Does this look photorealistic to you?

[Sc4freak]

Hi, I don't know if this is the right place to post this or not, but here goes.

After first playing Oblivion, I was stunned by the graphics. The outdoor scenes especially. Well, a friend of mine who was watching me claimed that he could do better. Naturally, I challenged him to make a better looking demo of one aspect of Oblivion's graphics. He chose water.

Today, he presented me of a short animated clip of his water demo - and he also claimed it to be photorealistic. I watched the clip (it was short, ~5 seconds) and was unimpressed. I argued that it didn't look photorealistic at all, but he wouldn't accept my criticism. He demanded a second opinion, so that's why I'm here amongst all you graphics whizzes. I want to know what you think about the water, and wether it lives up to my friend's claim of it being photorealistic.

Here's the clip: Linky
Sorry about the resolution, it's what he gave me.

To me, the water looks as if it just used a looping animation, over and over again. And, the animation looks kind of jerky. And I can't put my finger on it, but the water just looks really "flat" to me, nothing like real water.

What do you guys think?

 

[nutball]

It doesn't look realistic at all:

- it's the wrong colour
- the movement looks like it's "looped"
- the wavelength spectrum of the ripples doesn't look right
- there's no crud floating on the water(!)

 

[nintenho]

It's not reflecting anything above the water or distorting anything under the water. And water never really looks good until your in it swimming around and making it move and whatnot.

 

[Nick]

It looks pretty impressive to me!

Remember that nature is actually boring. I once saw a rendering of a toy, that looked bland with the wrong highlights. Coincidentally I had a real-life object like that, and to my surprise it was just as bland and the light looked more and more unrealistic the longer I looked at it...

This water can probably be improved a little further, but I highly doubt that Oblivion has any more realistic water.

 

[hughJ]

Making water better than Oblivion's shouldn't be that difficult for anyone who knows what they're doing, as the water in the game is pretty darn poor. I think the first mod I downloaded for the game was a water-fix.

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

To be honest I don't think that it is something that can be decided based just on the small image that you have available. There needs to be some context to the image. If this was a views into a swimming pool for example then I would say it is not bad. In something like Oblivion you are supposed to be looking at dark lakes or pools, which would be darker and thus be more reflective of the surrounding environment.

There is also the fact that when making a game, what is realistic may not be the most pretty and whilst game designers are trying to get a lot more realism. There is still room for artistic interpretation.

CC

 

[JHoxley]

Of course its not realistic - it doesn't look like liquid glass like HL2

Whilst there is some degree of accuracy in Fresnel weighting reflect/refract models I've yet to see any game implementations that dont mutilate it and end up with something resembling liquid glass. I cant remember where, but there was a tech-demo that introduced depth-based colour, caustics and proper physics for the waves - that looked really good.

I was quite impressed with this recent GDNet IOTD...

Jack

 

[London Geezer]

It might look photorealistic if it was trying to depict a part of a swimming pool. with no one swimming (there's not disruption in the water, the waves are too regular). and with nothing over it to reflect, or anything under the water to refract.........

In that case, it would look right... Maybe...

 

[SlmDnk]

Looks very good to me. Certainly better than Oblivion.

 

[Sxotty]

One needs higher quality to tell, but I actually think that looks photo realistic to water in a harbor that is somewhat milky, no crap on top and a cloudy day...

 

[rwolf]

Looks like video.

 

[Farid]

It doesn't look realistic at all:

- it's the wrong colour
- the movement looks like it's "looped"
- the wavelength spectrum of the ripples doesn't look right
- there's no crud floating on the water(!)

I wouldn't be surprised if this "demo" was nothing else but a real video.

 

[thehulk]

looks good to me.

 

[zed]

looks good, could even be real (hard to tell with such low quality video)
a few months ago i wrote down a list of common things that occur in nature + i believe water is the easiest phenomina to realistically emulate graphically

Remember that nature is actually boring

this is correct, also lighting wise on a day like today (overcast) shading is very flat and unexciting, this is why when i render things i like to 'sex them up'

 

[SPM]

The motion is unrealistic. It looks like a cut video (or a fixed animation sequence) that is being played forward, then backward then forward and so on rather than a proper water simulation. The effect isn't bad though considering.

 

[Jawed]

I was quite impressed with this recent GDNet IOTD...

There's a decent app to download on there - for SM2 cards.

One of the issues with water when it's in a body such as a river, lake or sea is that it's rarely as transparent or as reflective as demos such as this would like to have you believe.

Jawed

 

[Sxotty]

I have seen lots of very clear water, but I cannot disagree on the reflection bit. The reflections are almost always over the top considering the lighting in the scene.

 

[ERP]

The thing about water is it's all about what water and the scale.
I spend a lot of time diving, and Breakwater at Monterey doesn't look anything like the fresh water at Tahoe, and neither look much like my swimming pool.

The demo looks OK to me, similar to floating on the surface somewhere like monterey, you generally can't see much through it and the only thing it's reflecting is the sky.

 

[Kanyamagufa]

The only problem I have with it is that it looks like it was looped poorly in the middle, so it jumps unrealistically for a second.

Otherwise, not too shabby for what it is.

 

[Dooby]

- it's the wrong colour

Water has its own colour eh ? Pink? Orange? Luminous black?

Other than the bad skips im thinking it looks pretty much dead on.