photorealism, arent you tired of it?

[broadband]

well what the title says, the english isnt my native languaje so dont expect a perfect gramar.

time ago i dont buy a new pc game, i havent seen a review or something that would call my attention except with the orange box, and after of watch the team fortress 2 graphics and style it calls my attention more than crysis, which i think its just farcry with better graphics for the pcs of the next 5 years. im also some kind of nintendo fan and i really liked the ocarina of time artwork... in fact i would like to find more pc games with a anime-style graphics or something diferent of the same fps crap that saturates the market right now

so, what do you think, post you opinions and/or thougts

 

[The Irrelevant Gamer]

I don't think we've actually achieved legitimate photorealism in games, but I do agree good art direction is better than pretty graphics. With strong artistic design you can achieve a lot with a little, but even the most realistic looking graphics can end up feeling generic. The more realistic graphics become the less games have to rely on strong artwork, which can lead to everything looking the same.

I'm not a fan of anime, but I agree some artistic style would be nice break from normal mapped full 3D up the arse.

 

[soliduck]

TF2 is the most visually compelling game I have ever played.

 

[soladrin]

sacrifice ^_^ thats a game that did miracles with what it had.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I finished "Psychonauts" last week (downloaded via XBox Classics) and that art style has to be about as far from photorealistic as you can get... and it's still compelling. Hey, any game with a level titled "Black Velvetopia" *has* to be strong on art-style just to survive. (And it tempted me to change my username to "Goggalor" for unrelated reasons. But I got over that.)

It'd be overstating my feelings to say I'm tired of games reaching for photorealism (I greatly enjoyed the art in "BioShock") but I definitely don't mind more stylised games if they're well executed and I certainly don't measure a game's worth by polycounting.

-- Steve

 

[p1ne]

TF2 is the most visually compelling game I have ever played.

Hell yeah. It's no coincidence that my two favorite online games atm are the two most fantastic ones (TF2/UT3). If I wanted realism I'd go for a hike. When I get on my computer I want to blow up aliens with a rocket launcher.

Also, Beyond Good and Evil looks absolutely fantastic even though it doesn't go for realism at all.


"Photorealism" in computer/video games is entirely a marketers' fabrication anyways. We're at least a decade away from it happening, if it ever does.

 

[eggdog14]

This is what had me confused about Gears of War.

The graphics are undeniably impressive, with great textures and water and lighting and bump. . .
ok we get it.

One small problem, every single level looked exactly the same.
It was all washed out and grey. I was unaware that war actually vacuumed color out of the world. I mean, it might as well have been black and white.

So maybe it was an atmospheric design choice, but then Epic makes UT3, part of a franchise with characteristic cartoon-ish gameplay and extremely colorful maps, in EXACTLY the same style.

UGLY UGLY UGLY.

So those are about the most photorealistic graphics around right now, aside from maybe Cryis (but honestly who gives a shit about Crysis?)

and yet i still find myself partial to, say, TF2, or Zelda, or. . . any game that isn't monochrome.

 

[Woppler]

Photorealistic games are made by lazy gamedevelopers. It's a shame that so much effort (and money) goes into to creating life-like enviroments and such. That effort should go in creating a compelling storyline and gameplay. In my opinion Nintendo is the only company who's kept that in mind the last couple of years.

 

[Darren Grey]

Having life-like 3D graphics can be good when you want a very immersive game, especially for the likes of FPSes that have stories grounded in the real world (ie not blowing alien heads open). However it takes some good design to also make levels varied and interesting, so that you're not constantly in repetitive grey or brown surroundings. For a lot of things there's also no real need for photorealism, and different art styles should be more often considered (and I don't just mean cartoony style - developers can be a lot more imaginative).

What I mostly dislike is when the realistic graphics have an impact on the gameplay. These days designers often feel the need to have over the top realistic interfaces which make the game less fun and more boring. It also tends to make the games into an exercise in reflexes and timing rather than thought or planning. It really irritates me when games try to imitate real life too much - I normally play games to try and get a break from real life!

 

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Personally, I don't give a fig about photo realistic graphics. I just like games that are fun to play. Photorealism was impressive in 1993 and helped sell a lot of copies of Myst. But nowadays better, more realistic graphics are a matter of course, but then so is the gameplay as everything is just a clone of games that are likewise 15 years old. That is, we're well past the point where where pretty pictures allows us to forgive an otherwise crappy game. So, I don't care if graphic scale back to ASCII characters, as long as the game is fun to play.

 

[Pyrrian]

My complaint with photorealistic visuals is that they aren't photorealistic enough. Plants and such always especially bug me, because they're always so flat and lifeless. Even when they sway, or have neat lighting on them, the absurdity is always obvious. Also, games like Gran Turismo 5 look brilliant, which I love. But, if the early demo release is any indication, it doesn't have the physics or customization of a game like Forza 2, which doesn't look as good. I think the lesson is that we still aren't close to getting workable photorealism out of games.

Interestingly, my first complaint carries into non-realistic games, as well. I absolutely hate how, in the first scene in Super Mario Galaxy, Mario falls into the most lifeless, artificial-looking bed of flowers I've ever seen. That flower bed might as well have just been a flat surface with a texture on it. It wasn't cartoony, it was just ugly. I mean, if you look at cartoon flowers, they're large and soft, with depth and a silly rubbery-ness. These were just static, 2D objects.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel the end goal of photorealism is to emulate an environment that isn't necessarily real, but generates the interaction you'd have in a real environment. Which is to say, you can pick up a rock out of a riverbed, and it will be different than other such rocks. Or you can tear a leaf from a tree. Heck, maybe you want to climb that tree, and break some branches. So, in the end, a photorealistic game needs to show me as many objects as I would see in a hypothetical real situation. The result is that, assuming the physics also advanced to this level, the gameplay would be brilliant, because I could do whatever I wanted to resolve a scenario. Which is the other point: visuals are unwaverably tied to physics and gameplay.

So, no, I'm not tired of photorealsim. I want it to keep advancing.

 

[shadow skill]

The only reason I can see for there not being photorealism is a lack of proper calibration of colours. We have not really begun to see photorealism in games so I don't think there is abything to be tired of yet in this respect.

Oh and Crysis on max settings is impossible, three of the new Nvidia cards can't even run that game without chugging.

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

How could a kid differentiate between what could be a photorealistic video game and reality?

I think the answer is simply that it is on the Tv or Computer screen. When a kid sees a movie it is photorealistic (it visually is real) but you have to actually talk to a kid sometimes so that they understand that it's all make-believe. If a kid cannot distinguish between reality and video game because of the visuals, there is probably a lot more wrong than the video game being pretty.

But more to the point. I don't mind the ever-present push for photorealism in video games. It pushes the industry forward, and at the current rate games could be photorealistic in maybe as little as ten years. At present, I think some games are starting to come up to the Uncanny Valley, where characters are real enough to look human, but too lifeless to appeal to as as humans (they're like puppets in human form). Some environments though devoid of living things have been very impressive.

But eventually, a decade from now or whenever it happens, games will start to look real. Most will probably have 'tells' in animation, lighting, or other things to make it distinguishable from actual video, but single screen shots will probably pass a quick look. Hopefully then though designers will be putting more effort into style and flavor than the amount of attention currently payed to technical aspects, rather than just the need to look real.

As was mentioned, some of the best games out there are not great for their life-like visuals, but rather for their artistic style.

 

[squirrelman42]

When Windwaker came out people really slammed it for its cartoony graphics, that did not stop it from being a fun adventure game, despite the sailing. Also on the World of Warcraft vs. EQ2 front (which has a clear victor now) SOE pushed for realistic graphics requiring a lot of processor speed and RAM while blizzard used the KISS model (keep it simple stupid) and instead of trying to make it visually breathtaking (which it can be at times) they used a more cartoony character and world model and had amazing gameplay. No matter how fancy, realistic, or flashy the graphics are, they cannot compete with storyline and smooth gameplay to really make you feel that you're in the game. For me nothing takes me out of a game faster than clunky controls or characters that I can't empathize with.

One of the last great things Sony did was publish Syphon Filter 3 on the PS1 instead of jumping it to PS2. Syphon Filter 1 and 2 had smooth gameplay, intuitive 3rd person controls, and a cast of characters that I really loved or hated (as was intended by 989 studios). There was much ruckus when the 3rd installment was coming out about whether people would be able to get it since not many PS2's were available at the time. So, instead of dropping the gameplay for making it look all pretty, they kept it on the PS1 and pushed that console to its limits and I am glad they did.

 

[RelentlessRolento]

the problem with photorealism is that it takes away style unless done properly. games Like Killer 7 and Okami would be dead if photorealism was mandatory. Personally the less real it looks, the more likely I'll pick it up.

 

[Shamanic Enzan]

You know what they need to stop doing? Making "Real Looking" games in order to say "HAY GUYZ, WE HAS THE POWA NOWZ", and make a fantastical game that looks High Def/3D Up the Arse.

 

[Girlysprite]

Keep in mind what 'realism' in games is, and real realism. You could say that games and movies have a sort of 'super-realism', which means that we take it as realism, it feels more or less natural, but it is not like it would happen in the real world.
I'm all for photo-realism by the way. I also like cartoony (still think WoW is one of the prettiest online games, cause I like bright colors) But I also adored the looks of Halflife 2. Graphics aren't the only part contributing to that of course, the fact that the world was living to me also contributed to its great effect.
What might also help in the future is computer generated textures and models. More variety is needed as objects get more lifelike, and generated differences in tree leaves and surfaces helps a great deal I think. It all already exists, game developers should just get back to it in the long run.

 

[jdog16]

I wouldn't say that I'm tired of it; I'm not one to complain about good graphics. It's more like I'm getting bored of it. So many games claim to look realistic these days that I just don't care if they do or not.

This is why I like the look of games like Okami and Super Mario Galxay; they look unique.

 

[Kirkkit]

It's not so much that photorealism in games is BAD, you just have to try to do it right...

From what I've seen, to get high ratings on graphics, it's a two step process: Apply a huge amount of bloom, and tons of reflections. I'm not entirely sure who came up with the idea that this is photorealism, because as far as I'm concerned, it's the exact opposite. Go outside and look at things outside. Do you see tons of "bloom" shining everything up? Is your car so reflective it boggles your mind? Chances are everything is actually fairly flat, with bloom only in extremely rare cases, and as for reflections, maybe if I kept my car in prefect condition with no blemishes whatsoever, though I don't think any such car exists at such a high level, even straight out of the factory.. Apparently the war tanks, armor and other misc. vehicles shown in games like Halo 3 never get dirty, even though they're constantly being pumped full of lead and crashing into walls, etc etc...

All these games trying to get a photorealistic effect in my mind have only created cartoonish replicas of real-world objects. From what I've seen, it's actually a fairly simple concept that everybody fails at. They are trying TOO hard. I mean for complex objects like a flat object with tons of little holes in it, I can understand that it's way too inefficient to have it all modeled out of polygons, but for christs sake how hard can it possibly be to realize that the ground is made out of dirt? No, we've got to make the ground made out of FLAT 2D LEAVES. What really ticks me off is that games like Crysis claim to have fully interactive plants that really move but they ignore the fact that their ground textures are made up of the flat 2d leaf textures that look like crap. Ignoring realisic textures for a moment, if there is one thing that would really blow my mind is for when I go prone to have the ground i'm crawling through be alive. I want to see bugs walking through 3d leaves. I want to see my arm brush through a pile of leaves when I go to start to crawl forward. I want to see leaves being blasted away from the nozzle of my rifle when it fires.

[/rant] (sorry)