Next-gen images vs. human perception

of course. even Kudo said during the Fight Night presentation that the more 'real' a character looks, the more our eyes detect anything that looks 'off'.

 

All the points raised in this thread can, indeed, be extrpolated from the Uncanny Valley theory.

Only good animators can overcome this problem, next-gen.

 

Photo-realistic gaming won't do much for the violence argument, we already have realistic violence in movies, which would have the same neurological effects that a photo-realistic game would have.

When you watch a movie more than once you already anticipate violence which would fire the same synapses that you would employ anticipating violence in a game.

 

No RingWraith your wrong it would give more to the violence argument. You know why because alot of people already don't like videogames and are looking for something to bark at. We people here already know that movies are the most realistic that you can make something visually, yet it would always look worst than a real movie.

GTA back in 1997 didn't really get any bad hype about crime, yet GTA3 did. And expect GTA4 to get even more bad hype about crime than 3. Trust me.

 

Of all the animations I've seen related to upcoming games, 2 stand out, Ghost Recon 3 (admittedly CGI) and the clip with Lebron in which the movement looked freakishly real. They both had me in awe. I think it's more important to have characters which move realistically than look realistic, but that's just me.

 

No thats you, me, and about 95% of every gamer in the world.

 

Unfortunately, many developers are more concerned about making games look pretty in screenshots, rather than looking good in motion. As I previously mentioned, Bioware is guilty of this with their KOTOR and Jade Empire games for Xbox. Those games all had some absolutely stunning screenshots, but were disappointing in motion. The framerate was erratic and the animations were bizarre. I laughed out loud at Jade Empire. There are some scripted scenes where an NPC has to run from point A to point B but there might be some obstacle in the way. The NPC will sprint full out for about 2 feet, stop abruptly, rotate a little, sprint 3 more feet, stop, rotate, etc. It's hilariously bad, and in those moments it totally ruins the immersion they were going for.

 

seriously


I'd MUCH rather see smooth lifelike animations than any other advancement.

Nothing interrupts the level of immersion more than a lifelike looking character shuffling or hobbling about unrealistically.

 

KOTOR I agree with. Jade Empire I do not. The animation in JE is LEAGUES beyond what they had in KOTOR. The cloth physics alone separates the game from the quality of most games' animation.

 

Animating human characters is a problem no where near to being solved. It's difficult enough to do in a movie situation where every last move can be handcrafted and you know exactly what will happen and its damn near impossible in a game situation where different moves have to blend into one another and characters have to react dynamically to the world they are in. Graphics are comparatively easy since an increase in computing power will directly translate into better graphics, its not hard to throw a few extra polys around, ramp up texture resolution and so on to get something that looks better visualy but it doesn't help you much with animation.

Overall, for both movies and games I think that a stylized look like that used by Pixar and PDI is the way to go. I think one problem is that people (western developers at least) seem to think that stylized graphics are only good for children's/family games (and movies) and that realism is needed for anything aimed at mature audiences (violence/sex/horror). I don't think this is true. Anime is very stylized and covers all genres and does so very well. It's time to drop this stupid quest for realism and instead explore more stylized artistic approaches to games to make them more engaging. Oh, and don't use mocap, keyframe animation all the way =)

(Realistic games do have a place of course, for example it makes sense for sports games where you play with real-life teams.)

 

If you want really realistic animations, you have to simulate everything, like muscles and traction. Otherwise, there is just a small set of animations that gets repeated and will only look right in combination with other animations that are designed to work together.

Sword fighting is a good example. Like in EQ2, where the hero will just wave his sword through the air and is still supposed to hit a dragon some way away and above the character. And you get swords that either swing through characters, or stop at a random point and play a hit animation. Etc.

And it would be nice, if characters were standing on a slope, instead of partially inside / above that slope, for a change.

You cannot make animations for all those cases, so you either limit the opponents to the same size and animations, or you have to use physics to get it right and do away with pre-recorded animations altogether.