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Perfectly Realistic Game Graphics 10-15 Years Away, Estimates Epic's Sweeney

by Nick Breckon, May 25, 2009 3:53pm PDT
Related Topics – xbox 360, Epic Games

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney now estimates that videogame graphics will reach the point of realism in as little as 10-15 years.

When asked for an estimate on movie-like photorealism by Gamasutra, Sweeney replied: "Probably 10-15 years for that stuff, which isn't far at all. Which is scary--we'll be able to saturate our visual systems with realistic graphics at that point."

"We're only about a factor of a thousand off from achieving all that in real-time without sacrifices," he said. "So we'll certainly see that happen in our lifetimes; it's just a result of Moore's Law."

While graphical fidelity might be perfected, Sweeney noted that mastering actual human realism will be a more daunting task.

"There's another problem in graphics that's not as easily solvable," he added. "It's anything that requires simulating human intelligence or behavior: animation, character movement, interaction with characters, and conversations with characters."

Sweeney explained that simulating human behavior is not "a matter of computational power," saying that "we just don't have the algorithms; we don't know how the brain works or how to simulate it."

"And if you could simulate it all, how could you train it to be realistic like a human? Those problems are probably decades away from being solved. Those are things that may not occur in our lifetimes."


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  • #141
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    By: jamb0ree x
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    From the neuroscience field, i think we have the "understanding" now of lower-order things which can be integrated in computer simultation realistically - like human anatomy, physiology, and the basic neural circuitry for behaviors i.e. to make facial expressions seem accurate on a micro level (e.g. Paul Ekman's work as described in Blink). Higher-order things like AI to model emotions are so far in the future, I don't even know how to predict we'll ever understand such things. All the current efforts, such as neuroepistemology or neural imaging seems to me at best semantics and at worst expensive psuedo-science.
    May 25, 2009 11:44pm PDT
  • #123
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    By: UMG x
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    ArmA 2 is not photo realistic. "Pretty realistic" and "photo realistic" are two completely different things. Photorealism will become possible when ray tracing becomes viable for games. To do this, we need multicore cpus to become cheap/mainstream.

    As for artificial intelligence, scientists already know alot about how the human brain works, and most of that won't matter since a human beings thought process during combat (95% of most FPS games) is much simpler. All developers need to do is look at real world tactics, and maybe action movies, to add that "hollywood" touch. A lot of it comes from polish too. Developers need to make a commitment to testing their AI so that it does what it is supposed to in a credible way.
    May 25, 2009 10:28pm PDT