Will Next generation graphics only be successful if they recreate human character models accurately?
Is that the barometer?
You guys.... some of you who are looking forward to next gen primarily for the graphics sure do your best to avoid watching, talking about or reading about next gen graphics.
This week I posted a couple of videos, a next gen lighting engine said to be running on a machine comparable to PS4 specs. And a video from Nvidia on their next gen face rendering tech. Skip to about 8 minutes to see the video. Considering it requires 2 teraflops (more power than the PS4) just for THE FACE it seems pretty infeasible for anything other than their high end PC GPU which is like 4.6 teraflops.
What struck me about the lighting engine environment video was that it featured an Unreal Engine 4 demo like environment. The detail was great and it was obviously a bump over what our current consoles could do. Yet after probably less than 20 seconds my wide eyed optimism was tempered and I was left with the feeling that it looked good, but similar to what we already have, but a bit better. Now we keep seeing technology from developers about recreating human like characters in games. The video I have linked above is the latest, then we had PS4's Old man video and Square Enix Luminous engine demo whose most impressive thing was the old geezers face. Kojima trying to wow us with Ground Zero's and Fox Engine, PES trying to do the same.
So is that how we are going to ultimately judge next generation graphics? On how well it can recreate the human face and emotional responses? From what I have seen extensive mo-cap has to be used and that makes the biggest difference, the animation of the characters. Nvidia's tech needs 132 cameras that captures mocap data which is 30gb larger than will fit onto a Bluray - their breakthrough was compressing it to 300mb. This week we also got new screens of Quantic Dreams' Beyond game. And it already does the realistic animation and facial pores up close thing.
So next gen, is it all about the faces?
As for reading about the tech, I care more about the state of your bowels than that. I don't care of they make the graphics with elves, I just want to see, I want to control it, that is it. How it gets done is no concern to me. So all this stuff is boring to me, unless you do what Kojima does and make it a mind fuck.
I watch anything that is a real game. I have seen all the trailers of "next gen" games.
Tomb Raider on PS3 blows my mind graphically, so I can't even wrap my brain around the next-gen yet. Faces are something that needs more work, but it's certainly getting there.
I'm with Vader on the tech stuff. I used to enjoy reading about it years ago, but it's so complicated and confusing now, that I'd much rather spend my time playing a game than read about what powers it. Magical elves make games. That's good enough explaination for me.
Same here, I'm just not knowledgable about tech. Tomb Raider is impressive, except at times when Lara moved through water. It appeared more like sludge. I'd like to see better ripple effects and water movement next gen. Sounds kind of nitpicky, but Metroid Prime had excellent ripple effects.
I had to reread that sentence. Damn my dirty mind.
Well, I'm all for better nipple effects too! I want to see nipples with texture that actually pop out. Better boob physics as well!
Yeah I'm kind of like this myself. Also my time is limited so I can't read/watch/talk about everything. I'll gloss over most stuff so I at least get the gist of it though.There is no way we hit that level of graphical fidelity and have it affordable as a developer to actually make. We have already started to hit the ceiling as far as graphics go. They could probably make better to be sure but it will not be affordable to do so, and will not be on any kind of console. Making games with graphics as advanced as you're suggesting would double devlopment budjets or more (budjets that already run $50-$100 million per game) so if one of these games fails it would take the company with it. I can't see it advancing any more as a mass market business model.
Gamers will still demand it though, and they won't be able to deliver. This will be one of the leading things to kill consoles and I don't expect we will see another generation for console gaming. This and the fact that they are already trying to turn them into functional PCs anyways.
The technology that drives the medium forward is also the noose around its neck.