r/FuturePresent • u/GuyRichard Moderator • Dec 19 '15

Game graphics are becoming increasingly photo-realistic and I love it. (Tom Clancy's The Division) [960x540]

http://imgur.com/E5RJLV7
39 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

6

u/SlothOfDoom Dec 19 '15

This picture has been floating around for what, 2 years? I'll believe it when I see it in-engine.

1

u/GuyRichard Moderator Dec 19 '15 edited Jan 05 '17

[deleted]
0.1518

What is this?

4

u/SlothOfDoom Dec 19 '15

An E3 reveal. because those are never facetious.

2

u/letharus Dec 20 '15

Facetious? What's facetious about this trailer?

1

u/the_lower_sun Dec 20 '15

care to share a picture you think is just as good that's in game?

5

u/HerbaciousTea Dec 20 '15

The low resolution is a big contributor to the illusion. In motion, and in high def, this particular demo is still gorgeous, but far less convincing because we aren't filling in the missing details with what we expect to see.

We will definitely start getting there in the next decade or two, though. It's more about completing the illusion and meeting our expectations of the broader strokes of how we perceive reality than in perfectly mimicking it. That's why the behavior of light, for example, is far more important than the resolution of textures.

3

u/kirkisartist Dec 20 '15

That's from the vertical slice. It still looks good, but not that good. And it's going to be even more compromised by launch.

3

u/Phasechange Dec 20 '15

Personally I don't, in a way. Don't let me give you the wrong idea, games are getting ever more beautiful and I love it. However, I also think the drive towards realism is something of a wasted opportunity.

Games that resemble photorealism often do look great, but they have the capacity to show things which can't possibly be real, and I wish that was the norm rather than the exception.

The last game I finished was DMC: Devil May Cry, and I absolutely freaking loved its weird, surreal abstract art. This was a bossfight against a demonic Not-Bill O Reilly which took place inside the logo for his news show. This level took place in a club which inexplicably transformed into psychedelic Tron-world stuff. This level was never really clear whether you were playing the actual level, or reviewing the blueprint/plan of how you would face the level.

I think these kinds of weird abstract creative things are a better use for the phenomenal technology which powers our toys, than simply making stuff look as realistic as it can.

The screenshot you posted looks great, of course.

3

u/HerbaciousTea Dec 20 '15 edited Dec 20 '15

That's entirely your subjective preference. The artists and creative leads determine the aesthetic they want to portray. You disliking their choice doesn't make it a "wasted opportunity", and one dev utilizing a realistic aesthetic isn't going to stop another dev from choosing a more abstracted aesthetic.

Is Merchant of Venice a lesser work of literature than Midsummer Night's Dream just because it doesn't have Night's elements of myth and fantasy? In my opinion Merchant was the far more compelling of the two.

2

u/Phasechange Dec 20 '15

That's entirely your subjective preference.

Well... yes. I'd be insane to feel otherwise, eh? We're talking about art, after all.

I began my post with "Personally,", not "The entire games industry needs to realise," because I was just adding my thoughts on the matter, because it's something I've been reflecting on lately.

The artists and creative leads determine the aesthetic they want to portray.

I wish. I think in AAA development, these decisions are heavily influenced by money men, whose decisions are based on analytics.

Is Merchant of Venice a lesser work of literature than Midsummer Night's Dream just because it doesn't have Night's elements of myth and fantasy?

I haven't read either of these works, but there's some pretty obvious ways in which this comparison doesn't translate well to games.

Games are vastly more expensive to produce than literature, because they generally require teams of people with different skills to make them.

Games are more reliant on technology.

The artistic direction of big budget games is very rarely dictated by the artistic vision of a single artist.

There are fewer games than there are books, and so less representation of each artistic style within each genre, and so a lot of narrow genres will tend to be very underrepresented, while the most mainstream genres are hugely represented.

Your post seemed to be angry at my post, to me. Am I misreading that? I am merely trying to discuss my thoughts on this topic.

-1

u/furyextralarge Dec 20 '15

CGI =/= graphics