The lack of Next-Gen demos and what to expect from the future

[milk]

What we are getting now, especially from Unity, are mostly art demos where everything the engine has is put together to make a super cool cutscene to use for marketing purposes regardless of the performance.

While I think this is correct and I do agree myself with the sentiment that these demos are not very representative nor illustrate what actual games will be like well enough, they are perfect equivalents to Agni's Phylosophy anf the Samaritan demo presented as examples in the threads opening post. So if the question is "where are these types of demos?" the recent U4 and Unity stuff is prety much the exact answer to it.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Be optimistic man, we've still got a long way to go to reach modern day CG and those talent devs would always find a way to wow us with the new power they've acquired .

I'm sure we'll be wowed somewhat. Just not by an awful lot. Ray-traced GI or shadows or reflections are nice and all, but they are (imo) not the thing that truly seperates today's real time graphics from the pre-rendered stuff. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest differentiators are expensive physics calculations (cloth, hair, water, ...).

 

[Karamazov]

when i saw shenmue's cutscenes on dreacmast = "wow that looks pre rendered"
when i saw resident evil 5 cutscenes on Xbox360= "wow that looks pre rendered"
when i saw uncharted 4 cutscenes on PS4= "wow that looks pre rendered"
whatever they bring next gen, i'm sure to be wowed !

 

[Dictator]

I'm sure we'll be wowed somewhat. Just not by an awful lot. Ray-traced GI or shadows or reflections are nice and all, but they are (imo) not the thing that truly seperates today's real time graphics from the pre-rendered stuff. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest differentiators are expensive physics calculations (cloth, hair, water, ...).

Really? I really think the difference of an object actually being lit correctly and self occluding light and bouncing light is that immediate thing that always stands out to me. Like, SSAO and cubemaps really are not enough.

 

[JPT]

Relax, tight deadlines for demos are the norm, it seems Just read this thread

https://twitter.com/x/status/1130098389993963520

 

[orangpelupa]

when i saw shenmue's cutscenes on dreacmast = "wow that looks pre rendered"
when i saw resident evil 5 cutscenes on Xbox360= "wow that looks pre rendered"
when i saw uncharted 4 cutscenes on PS4= "wow that looks pre rendered"
whatever they bring next gen, i'm sure to be wowed !

I was like that. Then I look for "compression artefact" and I can discern which ones are real time and which ones aren't again.

Seriously, even final Fantasy that was one of the pioneer of crazy high quality pre-rendered videos use blocky videos for FFXV.

But they say ff7r gonna cokes in 2 discs... So maybe they finally use high quality videos again

 

[jlippo]

Really? I really think the difference of an object actually being lit correctly and self occluding light and bouncing light is that immediate thing that always stands out to me. Like, SSAO and cubemaps really are not enough.

Oh, yes.
AO in it self is horrible, it always needs a directional component to look halfway decent. (Bent cone or similar.)

 

[Svensk Viking]

Old thread but figured this might be best mentioned here. One thing that's greatly annoying me in modern games is that they're still plagued by pop-ins. Even if you have a high end PC that can max Far Cry 5 at 60+ FPS, you still see objects appearing right before your eyes. Rather than just having better graphics in Far Cry 6, reducing/eliminating those bloody pop-ins in FC5 would feel alot more next-gen to me.

 

[Karamazov]

RDR2 has very minimal popping, even for the foliage, and that's a great achievement.
but then horse speed is not the same as a car or a plane.

that mission was quite somtething

Spoiler

 

[trinibwoy]

Old thread but figured this might be best mentioned here. One thing that's greatly annoying me in modern games is that they're still plagued by pop-ins. Even if you have a high end PC that can max Far Cry 5 at 60+ FPS, you still see objects appearing right before your eyes. Rather than just having better graphics in Far Cry 6, reducing/eliminating those bloody pop-ins in FC5 would feel alot more next-gen to me.

Need that mesh shader action.

 

[Mitchings]

I expect the most prominent and important next-gen features will rely on interaction and as such many of the tech demos we'll be seeing will be constructed to demonstrate that.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@Mitchings I really hope next-gen uses a lot of the power for interactivity in the world, vs just pushing more pixels. I'd love to see more accurate physics, improved animation, better ai, 120fps than straight increases in visual quality. One thing I found this gen was the games tended to go open-world more often, but interactivity wasn't a huge leap from previous gen titles like GTAV, Uncharted 2/3.

 

[ultragpu]

Yeah they were so preoccupied with how big the open world they could make that they didn't stop to think whether they should.
I honestly hate huge, empty open world with repetitive assets and mission structure, instead they should focus on density, unique assets, interactivity and variety. However that said they shouldn't skimp on pixel complexity either. You tell your girl to check out Horizon Zero Dawn 2, she gets blown away by how the loose leaves get stuck on Aloy's hair but then she takes a closer look at the hair and all she sees are sheets of polygon alphas, she drops the Dualshock 5 and calls you a liar. That's how the relationship breaks! But if you got your next gen hair rendering going, ohhh boy you know what she'll drop instead of the Dualshock 5

Spoiler

.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Playing the critically acclaimed TLoU (PSN freebie)...it's so wooden! Actors talking without regard to what I'm doing. Places I should be able to go but can't. I'm not the slightest bit absorbed into the world. Don't recall UC4 being any better. Being able to walk into someone, or just stare at them, and not get any response. People simulation is a million miles from realistic and involving, and that one's gonna be a bugger to implement. Couple with that non-gamey physics where collisions are with actual objects instead of crude bounding volumes...I feel there's way more that needs to be done to progress games then will happen for generations, unless there's a whole software paradigm change.

In a way, perhaps improving graphics is just leading to a worsening Uncanny Valley of world simulation? We'll have beautiful, photo-realistic dioramas to wander about within their very limited confines.

 

[Picao84]

Playing the critically acclaimed TLoU (PSN freebie)...it's so wooden! Actors talking without regard to what I'm doing. Places I should be able to go but can't. I'm not the slightest bit absorbed into the world. Don't recall UC4 being any better. Being able to walk into someone, or just stare at them, and not get any response. People simulation is a million miles from realistic and involving, and that one's gonna be a bugger to implement. Couple with that non-gamey physics where collisions are with actual objects instead of crude bounding volumes...I feel there's way more that needs to be done to progress games then will happen for generations, unless there's a whole software paradigm change.

In a way, perhaps improving graphics is just leading to a worsening Uncanny Valley of world simulation? We'll have beautiful, photo-realistic dioramas to wander about within their very limited confines.

I did enjoy TLoU gameplay and how tense it was all the time to make me do extended breaks between sections to release the tension. However, I also thought it was very far from the critical acclaim it got. The story's ending was sooooo predictable and yet it was praised like the second coming.

 

[see colon]

I did enjoy TLoU gameplay and how tense it was all the time to make me do extended breaks between sections to release the tension. However, I also thought it was very far from the critical acclaim it got. The story's ending was sooooo predictable and yet it was praised like the second coming.

Video game stories get graded on a strange curve. For example, I've heard people rave about Half-Life (1 or 2) because of it's narrative, but the story itself is the same as DooM. Scientists mess with something, open a portal and monsters come out. Any movie with that story would never be highly regarded for it's story. The difference, I think, is that the presentation allows gamers to create this head cannon where they imagine the story to be deeper than it is because they were part of it, and they remember how they feel emotionally while playing it, and it allows them to connect with the story in ways that a well presented cinematic piece never could with the same story.

 

[Xbat]

@Mitchings I really hope next-gen uses a lot of the power for interactivity in the world, vs just pushing more pixels. I'd love to see more accurate physics, improved animation, better ai, 120fps than straight increases in visual quality. One thing I found this gen was the games tended to go open-world more often, but interactivity wasn't a huge leap from previous gen titles like GTAV, Uncharted 2/3.

Hopefully the way more competent CPUs mean we get more dynamic games.

Back on topic, where are my amazeballs tech demo's .

 

[lefantome]

UPDATE 18.03.2020

So both Xbox SX and PS5 specs have been revealed and the only thing we have seen are an old gen game (Gears 5) with some better settings and some path tracing Minecraft demo, both of them from Microsoft.

GDC is not physically happening due to the COVID19 pandemic but no "next-gen" material seems to be out there yet.

What should we really expect from this gen?
Because I am quite pessimistic about this at this point.

 

[Esrever]

Relax, tight deadlines for demos are the norm, it seems Just read this thread

https://twitter.com/x/status/1130098389993963520

So he ended up only making slightly more money? Down 30% then up 50% is only 105% of original.

 

[orangpelupa]

Playing the critically acclaimed TLoU (PSN freebie)...it's so wooden! Actors talking without regard to what I'm doing. Places I should be able to go but can't. I'm not the slightest bit absorbed into the world. Don't recall UC4 being any better. Being able to walk into someone, or just stare at them, and not get any response. People simulation is a million miles from realistic and involving, and that one's gonna be a bugger to implement. Couple with that non-gamey physics where collisions are with actual objects instead of crude bounding volumes...I feel there's way more that needs to be done to progress games then will happen for generations, unless there's a whole software paradigm change.

In a way, perhaps improving graphics is just leading to a worsening Uncanny Valley of world simulation? We'll have beautiful, photo-realistic dioramas to wander about within their very limited confines.

UC series and TLoU are wide-linear games that will break suspension of disbelieve as soon as you starts doing things outside of the predetermined flow. But if you sticks to the flow, it generally good, and the characters will properly react to the environment and do proper banters.

for better dynamics,
go with the dude-bros in FFXV. Their banter are appropriate with the environment and the story going. But around the last 1/3 or the game, the banter won't follow the story and it will just be generic IIRC.
FF7R also have nice contextual banter. E.g. if you keep hitting yourself with the lasers, the female (forgot her name) will comment it. saying something like " r u a masochist?"