Photo-Realistic Graphics: Out of Reach?

[Yog Sothoth]

..okay, that's good. But I'm not exactly confined to the question you asked. I think it's been covered nicely in here and I decided to put in my own thoughts on the subject of having these games for myself. For the record, I don't actually think it to be all that possible... in the sense that, well, it will be doable at one point. I just don't think people will bother going through the process.

sorry, didn't mean to come off so strong... just trying to keep this thread on topic, and a few other people have expressed a similar sentiment... but i'll go ahead and throw my two cents at this angle...

i think that photo-realistic graphics would certainly be more appropriate for some games than others. flight-sims and the like are a great example... when you're trying to simulate a real world experience like that, the more real the graphics look, the better...

at the other end of the spectrum, you have games that are very artistic and stylized, and would suffer if the graphics didn't reflect that... games like Okami, Zelda and Viewtiful Joe would not benefit from photo-realistic rendering...

 

[742]

well, sometimes things DO look perfect. but yes, the small imperfections make things look too real.

 

[Elurindel]

Why would we want photo-realistic graphics? We play games to escape reality, not to dive right back in.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Well, if you want to be REALLY nit-picky, that's not really photo-real either, it's too perfect. Glasses should have finger smudges and such on them, there should be bubbles or foam on the wine, grunge on the dice and tile, moisture on and around the glasses, etc. Real isn't so much about ray tracing and reflections and such, what really kills the effect is when things are too perfect. Glass too clean, water too clear etc. Adding that stuff is what cranks the amount of power and space required for models and textures. Sure, we do have ways to simulate stuff, normal mapping etc. but it takes a great deal of computing power to get that kind of thing in there, as well as very nit-picky artists creating the content.

If one is to be that specific, then the perfect graphics will come from nothing short of a particle simulator emuating all existence.