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?

Actually I disagree, it is the opposite for me. I find reality exciting to look at and to observe all the fine details that games are still missing.

I have posted this many times before. I will not be happy until we acheive Avalon.

The better we get are graphics, and the more trained developers are with creating them, the faster we can acheive this.

I will not be satisfied until I can use my own natural skill as a marksmen in a game to get myself some headshot and feel some actual bullets. Yes I repeat I want to feel that bullet no matter how painful. That will get players sweating...and get them to play better.

I dont think people understand what will happen once we do achieve that photo realism in games. Kids now can still play M games and get away with because it still looks fake as hell. When games do reach that point it can be pretty traumatizing I think. Im not here to say "think of the children" but that can certainly be a backlash for the video game industry.

Honestly Ive never cared too much. High end last gen games look great and I can live with them. All I want is smoother animations. I also prefer stylized graphics over realism. After all games are fake and I dont really wanna be reminded of real life when I play them. Okami/MadWorld/Valkyria Chronicles all beautiful sylized games that do not need photo realisim.

Twilight Princess/Mirror's Edge are two games that use lifelike character models but are unique in their style and they look great. They dony look photo realistic but they also dont look cheap.
Style>>>>>Photo-realism

I would love to be a player in an SRPG in Avalon. Would be so fun.

Games that stem from the real world I would like to continue their path to look like their source material. This includes racing games, sports games, war games and licensed games. There is plenty of room to have both, no matter how much graphics advance. Why would I want my Madden NFL game stylized though? The point is to get as close as possible to get you playing exactly what you see on a televised game. Let some other football game go for a kooky art style. Why would anyone want Forza, Grid and Gran Turismo to not strive for realism? If they make a new movie licensed game, wouldn't I want it to look like the movie?

Some people love the artwork, others love the immersion, for me gameplay is king, but everyone has their opinion.

It allows for greater immersion.

RPG's, sports games, racing games will all obviously look and feel better..provided the animation can keep up with the increased image quality.video games have barely reached the quality of toy story(96) so there is a lot of progress to be made.

sonic unleashed looks awesome for a platformer and its much better than the previous 3d sonic titles. gameplay is king but visuals are important too.

realistic graphiks is for the immersion of the gamer