I beg the answer to a simple question, why is it people value photo-realistic or simply realistic graphics as important? Graphic development has been a very important part of the last few generations, and took a big leap with our current generation. Its at the point that alot of people would agree, we have the graphical capabilities to practically do anything now. We've seen pre-rendered cutscenes with near-photo realism, we've seen cartoony 3d enviroments, to richly textured backgrounds, and player models.
The point is, why do we strife forward to completely realistic enviroments, textures, and player models?
My simple arguement is this, have you looked at real life lately? Its BORING. I spend all day looking at real people and real enviroments and I'm often very, very bored of it all. Only a few times do I see a sunset or something that takes my breath away and I can really take in the enviroment.
Case and point, these two screenshots.One of a real-life modern livingroom, the other is a render of a real-life modern livingroom. We'll compare these two screenshots. In these two examples, we're comparing photo-realism. These screenshots are from very advanced computers and thus look fantastic.
So this is a example of a real-life modern livingroom. You can see the textures clearly of the sofa's, the tables, everything! It looks very nice, but for anyone who lives in a modern livingroom, this is a day to day sight and one would get bored of the scenery rather quickly. Infact, I can pretty much quantanee most people who look at this video, didn't look at it for more than 30 seconds.
This is the CGI render of a livingroom, now. Again, you can easily make out the textures, espically of the wood floor and the table-carpet. The texture of the coffee table is hard to make out and upon closer look. The sofa's and livingchairs are a bit fuzzy for some reason. Overall, a very impressive render of a livingroom.
Now, whats the big difference between them? Well, one is definately more glossy than the other, as if someone took a cleaning product and cleaned the living hell outta the room. There still is a bit of fantasy behind the Render, but overall. It has a very realistic appearance. But as I've said before with the real-life photo? I can guantanee most people looked at the picture for at most 30 seconds, maybe a few looked for a minute or so. But its a pretty average piece of scenery. In my opinion though, boring.
Now, I can guantanee you that most people who only looked at the real life picture for 30 seconds, looked at the render for about the same time. Maybe longer, maybe shorter. I've looked shorter personally due to the similarities between the two pictures are much more common than the differences. I grew bored with the pictures, so the second one didn't interest me. I bring up this point because the borders between fantasy and reality now have gotten blurred. My mind didn't recongize the render as a render because it was so real, and because I'm used to looking at real enviroments, they don't register with me unless they are absolutely spectular. Which this render, while amazing as a render. Isn't spectular real-life scenery. I've seen something like it a million times before, and I have no doubt I'll see more of them in the near future.
Now, lets take a look at two more photos, but this time. We're aiming for semi-realism. There is still a bit of realism between the two photos, but the lines are more clear this time around.
Wow, this is... average. Everyone who's lived in a city has seen this before, we've gotten the angled view of several buildings in a urban landscape. But we've all seen this before, I actually wonder what city this is. Looks pretty... white. Do ya know what else has white buildings?
Mirror's Edge! God I love this game, it's realistic in its own way. Yes, however. It mixes in obvious fantasy graphical textures, you'll never see a skyscraper with a bold blue draping over the side. In real life it'll be faded, you expect such a discoloration. So your mind views it as average and of course it doesn't surprise you or it doesn't really give ya "wow" value.
My point is that while photorealistic graphics would be a cool thing. It would make the games visually boring, now. Not everyone's seen bullets whizzing by them while the dust kicked up by a tank's tracks blinds your vision in real life, but we're not aiming to see these things in real life, if you did. You'll join the army, not pick up the latest Battlefield 2 game.
I hope this has been a interesting read, share your opinion. Is photorealistic graphics that important to the future of games?
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