Evening Reading

by Brian Leahy, Oct 11, 2010 5:00pm PDT

Unfortunately, I've been away from StarCraft II for far too long and now I've lost all of my skills. At some point, I'll just have to give it another go, bomb my ladder rank, and work my way back up.

I'm super-excited for GSL 2, which is currently finishing up its offline qualifiers and should begin streamed matches in a little over a week. Some StarCraft: Brood War pros have begun making the switch to SC2, including BoxeR--the most famous SC:BW pro--and NaDa. Non-Korean players Greg "IdrA" Fields and Dario "TLO" Wunsch, both of whom played in GSL1, have qualified for GSL2.

The quality of games should get better and better as the GSL seasons continue.

Gaming News o'the Day

Magneto, MODOK, Sir Arthur, and the new Bionic Commando join Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Classic X-Men arcade game coming to XBLA and PSN.

Raven hit by layoffs. Possibly put on Call of Duty: Black Ops DLC.

IndieCade 2010 award winners.

Links from Morning Discussion

Minecraft mine-cart interstate and music video.

Gearbox surveying players on multiplayer options.

Read all the News

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By: locater16 x Show Full Post

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When will graphics be "good enough" for most games?

The next generation of consoles/games will see photorealistic graphics for mostly static environments (unlimited rez textures, unlimited geometry detail on static geometry, pre-computed lighting). But honestly it doesn't seem like many games will ever need photorealism. Is Mario Galaxy good enough for Mario, at least close to it? How about Fable, or even Halo. I don't see Halo as ever really needing photorealism, they can do better than Reach sure, but they'll always be better off going with stylization.

Oct 11, 2010 5:42pm PDT

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When will graphics be "good enough" for most games? The next generation of consoles/games will see pho... : locater16
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 132 replies.
- Halo looks nowhere near Avatar, for example, and that is like the ultimate in stylization so I'd say ther... : kill9
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  I'm playing Dragon Age on the PS3, and we're nowhere near "good enough." : pgharavi
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    Dragon Age looks pretty dated and the developers admit it, not a good example of where we're at right now... : uebersoldat
    - I thought it looked great on the PC : Pandilex
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  In the Year 2525 : Sludgehead
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    if man is still alive : Slowtreme
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      In the year twenty five and twenty five, If man is still alive, We'll get to see that generation, Whe... : Goto10
      
      hehe nice. : RogerDandy
      
      Post of the day : hanged_man
      
      Awesome : comiekazie
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  Photo realistic is going out of style for most non-sim games. It is the time of the creative artist. : HL3dsx
  - i hope so : bolneze
- Almost everything will be better off going with stylization. The requirement in art assets if you go for ... : Conan
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  when playing a game means you are on the Halodeck ala Star Trek TNG : sm00v3d
  - This. They will never be "good enough". : Dr_Cube
  - Minecraft in holodeck would be awesome : hanged_man
- We're at the point where I'd rather see shittier textures than loading screens between environments. Seem... : HockeyJohnston
- They're already good enough for me. Hell, they were good enough in 1998. : The Grolar Bear
- for environments ME2 is about right. Model quality and animation need to improve a little more. imo. : IcomeINpeace
- I've never been a fan of photorealism for characters. It all goes to hell as soon as it's in motion and y... : synapse19
- I would submit that graphics haven't been the bottleneck in a long time already : MikkleThePickle
- next gen will probably look close to this or I hope it does: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0MmsXdgszA ... : X-GOUKI
- Honestly, "photo real" graphics would look like ass. They have to be stylized just a little. Same thing... : timmie
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  i think i'd be happy with where consoles are now if they just did 2XAA or so. my biggest complaint is how... : Veegeezee
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    er, rather, if more games used AA that is. i know the consoles can handle it. : Veegeezee
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      jaggies and FOV = 45 degrees(exaggeration) is lame : gyokuro
      
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      FOV is a bummer but i get why it's there. maybe the next big thing should be panoramic projectors? : Veegeezee
      
      i wouldn't mind the baby step of having a minimum of 90 deg FOV on a WIDESCREEN TV...i mean come on. : gyokuro
      
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      http://www.fighterops.com/forum/showthread.php?7965-Dome-projection-on-a-budget&p=104418&viewfull=1#post1... : spazzium
      
      There's better examples out there, but yeah that's what I'd like to be playing on. : spazzium
      
      Lol, that thread gets a "Rawlings-Chamberlain/hell of a ride" post like 8 messages down. : Crabs Jarrard
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      You'd be surprised at how much AA costs, it is REALLY expensive : locater16
      
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      2XAA isn't THAT expensive. I mean 3d is getting pushed like nobody's business...and I think there's an a... : Vorlonesque
      
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      Well 2x isn't that bad, but it doesn't work with deferred lighting on today's consoles so there's that. : locater16
      
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      Well yeah, deferred shading is its own thing and I forgot about that (which is dumb on my part, as I was ... : Vorlonesque
      
      Of course not, but morphological+multisample (yay DX11!) will solve anti-aliasing. So... it's solved alre... : locater16
      
      It's really not. It really costs pretty much the factor of AA--less if you're using a form of VCAA and le... : daVinci1980
      
      I heard it was only three fiddy. : menar003
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  weren't video games supposed to look better than ToyStory like 8 years ago some dev said. : gyokuro
  - Toy Story 1 is pretty fugly. : HockeyJohnston
  - minecraft already does look like ToyStory! : radula
  - that was ken kutargi, said ps2 would run toy story in real time : Chandler55
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  I'd like TF3 to literally look like a Pixar movie. : The Wilhelm Scream
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    No you don't, because to do that you'd still be playing the same game but just with better graphics. If y... : synapse19
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      Change isn't always better...gameplay doesn't magically evolve in one direction. In 10 years I want game... : Vorlonesque
      
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      Trying to make any game literally look like a Pixar movie would leave you with nothing other than a singl... : synapse19
      
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      But in 20 years making a game look like a Pixar movie looks today might be possible...we're talking the f... : Vorlonesque
      
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      Increasing graphics quality isn't all about processing power though. The biggest issue is man power. The ... : synapse19
      
      I disagree, a lot of textures etc. in games come from photographs. A higher res texture doesn't take twic... : Pandilex
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  Graphics have always been "good enough." : Freon
  - get out of my head : watcherxp
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  I can think of a number of techniques that could use more power...I think ray tracing or photon mapping w... : Vorlonesque
  - I'd add that I'm the guy who still loves Quake3 and still plays older games than that. Good enough to be... : Vorlonesque
- graphics are less important than gameplay .. you can have a great game with any range of graphics (see: m... : strider_
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  id have a hard time shooting people if it was photorealistic : Chandler55
  - Interesting point. : dognose
  - But what if they were people banging your wife *comedy drum roll cymbal sound* : Vorlonesque
  - I wouldn't. : menar003
  - I think it would be very surreal to play a photorealistic combat sim. : aeg1x
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    What if they all looked like Glenn Beck? : CRasterImage
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      There aren't enough bullets in the world : acheron
      
      Are you telling me I can dodge bullets? I'm telling you, when you're ready, you'll be able to manifest... : Vorlonesque
    - It would sound like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oO7xEGhtgY Oh fuck who am I kidding, I just ... : MeestaNob
  - what about zombies? : filthysock
  - Hard time hiding your erection is more like it : Porkasaurus
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    I actually ran into this problem a little bit in Crysis. It was both frustrating and fascinating. That ... : action wombmate
    - how? the people in Crysis don't even look remotely realistic unless you live in a cartoon world. : trelain
  - HALT THE DEVELOPMENT! good point, actually : vx2o
  - Just as older people are shocked with violence in games, younger people are more immune to it, and so you... : Pandilex
- Graphics have always been "good enough". : watcherxp
- Seems good enough now for the most part. What I'd prefer is decreased load times (or eliminated load tim... : BouillonCubes
- #1672
  
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  By: 60days x Show Full Post
  
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  I feel like we're almost there with texture resolution vs screen resolution at the moment. A game that fully exploits 1GB means almost no more blurry diffuse textures up-close. With another 1-2GB all the other types of maps could be brought up to the same level, and at that point theres not much point in going further.
  
  But that only goes for current usage - if suddenly people start using some crazy new technique (like voxel maps for smoke or something), or devs start massively increasing the variety of textures in a world we'll be back to 'could be less blurry'.
  
  Oct 11, 2010 8:40pm PDT
  
  I feel like we're almost there with texture resolution vs screen resolution at the moment. A game that fu... : 60days
- Better graphics does not necessarily equal an end goal of photo realism. Just look at something like Fina... : -JLN-
- when you cant distinguish it from movie cg : spiderfill
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  Quake 3 is as good as I'll ever need graphically. : jet-poop
  - picmip 4! : radula
  - and 640KB RAM will do me indefinitely : skryte
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  wind waker on the dolphin emulator with everything cranked up is pretty much the best looking game i've e... : DrFlammable
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    It is a fucking shame that Nintendo was scared off the cel shaded look from the backlash Wind Waker got b... : Serpico74
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      If they actually go with the Impressionist/painted style they hinted at (or the watercolor style a lot of... : Vorlonesque
      
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      It could be, but there was nothing impressionist about what I played at E3. It needs to go much farther t... : Serpico74
      
      i hope the controls aren't fucking obnoxious. twilight princess was okay on the wii with minor control-ba... : DrFlammable
    - And now a brief impression of those threads "wahh, Zelda changed, wahhh! Nintendo games can't change ever... : locater16
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    While I love that style, I don't want every game to look like that. Making every game look like WW becau... : Vorlonesque
    - i almost typed this in my post but decided to skip it, i was gonna mention it's pretty important for ever... : DrFlammable
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  I don't think we need to up geometry as much as texture res, shader effects, and dynamic lighting. : Fred Garvin
  - For the near future I kind of agree...especially on the shader effects side...there's so much you can do ... : Vorlonesque
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    I'd like to not deal with normal maps anymore. Let me use my high-res render instead of a bake. I thi... : Ooghijmiqtxxa
    - What would you use instead of normal maps? You want to paint all that geometry? : Fred Garvin
- short answer: never. : filthysock
- good enough now. Brood Wars and UT99 are fun still. Minecraft is fun now. SC2 and GTA4 look good enoug... : MamiyaOtaru
- There won't be enough ram on the next generation of consoles to make things look "good enough" and they a... : Lucy Labia
- Subjective. For me, I('ll) shut up when I get 1080p with 2x FSAA and a framerate above 40 at all times. : ramshot
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  They need to work on animation more than anything. : red2lucas
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    And get rid of ragdoll effect and give us back death animations : hanged_man
    - What about a combination of them both? Isn't that what that Euphoria does like from GTA and RDR? : AgentPothead
  - I agree. : vx2o
  - Googly eyes are a plague upon all video games that only Valve have truly escaped from. Behold the dopey t... : SpaecKow
  - yeah I agree. also not horrible, fanmade-level character designs. I hate how almost all european made stu... : razorblade79
- Quite a while ago. : frib
- I think they're fine now. individual rendering effects were really impressive to me back when we could... : DeBurgo
- 3 years ago for hd, also 8 years ago for sd : razorblade79
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  WTF is wrong with you people saying it's good enough now? Face and even body animation remains almost uni : filthysock
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    I play games, not people simulators. : frib
    - murder simulators.. : master_disaster_17
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      So valve should not have bothered with the effort they put into face animation and lip syncing? : filthysock
      
      It bugs me when I see lip syncing and stuff, but while the character is talking, they remain completely m... : Pandilex
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    you don't need more graphicpower to get visuals right, you need a better art direction. : razorblade79
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      Better tools will empower new art : filthysock
      
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      Better tools won't suddenly make every animator a savant. We can get awesome animation now, but since gam... : Arceihn
      
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      wouldn't better / cheaper mo-cap setups take a lot of the burden off of the animators though : Veegeezee
      
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      MO-CAP is total crap, I made a post about it below. Hand animated takes more time, but more effort is pu... : HL3dsx
      
      There are sudtleties to human movement, and most game animators miss this. Just compare any of the hand ... : HL3dsx
    - On consoles you really do, so much texture res is blurry and ugly in games like ME and CoD. : SpaecKow
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    Water does not look like jelly. To do that it would have to move, and almost all water is static instead. : AlexW1203
    - I'm talking about moving water : filthysock
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    You realize that the human brain has spent 75% of its time on planet earth looking at humans through all ... : HL3dsx
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      Never say never... If you'd said 10 years ago we'll have physics in games like dropping a barrel, watchin... : Pandilex
      
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      I would have said, sure that will easily be possible in the future. However tricking the human brain int... : HL3dsx
      
      But there will be other things that would complete the illusion, such as the senses. : HL3dsx
      
      What about TV? : Pandilex
- Animation and input also factors in. As soon as you start move the viewpoint with a thumb stick you are ... : dael
- Its simple, they shouldn't.. simple design rule is that the closer things get to real the more we see the... : hectadectagon
- In a way, they're good enough now but they will never really be good enough. I say good enough now bec... : DinK
- I'll stop lurking to throw this point around: I don't think the problem is a lack of horsepower or techno... : Fhreelance
- As long as I can tell the difference between the world "out there" and the virtual worlds presented in g... : Kristian Joensen
- It's always the "next generation" that will have photorealistic graphics. We are no where near that. That... : dookiebot
- I think were already getting there. It's hard to play most PC/PS3/360 games and actually complain about t... : Funran
- Well, I just started playing Planescape Torment, which runs on the Baldur's Gate 1 engine and aside from ... : rottdcorpse
- "When will graphics be "good enough" for most games? " I suspect this will vary by generation. For me,... : Mascot68
- When I can touch them, smell them, and fornicate with them. : GibMonkey

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