washimul on 26 February 2007
your mother said:
Kwaad said:
Yulegoat said:
Water on the 360 has a lovely water effect that uses quite a bit of power, but NOTHING compared to 'real' water. When I say 'real' water I mean rendred useing polygons VS whatever that water effect. The reason it hasnt been done in the past useing full 3D polygons, is because of the sheer ammount of power it takes to make it not look horrible.
(flat water, with a good animated texture looks alot better than Crappy 3D water, True 3D water blows everything out of the water... But it shreds modern PC processors. I'd say only 360 and PS3 are capable of it. Yet the PS3 uses (at most) 1/7th of it's power while the 360 would be using 1/3rd or at best 1/6th.
Waverace 64, on the piss-shit underpowered (by today's standards) N64 utilized polygons for their water. The water even reacted according to how you rode your jetski.
How good water looks has nothing to do directly with the capabilities of the machine. Different games place different emphasis on different aspects of the game to make them shine. It's not like Simcity cannot make 3D polygons for their water. Sure they can, but what's the point? It's a city-building sim. Having "cool" water does little, if anything, for the gameplay, not to mention the fact that it would take part of the computer's overhead to calculate these damn "real" water effects instead of, you know, calculating sims' AI, which is what the game really is about.
Games like Waverace used 3D polygons to great effect, and I bet that the method the developers used to create the water surfaces for Waverace consumed at least 1/2 of the N64's overall processing overhead, but for a game that is based on "racing on waves" this approach not only makes a lot of sense, but is actually required. Of course, that leaves precious little for other "overhead", like higher texture sizes or poly counts on the in-game models.
As if games like RFOM, UT3 and GOW (God or Gears, take your pick) need "real" water for the gameplay to shine and for you to truly immerse yourself in the game. I've never heard anyone poo-poo UT2K4 because "the water is nothing more than two tileable textures looping in a criss-crossing pattern - that looks like shit and I am so disappointed with Unreal!"
Having said that, if these games can actually get "real" water (as you call it, even though I cannot ever envision my LCD TV getting wet by playing a game) without taking away the other visuals (e.g. dynamic grass & weather) while making the gameplay work around these elements, then we're talking. Until then, however, none of this advanced technology means shit. Painkiller had all these cool destructible environments, but it wasn't a gameplay element and destroying things didn't help or hurt you; in other words, nice eye candy that did squat for gameplay.
Your "1/7th, 1/3rd and 1/6th" arguments, and most of all, about "simulated" vs "real" water make about 1/223,348,382,865 sense.
RFOM, GEOW, UT3 all these game companies are extremely lucky..................geez LAIR has put CRYSIS in real CRISIS.
hype for any other game has simply faded to 0 after the "water" and monster effects of LAIR.
i had high hopes for FCATOR 5 when they said back at TGS that LAIR would be the most detailed next gen game with 50x more polygons than each char in GEARS.
i dont even want HS, MGS 4,or motorstorm anymore...........all i want is LAIR.
i am no longer attracted to my fav RFOM...........see the LAIR effect.
all over the gaming forums people have just gone crazy with 60% cancellation of preorders for CRYSIS and other games.
Clearly madness starts with motorstorm but is fueled to HELL by LAIR. (the new GOD of all GAMES)
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