended horrible textures because they LIKED horrible textures and found them visually pleasing.

edit:
Here's another example of people arguing over graphics without any real perspective -- you've got people accusing Assassin's Creed: Syndicate of being a "downgrade" from AC: Unity because in their view it has less impressive lighting. That may be true from a "here's some screenshots" perspective, but the problem is that Syndicate has a REALTIME lighting system and Unity has a STATIC lighting system. Prebaked with 4 times of day. The ability to change the time of day in realtime is just as much a part of graphical fidelity as visually nice lighting.

Similarly, I can argue that Watch_Dogs is a much better looking game than GTA V. Certainly, WD has better animation and textures. But GTA V has realtime lighting and WD has prebaked. Dynamic lighting is a game-changer, if you'll excuse the pun, when it comes to visual fidelity.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I don't think they're doing enough. Animations still look horrible. They spend all these resources on character models and environments, but the characters still look like mannequins, having no muscle or flesh to flex and yield. Lara Croft's hair looks amazing in Rise of the Tomb Raider, but her body ruins the illusion.

I'd actually say the opposite is true. Her physique looks generallly okay and gets appropriately muddy and dirty, but her hair seems to operate on a seperate level of gravity, swaying around effortlessly with even the smallest movement of her head. And it's incapable of getting dirty. So even when Lara is completely covered head-to-toe in viscera, her hair is still squeaky clean, like it's made of somekind of space age polymer.

 

[Zhukov]

The lack of... "appreciation" for high visual fidelity is one of my pet peeves. Many games have amazing visuals and get no recognition for it because... basically, some people don't like the art style.

If someone uses the highest quality paint on earth and the most expensive paintbrush to paint a boring picture they really shouldn't be surprised when nobody gives a damn.

One person's boring picture is another person's masterpiece. I think where cinema and games differ is there is a quantifiable appreciation for visual fidelity. 2001: A Space Odyssey may be really, really boring, but it's a beautiful film to look at, and a huge part of the film's "experience" comes from that. With games, one person's "great art style that really holds up" is another person's "pixelated mess". (I'm looking at you, Vagrant Story.)

Well, if there were a lot of people who thought the boring painting was a masterpiece then it would have gotten the recognition it deserved, yes?

If a game gets "no recognition" for its boring visuals despite using all the latest graphical toys and tricks then that suggests there weren't all that many people considering it to be a masterpiece.

I'm basically arguing that most people have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when it comes to graphics and often can't think beyond "does this art style seem visually pleasing to me". It's been a problem since the dawn of 3D graphics when, as I mentioned, a lot of people grew up with PS1s and defended horrible textures because they LIKED horrible textures and found them visually pleasing.

But is being visually pleasing not the point of graphics?

(Okay, that and conveying information obviously.)

If one game uses all the expensive tech and audiences don't find it visually pleasing while another game is considered visually pleasing despite not leveraging all the latest tech then what does that say about the developers of the first game?

 

[Ross Zevenhuizen]

This really comes down to an argument over style versus fidelity. Game graphics follow the same curve as any creative medium: at first the quickest way to make a beautiful piece is to expand the limits of the medium, but as innovations compound and begin to offer more options than artists are capable of accounting for all at once (and audiences capable of noticing), classical artistic talent rapidly starts to win out over better "tech" in terms of making more effective art.

Developing the technology to render pictures in colour is an immediate, effective, and obvious way to make more effective art, while working entirely in black and white requires significant skill to appear as pleasing (or whatever other goal the artist has in mind). On the other hand, once we can make images on screens of tiny, variable lights with ink-less pens that draw in millions of colours at the push of a button, and change their size and behaviour on the fly, what makes a piece of art stand out? Almost entirely its style.

Nobody is impressed by pictures having colour any longer, just as nobody is impressed by games merely being 3D - the way tools like lighting, sound, and texture are used to create an artistic style is rapidly becoming more important than how accurate or powerful they are as systems in a game engine. There are still kinks to be worked out and boundaries to be pushed in this medium, but they're increasingly granular things with lessening impact compared to what's already been done.

Case in point? Look at the avatars on this page. That's art self-selected by a workable sample of different people. Art most probably enjoyed by those people. How many avatars use strong and abstracted visual styles, and how many are designed to take full advantage of all the latest colour depth, resolution, and imaging tech to depict a subject where any of this is actually apparent? I see sketches, cartoons, pixels - style winning out over fidelity, because photography has long since killed the novelty of a perfectly realistic picture.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

edit:
Here's another example of people arguing over graphics without any real perspective -- you've got people accusing Assassin's Creed: Syndicate of being a "downgrade" from AC: Unity because in their view it has less impressive lighting. That may be true from a "here's some screenshots" perspective, but the problem is that Syndicate has a REALTIME lighting system and Unity has a STATIC lighting system. Prebaked with 4 times of day. The ability to change the time of day in realtime is just as much a part of graphical fidelity as visually nice lighting.

So, they made it worse by applying more advanced lighting system? Just because you use better tech, doesn't mean you will get better results. I don't care how you do the product, I care about the end result.

Similarly, I LOVE prerendered backgrounds. PS1 use to have them a lot but then they kind of disappeared. I was pleasantly surprised that Bravely Default used them and they even were slightly layered so you got the illusion of 3D objects. They might not be the most high techest of way to doing things but damn if they don't look good!

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'd actually say the opposite is true. Her physique looks generallly okay and gets appropriately muddy and dirty, but her hair seems to operate on a seperate level of gravity, swaying around effortlessly with even the smallest movement of her head. And it's incapable of getting dirty. So even when Lara is completely covered head-to-toe in viscera, her hair is still squeaky clean, like it's made of somekind of space age polymer.

I thought they improved it. At least that's what I remember from watching this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlUxKO5zYOA

I'll take it over the stiff polygon hair in other games.

This is bad: http://41.media.tumblr.com/73657f7fdd10fa269a8c64afd08c263c/tumblr_nj4ksiV93L1tnxw0ro2_1280.jpg

(I actually like Life Is Strange and dislike the new Tomb Raider.)

Despite all the cutting edge tech behind it though, it still doesn't behave like real hair and only serves to stick out more with its wavey-ness. Even sleek hair is a bit stiff and has weight to it -- It doesn't just flow all over the place like it's constantly underwater. It's impressive, but it just doesn't look like hair.

When you look at Quiet's hair in Metal Gear Solid 5 (to go with a similar current gen example), it looks way more "realistic" eventhough it uses a much simpler rendering technique.

I feel a lot of developers now are seriously overthinking hair rendering in games. Hair naturally sticks and clumps together, making it unnecessary to render each hair individually. This why Ellie's ponytail in The Last of Us looks better than Lara's super detailed TressFX ponytail.

 

[Areloch]

This is a good time to build on Ambient_Malice's post and add in the distinction between Graphical Fidelity and Aesthetics.

Graphical Fidelity, being the resolution and detail, and technical implementation brought to bear to render the scene, is separate from the Aesthetics.

When people prefer one game's look over another, it's almost 100% of the time because they prefer the resulting Aesthetic, over the Fidelity. it's how you get people claiming that Fallout 4 doesn't really look any better than 3 or New Vegas. In terms of technical terms, in terms of Graphical Fidelity, it's factually incorrect. However, in terms of the Aesthetics, they may find that the general presentation of the game's look is rather similar.

Metal Gear Solid 5 is another good example. In context purely of the technical implementation of the art, it uses somewhat low resolution textures, and rather simple environmental models. However, the lighting implemented covers up all that, and combined with some excellent art direction as a whole, the Aesthetics are unaffected, making it visually appealing, even if in purely technical terms the game isn't quite so impressive.

With Ryse, the game is absolutely technically impressive, much like the recent Battlefields. However, a problem with some of the top-tier fidelity games is that they tend to overshoot on some effects and it ends up harming the Aesthetic.

Battlefield 3 serves as an exellent example here. It was amazing in a technical sense in how much graphical fidelity it put out, but then they laid on the extreme contrast and blue color correction and lots of people really disliked the aesthetics of the look, regardless of the fact it was astounding from a technical sense.

But I agree. Most people have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the technical aspects and tend to use Fidelity and Aesthetic interchangeably, which is why there's so much "I don't like the graphics" getting clogged up with the technical aspects.

Nothing is wrong with pushing the technical envelope, and in fact is good for ALL games to do so, even the non-photo-realistic ones, because it provides developers a bigger, better, more flexible toolbox in order to achieve their desired Aesthetic. The point to watch out for is making you have a good aesthetic in the first place.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

[
I'm basically arguing that most people have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when it comes to graphics and often can't think beyond "does this art style seem visually pleasing to me". It's been a problem since the dawn of 3D graphics when, as I mentioned, a lot of people grew up with PS1s and defended horrible textures because they LIKED horrible textures and found them visually pleasing.

edit:
Here's another example of people arguing over graphics without any real perspective -- you've got people accusing Assassin's Creed: Syndicate of being a "downgrade" from AC: Unity because in their view it has less impressive lighting. That may be true from a "here's some screenshots" perspective, but the problem is that Syndicate has a REALTIME lighting system and Unity has a STATIC lighting system. Prebaked with 4 times of day. The ability to change the time of day in realtime is just as much a part of graphical fidelity as visually nice lighting.

Similarly, I can argue that Watch_Dogs is a much better looking game than GTA V. Certainly, WD has better animation and textures. But GTA V has realtime lighting and WD has prebaked. Dynamic lighting is a game-changer, if you'll excuse the pun, when it comes to visual fidelity.

Why should I give a damn about a game that has "Better graphics" if it looks bad? You can have an engine that supports ridiculously high polygon counts, can support complex particle systems, has phsyically based lighting systems, but if the modelling, animation, texturing or art design sucks then it's still going to look bad.

Non-photorealistic rendering is something that's been getting more and more traction in computer graphics, and with good reason. While I can appreciate it from an algorithmic standpoint, I'm enjoying visuals for how they look, not how well they were optimized. One of the coolest papers I saw read recently was this: http://gfx.cs.princeton.edu/proj/hatching/ a paper on real time hatching.

Basically, better graphics technologies are just tools. You can use them to make something that looks good, or looks bad. A better tool can make it easier for me to make something look good, but as a consumer of games I shouldn't be expected to praise the visuals if they made something I think looks bad with a great tool

EDIT: To clarify, I can see what you're saying, but as a later post mentioned graphical fidelity and visual quality are two very different things. Graphical fidelity should be used for the sake of improving visual quality, if it doesn't then there's a problem somewhere along the line.

I will grant you the lighting point though. You can't just compare it in screenshots. I'd say it's still a visual downgrade though if they use the real time lighting system and don't utilize it in such a way that the player notices the difference