New engines make everything look so plastic :(

[2senile]

Realism is a fine goal to aim for but ..... speaking for myself I have to say that I don't want realistic characters in a game.

I've seen death, pieces of flesh blasted off bodies, heads explode from the impact of high velocity bullets etc. Give me cartoony graphics any day.

I know you are talking about the technical details involved in creating a realistic gaming world in this thread but has anybody really considered or discussed the effect that truly realistic graphics could have on the less sophisticated gamer; specifically the pubescent male?

Many times in other forums I've raised my concerns about the Government here in the UK lacking members who have actually been engaged in real combat. My supposition is that, lacking first hand experience; they are more likely to "send in the troops".

With truly realistic graphics & the dominance of FPS we could create a generation (falsely inured to the true horrors of war/combat) who have a false vision of what is entailed in armed conflict & may see it as something less than the absolute last resort..

I'd really like to see your thoughts on what I have posted & hope I haven't stepped over the line in digressing so far from the subject of the thread topic.

 

[Scali]

I know you are talking about the technical details involved in creating a realistic gaming world in this thread but has anybody really considered or discussed the effect that truly realistic graphics could have on the less sophisticated gamer; specifically the pubescent male?

Well, I think it will be the same as with movies. Movies are already highly realistic. They have been for years. Movies are just rated to age, and games are aswell in some countries, I think. They should be anyway, I suppose. Perhaps when I go and buy Doom4, I will have to actually show ID

With truly realistic graphics & the dominance of FPS we could create a generation (falsely inured to the true horrors of war/combat) who have a false vision of what is entailed in armed conflict & may see it as something less than the absolute last resort..

On the other hand, that generation will be excellent at handling weapons, and their supreme eye-hand coordination will make them great snipers
Seriously though, I think it's not much different from movies. In fact, playing games may actually make them MORE aware of how easy it is to get shot by enemies you can't see or hear.

 

[Fodder]

As i've said the game does look better in motion.

I watched a few small vids and it did look better, but then I downloaded the huge 1024x768 'In Depth' vid off the EQ2 site and that strange clay sheen was back with a vengeance. Small things like the blinking definitely helped, but the underlying rendering has issues.

Seriously though, I think it's not much different from movies. In fact, playing games may actually make them MORE aware of how easy it is to get shot by enemies you can't see or hear.

Sure games portray the danger of war, but what about the horror of it? Compare Call of Duty to Stalingrad, and it's a completely different message.

 

[2senile]

Thanks for the reply Scali.

With a movie we are just passive observers while games attempt to draw us into the game world. Ratings are good but I will bet that if "Little Johnnie" sulks for the latest hyped game many parents will cave in & get the title for their little brat.

Although I will probablly never know, I do wonder how many pre-teens have played Doom 3, .... despite the age rating.
Looking at forum posts it makes me suspect that the figure is high.


I agree about the good eye/hand coordination training.

Maybe if the kind of games that worry me found a way to include the smell, real fear, disgust & inflict non-lethal pain I'd be less concerned about the effect truly realistic (in just the graphics area) games might have on less mature gamers.

 

[3dilettante]

I'm kind of curious to see a few decades down the line if a shooter based on a real war (I don't know, Call of Duty 10?) is rendered and designed for such realism that it gets lumped in as a horror game.

It's something that is kind of overdue. I've never heard anybody describe turning another person into ground chuck while others are trying to return the favor as anything but horrific.

I have a feeling it's going to result in the creation of a gaming genre that specifically avoids being realistic.

FPS/real
FPS/fake?

 

[Fodder]

Spotted a pretty good looking head in the latest batch of UE3.0 screens, it'll be a pretty cool day when all the characters in an MMORPG look that good.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Proper looking human skin is tricky... there are a few requirements that depend on the artists, and some that require engine fetures.
- There is no such thing in reality as a specular highlight; all we can see are reflections of bright surfaces - and light sources are usually bright. However, speculars are a relatively good approximation for movie effects as well.
- The reflectivity of real materials changes depending on the angle you are looking at them; front facing surfaces are far less reflective than glancing surfaces. This has to be simulated in the shader by gradually amplifying the specular highlight.
- Human skin's reflectivity and other attributes are varied across the face and the different body parts. Usually, the softer the skin and flesh, the less shiny it'll be, thus the specular map has to contain low frequency variations.
- The other important factor for speculars on skin is the bumpiness of the surfaces. Tiny wrinkles, fibers, pores scatter the reflected light a lot, thus the specular highlight is usually spread across a larger area but it's broken up into small parts by a properly painted bump and specular map. These details are generally too small to sculpt into the highres model used for normal maps, and are easier to paint anyway.
- Finally, skin is translucent, light gets bounced around in it and illuminates it from below or behind (hold your hand in front of a lamp to see it). Subsurface scattering is a proper but slow solution that currently can not really be used on deforming (skinned, animated) objects. There are many possibilities to develop fake solutions for realtime applications though; ATI's lightmap bluring based trick in the Ruby techdemo is one example.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Spotted a pretty good looking head in the latest batch of UE3.0 screens, it'll be a pretty cool day when all the characters in an MMORPG look that good.

They seem to have a nice material editor too... good

 

[Ostsol]

- The reflectivity of real materials changes depending on the angle you are looking at them; front facing surfaces are far less reflective than glancing surfaces. This has to be simulated in the shader by gradually amplifying the specular highlight.

Isn't this what the Fresnel Term is supposed to take care of? (Of course, most games indeed only bother with basic Phong diffuse and specular.)

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Isn't this what the Fresnel Term is supposed to take care of? (Of course, most games indeed only bother with basic Phong diffuse and specular.)

You're right; but most artists prefer to use a simple custom black-to-white gradient, because it allows more control.

 

[jvd]

Spotted a pretty good looking head in the latest batch of UE3.0 screens, it'll be a pretty cool day when all the characters in an MMORPG look that good.

well if thats what u like , lets hope wow fails as if low polygon chars and areas are the way future mmorpgs go we are in serious trouble.


Here are some new eq2 shots from this last week.

http://eq2.ogaming.com/gallery/albums/album07/WPeverquest2_spells_68.sized.jpg

http://eq2.ogaming.com/gallery/albums/album41/warcry_43290.jpg


http://www.gamergod.com/images/eq2/eq2ss/EQ2_000014.jpg

http://www.mmorpg.com/images/screenshots/2161.jpg

 

[Fodder]

Here are some new eq2 shots from this last week.

Give that we've been talking about rendering human faces and skin, what's the relevance of those shots?

 

[jvd]

Here are some new eq2 shots from this last week.

Give that we've been talking about rendering human faces and skin, what's the relevance of those shots?

Just threw up some more shots , one i just liked (The sunset )

The unicorn was to show that not all creautres will have a shiny look , the kerra was to show that not all huminod chars have a shine to them.

There are many races of playable chars in the game and many diffrent kinds of hair , the faces show that not all of its plasticy .

http://www.eq2forums.com/modules/gallery/albums/EQ2Fantasy-Exclusives/eq2_000718.jpg

http://www.eq2forums.com/modules/gallery/albums/EQ2Fantasy-Exclusives/eq2_000638.jpg

http://www.eq2forums.com/modules/gallery/albums/EQ2Fantasy-Exclusives/Ladyinstudy.jpg

 

[Ostsol]

To be honest. . . none of the skin in any of those shots looks especially good, IMHO. I didn't quite like the unicorn, either. It's not really shiny, but it made me think of a painted, plastic model more than anything else.

 

[Quitch]

Realism is a fine goal to aim for but ..... speaking for myself I have to say that I don't want realistic characters in a game.

Making games look more realistic won't change a thing, the divide between the game and reality will be as harsh as ever. I'll still be sitting at a screen, peering into 3D glasses... whatever. I can take them off and walk away. I can die and reappear. I can kill people, reload, and they're there again.

Don't be fooled into thinking that nice graphics make anyone think it's any more real, it's simply a way of better immersing the player, the same way superior writing makes for better imagery than poor writing, but it doesn't make me believe it's any more real than the last book.

People worry far too much about this sort of thing.

 

[Tim Murray]

So EQ2... it's an MMORPG that uses lots of polys. Yay? I guess? Why do you insist upon plugging it in every thread? It's not DER UBERTHREEDEE or anything like that. It's a decent-looking game. Hooray. It's not applicable to 98.3% of threads.

 

[jvd]

So EQ2... it's an MMORPG that uses lots of polys. Yay? I guess? Why do you insist upon plugging it in every thread? It's not DER UBERTHREEDEE or anything like that. It's a decent-looking game. Hooray. It's not applicable to 98.3% of threads.

Who me ? I haven't pluged it in every thread ! punskin brought it up in the very first post of this thread.