Graphical realism? Whats your thoughts?

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Titchgamer:
So the VR thread has had me thinking a bit the last few days about a conversation I had with a guy a few years back.

So to set the scene the guy I was talki g to was a elderly chap in his 80’s who was a very level headed and forward thinking kind of guy.

He had no interest in gaming but had obviously seen it evolve and liked to discuss the modern world and tech as much as the past even though he had no technical knowledge or capability.

Anywho ime playing COD (I think it was) with my bro when he pops in for a chat and decides to debate gaming with us.

Now the thing I remember clearly was him looking at the screen for a few mins and then exclaiming “christ it almost looks real doesnt it!?”

He then went on to tell us some war stories and how he found it kind of wierd that he remembers seeing sights of battle complete with crys and bad smells etc that were now made into computer games.
But also could understand the excitement and entertainment side of it.

Now like I said this was a few years ago now and sadly he is no longer with us but I would of been interested to get his opinion if modern day GFX.

As lets be honest some games could be seen as “real” if it were not for the fact we are looking at TV’s.

I never really considered how real a game looked in the past, It was always just a game.
But his comments and the dawn if VR are starting to change my perspective.
Combined with that Episode of black sheep!

I know they always have been and always will be games.
But with taking a older persons view it makes me wonder about future generations having lines blured.
Almost matrix style.

Scary possibilities really....

Thoughts?

And discuss......

:)

Howard_Casto:
Eh, unless there is a dramatic leap in tech, games aren't going to look real anytime soon. Currently they look fake as hell.... the animations aren't quite right, facial expressions are wrong, the texturing isn't realistic enough, ect. The only people that think it looks real are people with either poor eyesight or poor perception of the uncanny valley. Faking a landscape or some sort of static setting might be possible, but you can't fake living creatures that people are familiar with. Our brains are just hard-wired to recognize them and when something is artificial the "soul" is missing for lack of a better term. We just know something is off.

That isn't to say that the amount of fidelity that games are doing these days isn't impressive, but it's kind of like a wax figure or a life cast of a person..... it might fool you for a split second, but you know almost instantly it's fake, lack of movement aside.

My point is that I don't think we have to worry about the implications of an artificial world that looks real because we are never going to get an artificial world that looks real.

pixel:
Graphics can be rendered at such a level, as to be able to fool the best of em. The problem is that to do this... it takes Hours upon Hours, of Light-Ray Tracing.

To make a believable object / animal... a single frame might take 1 week of processing time, for the render to be output.

Animation can be flawless as well... if someone actually uses motion capture at high resolutions... and or great frame-analyzers (with a little help from
humans.. when the thing gets confused) The problem here... is that many studios Cheap-Out. Like Lucus, and his Brainiac CGI-Modelers... whom had
Zero business even Trying their hand at animation... let alone putting it to film! >__<

Animation by real talented Artists, can be stunning, and potentially flawless. The thing is... Such artists can not stand to work with the WRETCHED CLUNKY
interfaces of all of those 3d moderling + animation programs. They get Infuriated, as it takes them 10x longer to come close to something workable... and
its so clunky... that even the best efforts, tend to be stifled by the process and interfacing. They could do a whole flip book worth of an animation, in the time it takes to get a single thing rolling in a 3d editor.

Also, what people will eventually realize, if and when things get to a point of realtime-photorealism... is that real life can be quite boring.
Thats why we tend to like and value paintings and artworks, that are not based on photorealism. Such as a Comic Book cover, an old CRT video
game like OutRun, a vector world that has a sort of MC Escher look to it. Animae characters huge emotion conveying eyes, and different proportions,
creatures such as Dragons... that do not exist in this reality... and much more.

Its the reason why Starry Night, will be worth 1 million times in value... than someones photograph of an actual star lit night sky.

Sure... people will initially be all about it... but eventually, the hype would fade... and they may look for something more
artistic / interpretive and fantasy based.

As an artist myself... I can tell you... that there are a lot of ways to make an image look far more awesome, with some unrealistic.. but
effective uses of color and shading. You can make things really Pop out, and Zing.

I certainly can also appreciate hyper-realistic artists, that can make their images look at real as a photo... but at the same time,
its fairly meaningless to me... because a photograph would have done the exact same thing... with far less effort / time wasted.

At least with an interpretive approach, you are getting an artistic / creative representation.

Anyway... The biggest thing people are going to eventually wake up to... is that no matter how real the games look... if they play like
crap, are not challenging, fun, interesting ... then they are not going to be worth a damn anyway. Which is why a game like Robotron,
despite its cheesy look.. is a far more addictive and intense experience... than any FPS that has ever been developed.

Only VR has a chance to potentially change things a bit better on the gameplay end... IF their controllers are far better at analog
precision and depth of range in interactions. (Thumbsticks just dont cut it)

pbj:
As soon as they make a convincing BJ9000 with Cindy Crawford you'll never hear from me again.

fallacy:
How real will always be subjective, when it comes to living things a lot of it has to do with the animation and facial expressions. Nice thing about VR as it keeps progressing with all the motion capturing, pretty soon we will have are fingers in the VR world, than leg capture points and after that eye ball capture.
There is this one VR game called Elevn – Table Tennis, when you start off you are in a room and an NPC is on the other side of the table moving around doing random small things and I swear I thought it was a real person behind that avatar and I started talking to him. VR right now only captures 3 points your head and its orientation and your hands, even with that your brain puts it all together that this movement is coming from a real body.

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