Blogs I hope PC gaming graphics have plateaued

I think we are approaching the end of the rasterised 3d graphics era and that is why improvements in engines are getting ever decreasing returns, the move to raytracing must begin soon.

 

Personally, I think that there will still be improvements in how good games look - but only relating to the effects, so we'll be getting better lighting/better flames etc.

I suspect that actual polygon count will not rise a great deal because of the exponential increase in time it takes to make a higher poly-count models.

 

AHA! you want prices to go down in general, making high-end graphics more affordable and less exotic! Well, wish granted, it's already happening

The 4870 1GB is at $180 now, and it is a decidedly high-end card, perfectly capable of delivering playable rates at 30in (which is 2560x1600 btw, not 1920). It's a pricepoint that only got you midrange stuff two years ago. Generally, i think we can say that prices for similar performance levels have halved in the last year, mostly thanks to the 4870 (introduced at $299), and ATI generally competing again.

I can understand the "want!"-factor of high-end graphics, and I too am hoping for prices to fall even further, i simply disagree with your causality. I'm of the conviction that making software better and better will get increasingly expensive, while making hardware better will get increasingly cheap. Since the two are eachother's incentive to innovate (game with no GPU that can run it is pointless, GPU that no game will ever need is pointless too), i'm hoping for some more software innovations. Both the SourceEngine and the CryEngine are getting a bit dated, and there hasn't been a game release based on a new cutting edge engine for years.

Lol, i've also been foaming in the mouth since the first time i saw that Westinghouse 3840x2400 screen

 

"Lombardi told CVG that he believes that ‘graphics have started to top-out. " Tell that to John Carmack, I think he differs with his Mega Texture tech, Sparse Voxel Octrees and his interest in ray casting....

 

My understanding of the megatexture tech is that it doesn't make the game look much better - but it makes developing and editing levels much easier...

 

...which will make it easier for developers to make better looking levels

 

Yes it is. But when the GeForce 6800 Ultra came out it was about £400 and when the 8800 GTX came out, that was about £400. This is because games were increasingly more and more demanding and the GPU's were more advanced in attempt to keep up.

What I'm saying is...

Me too. Just one more time now

 

qft.

It will soon be like Photoshop: The program gives you the possibilities to do almost anything and is "plateaued" (efficiency not accounted for). The problem is that most designers don't know what they're supposed to want to do.
Soon, graphics hardware will be enough for our rasterization needs, but our graphics developers must want the right things.

I will give a real world example: Company of Heroes, with a handful of sprites (!), produces the most impressive explosions I've seen for a game (I would post a youtube vid if I weren't at work).
Another example are Hollywood animations. They create fur, metals and clouds with the most surprising fidelity. The awe inspiring visuals stun you! ....Until they try to make a human. It's just mentally hard to produce one, to capture all those skin folds, all those muscles that you subconsciously know of from your life experiences but can't list on a sheet of paper. It's a real challenge that makes "artistic license" a crude excuse for making a game with a comic style like Team Fortress 2. If you're going to draw humans and it's going to look wrong, let's at least make it a styled "wrong"!
Don't get me wrong - I love it's style. But if we were able to draw photorealistic humans with ease, we would see way less comic-styled games. Those that aren't comic styled look bad. You just didn't look so critically at them until now.

As for evolution, I would forecast 15 to 20 years until graphics plateau in the way the article says. Like Sebbo said, we still need to make the jump to ray-tracing, and I would grotesquely place that as "half-way there".
In minor steps, we would also need to progress into higher resolutions (up to tiny pixels on wall projections), 3D illusions, angled displays (full domes?), etc. Is it actually a matter of display limitations?
In a later moment we could see more "futile" features that consume lots of compute power, such as rendering independently from the POV (e.g. for spectators watching from other angles" on some wacky omnidirectional display.. or something like that)... Ah, if the future were easier to predict!

I wouldn't include physics in graphics, but I guess it does mix up in some ways. For instance, volumetric clouds is considered graphics nowadays, but it's really physics. They're particles and you need to calculate how they move around, disperse and difuse light. Same thing for water. It's a material, so it's physics, but it refracts light, and light is done by graphics. Well... light IS a part of physics, eh?
In a short line, physics still has more than a decade to go, for sure.

But if you do want to stand ground in rasterization, we really shouldn't expect many large steps forward. More particles here, sharper textures there, livelier shadows here, bloomier HDR there and so forth. Shiny materials already have bumbmaps, movement already causes motion blur, round surfaces cast Phong reflections.. it's pretty much done. But rasterization is still well below ray-tracing.

One way is to look at a game screen and compare it with a photo of a similar ambient. Then ask yourself: What's missing to make it look better?
If I do that with Crysis and a jungle photo, I would say "not much".
Then again, if I do that with Left4Dead and a photo of a zombie, I would say "WTFOMGBBQ! A ZOMBIE!!"

 

Correct, but we have all advanced a full generation. The 8800GTX launched what, 30 months ago? The GTX280 introduced at roughly 300 pounds if i'm correct, and so did the 4870X2. Isn't this the progress you are looking for?

This will be my last try:
I understand what you are saying, i just disagree. I think it's important for the industry as a whole to keep moving forward, and that this will ultimately yield the best results for us consumers, both in price and performance. I can't say it more plainly then that, and as i sense we are both getting mildly annoyed, i'll stop there. I would like to keep this from spiraling into one of those threads that counts down to hitler.

 

When the Radeon 4870 X2 was released, some eTailers sold it as low as £350 but more were at £400. No one had it at £300. The GeForce GTX 295 is £400

/facepalm

 

Graphics on PCs are linked to the consoles now. When there's another generation of consoles there will be another generation of PC graphics. Until then, I'm enjoying playing games maxed out at 1080p on my 4830.

 

The GTX295 is an abomination. The 4870X2 was quoted here on Bit-tech (i have reliable sources ) as being 327 when it was first reviewed, and even that thing was rediculously overpowered unless gaming at 30in (which is still 2560x1600).

 

The 295 is the very card that was making Crysis Warhead look so amazing on a 30in display and costs £400.

The 4870 X2 was out before then.

Corrected. But we're digressing and the point of my blog still stands which is...

 

We're not approaching the end of raster graphics IMO. We may be approaching an age where rasterisation isn't used exclusively for every effect, but there is little point in ray tracing something that doesn't reflect light and isn't also curved. It's very easy to reflect light on a flat surface with rasterisation and it's also very efficient so there's little point changing the way you do something to see no visual benefit.

Where I think we're going is towards a hybrid raster/ray tracing rendering model because using ray tracing exclusively would take us back more than a few years - ray tracing vs rasterisation is not black and white and it never will be, that's for sure. There'll be shades of grey for many years to come.

 

What I find silly with todays games is, that the only thing that advances are the GFX.

Acknowledged, there's a very few titles, that have shown excellent physics aswell lately, but that doesn't solve the real problem of the whole gaming-market....

most games are damn boring to play!

 

Good point. I wonder how efficient hybrid models will be. Most likely, ATI and NVIDIA optimization efforts will be crucial in accelerating ray-tracing penetration.

 

actually I loved mass effect on the pc, when you left on the grain effect and forced on 8q aa 16x af it was like playing a movie.. it's awesome imo

I know alot of peeps turned it off.. try at 8q and it looks as good as crysis far as immersion goes (imo)- felt like I was playing a hollywood flick =]

 

I want the games to actually be fun, I mean sure, Crysis was fun, but after a while it just got boring(until installing new weapons that is).

And FC2, not even worth mentioning.

All these games look great, but the lack of intriguing presentation and the lack of any innovation really kills it.

 

wow, I don't ever think I've seen this before. An author trolling in their own blog.

"I hope PC gaming graphics have plateaued"

What the titles pretty much states is that you hope CG stops progressing, flatlining how the top of a plateau is shaped.

Crysis at max/dx10 and Left 4 Dead at max, side by side they are night and day. Screen shot both of them next to each other. Just look at the draw distance.

"The 4870 X2 was out before then."

the 4870 was released mid august, bit-tech reviewed it at the begining of september, it was reviewed 2 weeks after the fact.

 

I want two more things and then i will accept a plateau

1) actual ground textures, not those blurry crap that we still get in 2009

2) characters that don't look like they're made of shiny plastic



otherwise I am satisfied