Poll: Do high end graphics take more than they give?

[jamesworkshop]

High graphics are a nice bonus,but medium graphics are decent as well.Depends a lot on the gameplay.

I hope that the developers(game designers) focus on optimizing the games that will require high end graphic settings,else the community of players that don't have "endgame" computers won't buy their games or upgrade their computer just to play it.

Medal of Honor requires at the following minimum configuration:
■Operating System - Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7
■Processor - Pentium D, 3.2GHz / Core 2 Duo, 2.0GHz / Athlon 64 X2
■Memory - 2GB RAM
■Video Card - Video card must be 256MB or more and contain these chipsets or better: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT ;
■ATI X1900. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.
■HDD Space - 9GB
■Soundcard - Soundcard with DirectX 9.0c compatibility
■DirectX - DirectX 9.0c
■Disc Drive - 8x or faster CD/DVD Drive

or in simpler terms a 5 to 6 years old computer, PC hardware requirements have been retrograde since the 8800GTX (November 8, 2006)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-dead-rising-2-tech-comparison-article

Consoles are now the focus, to the point where the incredible rendering technology being developed by NVIDIA and AMD is simply being used to generate fairly simplistic visuals compared to what the raw hardware is physically capable of delivering.

While Dead Rising 2 works well enough on PC, you still can't help feel that with the advanced tech available even in budget gaming machines, it could've been so much more. You can't help wondering if that latent power will remain forever untapped.

Capcom's zombie massacre is a solid PC release and the fact that it is directly converted across from a fixed architecture also means that the level of CPU and GPU hardware required to get the game running at an acceptable level is pretty low. As is the usual state of affairs with console conversions, a fast dual-core processor combined with something along the lines of a 9800GT should allow you to effortlessly outperform the 360 version, and in a market where less than £120 gets you a very powerful GTX460 with an impressive 768MB RAM, that's an embarrassingly high level of raw graphical power for a relatively minor cost. All the limitations of the console in terms of resolution, frame-rate, anti-aliasing and texture filtering can be effortlessly overcome through sheer horsepower alone, and it needn't cost the earth.

 

[Lyx]

You do realize that the atmosphere you're hinting at primarily comes from lighting, and not so much from texturedetail, polycount, etc?

Lighting is one of the hardest things to get right and one of the most stressful on your hardware. 'lighting' also extends to advanced techniques like self shadowing ambient occlusion, surface mapping that effects the way light interacts etc etc. Textures and advanced geometry mapping like parallax mapping/ tesselation are quite a big part of how a gamecan look and how realistically lit a scene looks.

True, but the important point in the context of the OP is this: It is mostly stuff that is done automatically by the machine - it requires a good engine, but AFAIK little additional work by the designer. To get this kind of atmosphere, it isn't really necessary for everything to be superprecise (well, unless the player obsessively checks for errors - but if he's doing that, then i'd say he's more interested in realism than atmosphere).

What i'm basically trying to say is this: Getting this kind of moody atmosphere isn't so much a matter of highly expensive modelling - its mostly done automatically by the machine: Little dev-ressources are spent (assuming an existing engine), and dynamics too do not get limited.

 

[Zorg Machine]

If the game looks like sh*t there's not much you can do to save it.
I personally believe that any game that you pay for has better be damn good if it has crappy graphics. Minecraft pulled it of so it is possible.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I've said it before and it's just relevant here.

WOW as an example, don't throw tech at it, just hire quality artists who know how to make things look beautiful with minimal specs.

I've been saying this for years. With World of Warcraft, you can instantaneously tell from a single screenshot where a character is- sometimes right down to the exact location- because every area has its own look, its own style. And yet the game's cartoonish but stylish look makes it much easier on the eyes as well as the graphics card; when I played the Lord of the Rings Online beta, I was actually getting headaches from trying to pick out details in some areas.

And sadly, some developers are putting in far too much effort trying to realistically render every last piece of cement-grey debris in their cement-grey gameworld, and forgetting that we bought their game looking for something to play, not a tour of Cement-Grey Urban Wasteland.

 

[Snarky Username]

What if i don't like minecraft because playing with legos just isn't fun to me?

Then you must be a robot because ever person loves playing with legos.

OT: I feel like now that graphics are reaching a point where they can't get any better, the main innovation will probably be making them cheaper to do. But I really don't know how graphics work, so correct me if we can't make graphics cheaper and we'll just be cursed with great graphics and mediocre games forever and ever.

 

[Ruffythepirate]

Along with quite a few others here I play Minecraft, so can't say I'm a graphics nazi. I really enjoy when a game is pretty but for me gameplay is top priority.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

They're a nice bonus but definitely are not a substitute for fun gameplay.

 

[Z(ombie)fan]

graphics- no. visuals- yes.

Minecraft- bad graphics, nice visuals.
Zelda: A link to the past- dated graphics, really charming design.
Okami- PS2 graphics, oil painting visuals.
SOTC/ICO- remember, those are PS2 games. yeah. woah.
OOT/MM- N64 graphics, but there is still alot of charm there.
Mother Series-none of them are at all 3D, but are about as good looking as games can get for their respective systems.

 

[Jack and Calumon]

There's a difference between Good Graphics and Bad Graphics. Minecraft has graphics that completely suit it down to the bone. Same with say, Call of Duty 4 or Heavy Rain. They have good graphics because it suits them perfectly (Heavy Rain actually has graphics that are stellar and I would argue are some of the most realistic I have ever seen in a game but that's beyond the point) If we look at Rogue Warrior however, then that's a different story. The game was trying to have realistic graphics but it failed and the game looks ugly. It's all about getting a graphics style that suits your game. So yes Graphics do matter.

Calumon: Would you like me in HD?

Jack: Only if Toei Animation decided to make Digimon Tamers Kai.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

My favourite game is Fallout 3.
So i guess that tells you where i am on the poll.

It's my favorite game too, and the visuals are a huge part of my love for it.

I'm guessing you like the graphics in it?

 

[Mista Miggins]

Good graphics can also take away from games in that they require a larger processer to show the beautifully shaped toaster in the dark corner of the beautifully shaped kitchen. When that power could be spent blowing stuff up realisticly.

 

[ArkhamJester]

I never gave two shits about graphics even when I was first playing games, I would take mega man legends (uno and dos) over final fantasy 13 with a big stupid grin on my face each and every time. Kudos to this thread, I'm glad to see graphic whores don't dominate the gaming community.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I must disagree on the argument concerning "seas of grays and browns" as that is not the fault of the graphics, but the actual art direction

Exactly. One only needs to play Enslaved, Borderlands or Arkham Asylum to see how the notoriously 'grey and brown' Unreal engine can produce fantastically colourful visuals.

 

[Drakane]

I think its situational. Amazing graphics allow for a lvl of immersion into a world that 8 bit just can't do. Were you more "into" the original Metroid Prime or the more recent ones? Not all games need to do this, but for many much is lost if it isn't. If Resident Evil 1 looked like Resident Evil 4, it very well could have gone from scary as hell, to I just pissed myself scary (it is feasible it also could have been diminished). Story and gameplay can take you along way, but if the room your charcter is walking in feels like it could be the room your sitting in... that too can enhance gameplay.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

[
You do realize that the atmosphere you're hinting at primarily comes from lighting, and not so much from texturedetail, polycount, etc?

Metro 2033 does have some pretty high rez visuals in fairness. That particular pic didn't show them off in great detail.

 

[mirror's edgy]

What if i don't like minecraft because playing with legos just isn't fun to me?

I'm going with this. However I will put forward Half Life 2 and the Dead Rising series as an obvious example of games that don't need high-end graphics. But I definitely appreciate high-end graphics. And when the two come together, you get great things, like Red Dead Redemption and Halo Reach. And that is all I have to say about that.

I'm sorry, what? HL2 has some of the most impressive locations rendered with great lighting, textures, physics, you name it. What looks bad about it even by today's standards?

 

[fulano]

You do realize that the atmosphere you're hinting at primarily comes from lighting, and not so much from texturedetail, polycount, etc?

This. But by today standards, we can get decent looking lighting that gets the job done on an artistic level without stressing the system for MAX fidelity striving for photorealistic nonsense. Gameplay should come first. That would make for cheaper, funnier, more fully realized interactive experiences.

If you think about it, gameplay so far has come only a vey few steps since 3D polygons made their first splash on the scene.

Think about it in terms of gameplay, other than world sizes and AI, what has, on average, really changed? Halo's basic gameplay mechanics could have been done in the PSOne, easy. The same for many other games: Street Fighter IV? a number of collision boxes and input sequences; Sould Calibur IV? The same; Gears of War? Same as Halo, or any other FPS, for that matter; Shadow of the Colossus? Take all the memory info of a continuous Tomb Raider level and craft a single moving character with all the collision detection in place; God of War III? Easy; Killzone? Easy.

Again, what technology has brought us is the advent of an ordered form of social worldwide gaming (a big game changer for consoles) and more memory space to do the more iterations of the exact same thing except bigger and shinier.