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Graphics whore thread - serious decline in videogame graphics since 2007

Garryydde

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^ Not saying DAI isn't ugly as fuck, but at least compare PC Twitcher with the PC version of DAI instead of PS3

Exactly, that way he can make screenshots at lowest settings and 640x480 resolution to be even more edgy. Missed opportunity.
9pUUd0D.jpg


Happy now?
 

Karellen

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The way I see it, there are real technical issues that are reasonably important and probably account partially for the sense that graphics have occasionally gotten worse, and certainly not much better lately. Key ones are frame rate drops, issues with render distance, poorly managed level of detail algorithms to swap between high- and low-polygon models and limitations in the number of animated characters on screen, all of which are exacerbated by the limitations of console tech that stays still while publishers keep demanding more realistic, higher-fidelity graphics so the game can be marketed as "bst graphx evar!"

Having said that, fidelity alone isn't even remotely sufficient to make a game look nice, what you really need is good art direction. The thing is, producing and animating 3D graphics is very labour-intensive, which in itself makes it hard to affect a coherent visual style, while cutting corners with things like outsourced assets, procedural generation and whatnot all further reduce the sense of authorial control and the "hand-crafted feel" of environments that are essential for making games look nice. Good art design is hard to accomplish in this kind of environment. Furthermore, HD graphics actually make things worse in that respect because it makes even minor deficiencies and cut corners in animation, models, texture quality and such much more apparent, and correcting those things exponentially more expensive. To make things look nice and "cinematic", then, games increasingly limit player agency to prevent them from doing immersion-breaking things at the wrong moments, which is how we get to fancy-looking amusement park rides and walking simulators. Modern, realistic 3D graphics are almost inherently decline-inducing because realistic 3D only works adequately in a small assortment of genres.

Not all is lost, however, since while 3D graphics are stuck in a vicious circle of incremental costs for diminishing returns, the Kickstarter boom has seen return of glorious 2D, which allows for much more focused and controlled art design with none of the publicity-driven emphasis on higher resomolutions and better textures. Which, of course, is why a nice 320*200 resolution adventure game will look way better than any number of 1080p, 60 FPS "immersive" games in which all NPCs inevitably look and behave like lobotomy patients.
 

Surf Solar

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Typical wyrmlord thread


And :lol: @ linking a picture of concept art as "graphics".
 

Gregz

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WoW started a sea change in the industry, you get a much broader potential sales demographic if you design your game around mid-end systems.

Now everyone is doing it, and ofc there's the console issue that's been mentioned upthread.

There's also the fact that single-core (i.e. gaming) CPU performance has been plateauing since, yep...around 2004 when the 2006-2007 games were being specced out during the design phase. The GPU depends heavily on CPU performance in games. It's not improving, and game designers still haven't been able to solve/innovate/transition from the single-theaded programming paradigm to multi-threaded (it's a very hard problem). Thus, multiple cores are useless for games, and most programs in general. Multiple cores basically let you run several separate programs at the same time, despite all the marketdroid talk and misinformation.

The Death of CPU Scaling in 2004

The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software

CPU-Scaling-640x637.jpg


Notice that Moore's Law still stands (transistor doubling), but clock speed has leveled out due to voltage leaking, heat, and other issues at the nanometer scale.
 
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pippin

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People has always been crazy about graphicks. It's just that in the past it was more of a "this game is good, and hey, it has nice visuals", but now it seems to be good visuals make a good game.
I do have an old pc gaming magazine in which some guy working on a very early version of WC3 (when it was more of an rpg than what it finally became) said "if your game doesn't work on mid-low tier pcs, you're economically fucked". That phrase stuck with me, because my computer at that time was crap and I could still enjoy WC3 without major problems.
 

A horse of course

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Anyone who hasn't read the XTREMEtech article gregz linked to should take a look. ET have a lot of other good articles on "wonder materials" like the much-hyped graphene transistors et al explaining why they're still a while off and why we'll be stuck in this hardware situation for a good few years yet.
 

abija

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There's also the fact that single-core (i.e. gaming) CPU performance has been plateauing since, yep...around 2004 when the 2006-2007 games were being specced out during the design phase. The GPU depends heavily on CPU performance in games. It's not improving, and game designers still haven't been able to solve/innovate/transition from the single-theaded programming paradigm to multi-threaded (it's a very hard problem). Thus, multiple cores are useless for games, and most programs in general. Multiple cores basically let you run several separate programs at the same time, despite all the marketdroid talk and misinformation.

They're not useless, on crysis and battlefield for example switching from an OC'ed core 2 duo to a core 2 quad who had a bit lower frequency gave a considerable improvement.
Give it a couple of years and you'll see even better use of multiple cpu's, devs being forced into it by the multicore turd powering xbone and ps4.
 

DalekFlay

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They need their own style rather than focusing on realism.

This. End of thread.

I would be fine with UE3 era technology being the end of 3D graphics advancement forever (with some added texture resolution compared to what most console ports got). That looks plenty "good enough" to me, if you design your game right. Crysis is about as realistic as I would ever need realistic graphics to look. I think gaming publishers are being absolutely retarded for pushing graphics beyond this, though I guess that's all they think separates them from the indie teams out there.
 
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It'd be more acceptable if more games were pushing the boundaries in other ways. Sadly they aren't, and the majority of games are still corridor-based with a small number of characters/objects in play at a time.

Also the overreliance on full screen post processing effects is ridiculous. It's so fucking pleasing visually to look at an average game from 1999-2005ish which just has decent modeling with decent textures that are sharp and crisply presented. I would happily wind back the technological clock several years if it meant getting games that actually tried to look realistic rather than this faux-realistic artistic bullshit.

The best graphics are those in your mind.

Am I the only one in the world who doesn't picture in my mind things I read?

Just, you know, curious.
 

DefJam101

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CryEngine 2 was a great engine but I'm tired of seeing Crysis wheeled out as an example of a game with good graphics. That game looked like absolute shit except for the alien spaceship level. Every other level was a visually busy foliagefuck green god ray bloom sparkling incomprehensible piece of crap
 

Gragt

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Am I the only one in the world who doesn't picture in my mind things I read?

Just, you know, curious.

Funny. Does the same happen if you hear a story? And what about time? For instance you wouldn’t picture something in your mind right away but when doing so later you’d have a clear picture of the thing you read or heard despite never actually seeing it?
 

taxalot

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Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
I do like my video games to look like video games, and not trying to be movies. I do not give one fuck if the graphics suck. Sometimes, that's a bonus.

I have a three years old computer, it still runs everything I've thrown at it flawlessly. My big hope : that it lasts until the end of this gen. If that means I have to play in 640x480 low details to get smooth gameplay, so be it. If the game sucks for that very reason, then it's probably not a very good game to start with.
 

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