Photo-Realistic Graphics: Out of Reach?

[Yog Sothoth]

ever since the PS2 launched, people have said that photo-realistic graphics are just around the corner... this was heard again frequently when Call of Duty 4 was released...

it's my opinion that 100% photo-realistic graphics in games will never be attained.. i think that there's a certain amount of chaos, randomness an unpredictability in real life that simply can't be reproduced in a constructed virtual environment. now, to be fair, i think that the subject matter can make a difference here. obviously, it's easier to create a good looking virtual car or other inanimate object, but when you start trying to render organic things like animals and especially humans, the challenge becomes much greater.

what do the rest of you think? will we ever see a day when it's impossible to distinguish the graphics in a game from real life?

 

[Pseudonym2]

I think they can make a single screen shot look like a photo. I've seen a few games do it. But the animations it seems would to hard to replicate. I don't enough about programing to say this for sure but it's something I've noticed in cames.

 

[Korhal]

Nothing's impossible.... look how far we've come in the few short years games have been around at all.

I agree with Pseudonym, photo realistic graphics are easy... natural looking animations and environmental interactions and such... now *there's* the hard part. But we're getting there.

 

[Yog Sothoth]

Nothing's impossible.... look how far we've come in the few short years games have been around at all.

I agree with Pseudonym, photo realistic graphics are easy... natural looking animations and environmental interactions and such... now *there's* the hard part. But we're getting there.

i think that some would argue that graphics of that quality are anything but easy to render...

i'm not talking about still frames, devoid of any animation... nor am i talking about tech demos and the like... i want to know if you think they're attainable in a full-blown 3D interactive game...

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

Nothing's impossible.... look how far we've come in the few short years games have been around at all.

I agree with Pseudonym, photo realistic graphics are easy... natural looking animations and environmental interactions and such... now *there's* the hard part. But we're getting there.

i think that some would argue that graphics of that quality are anything but easy to render...

i'm not talking about still frames, devoid of any animation... nor am i talking about tech demos and the like... i want to know if you think they're attainable in a full-blown 3D interactive game...

Yes, I think so, In time anyway. It won't be easy or cheap but... doable, I think so.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Why would I -WANT- a photorealistic game?

 

[Graham]

Why would I -WANT- a photorealistic game?

Agreed. Some of the best looking games keep a suspension of disbeleif by making a non-realistic art style look as cool and 'alive' as possible. Think of games like the Legend of Zelda franchise, Saints Row, and Okami. Even Crysis had stylized features if I recall correctly, and isn't that considered the peak of graphical possibilities right now?

 

[TheKaiserEcho]

I'd say we're pretty close to that, but you try to render a realistic character at that quality, with realistic animations? good luck with that. I'd say we'll never quite attain photorealistic games simply because of animation requirements. There's a certain limit to how many frames animations can be versus what's required by the game, i.e. if a player hits the jump key, they'll want to see your character jump, not see a fluid, realistic animation that takes half a second. I'm sure we'll reach the point where we can, but I don't think we will, unless gamer preferences change.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Here's one of the most recent developments in photorealistic human animation: [img_inline caption="This is an example of SSS on a sculpture. I think it is bronze." width="300"]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/57/Scattering-example.jpg[/img_inline]
Subsurface Scattering. Subsurface Scattering is where incoming light (calculated as a bunch of invisible particles shot from the light source, known in the industry as 'Photons') when coming into contact with a surface (Human skin, for example), they dramatically slow down, change colour due to the materials beneath the skin (tissues, blood, etc.), and scatter randomly, leaving the surface again as a different colour and from any angle. This means a single light-source illuminating an arm has light changing the colour of the surface of the arm for light exiting the arm on the camera-facing side, as well as inhibited light exiting the sides and the unseen back side of the arm, ever-so-minutely illuminated the space in which the body & arm reside in, as well as the body itself.
For this reason, many a CG film with creatures or people in it are modeled in and out; Skin, Bones, Muscles, Tissues, blood veins, organs and all.
This effect with ideal graphics capabilities is done for ALL materials; plants, skin, wood, plastic, even varnished metal is applicable to this effect.
Such complex calculations assuredly can not be done in real time at this point in computational history, and we still have a long way to go before we know how to do a photorealistic human.

Another affirmation of my notion that there is no way to 'Make a Computer Graphic Better.', Nor some simple solution. It's numerous uncountable minute things that make it closer to perfection with each iteration.

 

[Yog Sothoth]

This is an example of photo-realistic graphics:

...We are *nowhere* near rendering that at 60fps at 1080p.

that's a really great shot... very nice.. is it a still frame, or is there any animation at all?

 

[zoozilla]

I think the closer we get to reaching photo-realism, the more the "uncanny valley" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley] effect comes into play.

So, really, even if we get extremely close to reaching photo-realism, our eyes are so fine-tuned that any inconsistency or flaw, no matter how small, will ruin the whole effect.

 

[Dommyboy]

Its not out of reach, its just that at the moment it would be completely unplayable and what I have seen from DX11, photo-realistic graphics are available.

 

[Najos]

Whatever, they did this over a decade ago!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py5tglfK0JU

That's right. That's Corey Haim.

 

[ffxfriek]

i think its out of reach as of right now...but realistic to hope for...look at blue ray discs....better quality is larger file size and with blue ray the disk capacity is greater therefore i think its more realistic to hope for... play station 3 has awesome graphics and use blue ray disks so there ya go

 

[Dogeman5]

There is one huge hiccup in creating photo realistic graphics; water

 

[Credge]

There is one huge hiccup in creating photo realistic graphics; water

Photo realistic does not mean correct physics. It's easy to make water look real. Getting it to behave properly is completely different.

 

[Humbug]

I think the closer we get to reaching photo-realism, the more the "uncanny valley" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley] effect comes into play.

So, really, even if we get extremely close to reaching photo-realism, our eyes are so fine-tuned that any inconsistency or flaw, no matter how small, will ruin the whole effect.

I agree that the more detail we include in a game, the more picky we will be about the animation. (This isn't exactly what I understand "uncanny valley" to describe). Tell tale signs of a computer generated scene (such as a texture "popping in" or "ice skating" characters) are much harder to accept with closer-to-realism graphics. TF2 managed to stay on the unfamiliar side of uncanny valley by going for a cell-shading style.

I think what would be better for games is to reach a point in which, at the stylised level that is chosen, it looks flawless. For instance, film a scene with a camera and blur it slightly then replicate the scene on a computer and blur it equally. If you can't tell which is real footage then that's where you want to be (with as little blurring as possible).

Besides, digital photography in also advancing. You can't expect a game to have photo-realistic graphics at 1080p when video is only just at 1080p.

 

[Yog Sothoth]

Besides, digital photography in also advancing. You can't expect a game to have photo-realistic graphics at 1080p when video is only just at 1080p.

excellent point, and one that i'd not considered...

also, the uncanny valley does not apply here.. that is about robots and androids, and how people perceive and react to them... and that theory is not accepted by many in the scientific community. it's still fairly controversial and up for debate....