Control and Resident Evil 2 Remake still look incredible and run well on fairly inexpensive hardware today. We don't need globally illuminated Unreal Engine 5 games with individually modeled nostril hairs on each character that require graphics cards with prices in the three digit range

Graphics should just be kept at late PS4 level for the foreseeable future to keep games as accessible as possible

  • StalinStan [none/use name]
    ·
    14 days ago

    We got two chokepoints. I feel like graphics have not improved significantly for a little bit that is true. However one problem is way to much stuff can't be re used. So, games will be made with thousands of hours of work done on assets. Then next game will use all new assets for thousands of hours more work. They really need to make some system by which we can keep adding to asset library's instead of just having to make new stuff all the time.

    The second is we need way more processors cause when you see good ray tracing it really is a wild step up in quality but it is super resource intensive. So maybe when we get reasonable level biocumputing I dunno. However that will be for first time in a while I feel like graphics really jumped up in quality.

    • Roonerino [they/them]
      ·
      14 days ago

      As far as I know, modern games use a lot of third party assets for crates and barrels and rocks (like Quixel and stuff) and even libraries of materials used for creating composite textures (like in Substance which I think is an Adobe thing now). So there's a lot of libraries for high quality resources locked behind enterprise grade paywalls.

      As for ray tracing...ray traced global illumination, as I understand it, is very expensive but kind of has a fixed cost, and increasing the complexity of the scene doesn't really increase the cost of calculating the lighting past the baseline until you crank up the number of samples or number of bounces. Also, it saves a fair bit of work because if you can fully commit to RTGI, it's all physically based and behaves realistically and you don't have to do weird hacks and tricks anymore to try to fake realistic lighting.

      • StalinStan [none/use name]
        ·
        14 days ago

        Nah, I want it back like in the hl1 days where everyone was just straight ripping and reusing everything. Those were fun days.

      • SpiderFarmer [he/him]
        ·
        14 days ago

        It hurts how the Far Cry series could be good with all the stuff they re-use and copy-paste. But they use those resources for evil.

        • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
          ·
          14 days ago

          ray tracing is cool in like Minecraft and stuff but I think that's probably the last thing that impressed me. I'm going to amend my point and say we could stop whenever it was invented and leave it there

      • RION [she/her]
        ·
        13 days ago

        Show
        Show

        It's like looking at identical twins!

        • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
          ·
          edit-2
          13 days ago

          my point is not that they're literally the same, but that the increases in photo realism are genuinely pointless. I see absolutely zero storytelling, gameplay, or even aesthetic value in them. A single real life photo provides more of what they're trying to copy than years of hyper realistic gameplay.

          • RION [she/her]
            ·
            13 days ago

            Really? I'd think advancements in mocap and facial rendering at least help make for more compelling storytelling, since you can get more of the actor's authentic expression

            Plus I like looking at pretty things and the top image is nicer to look at than the bottom one