The move towards CGI. What consitutes 'the look' and how close are we getting?
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
ArcticCircle
Newcomer
Jim himself made great episode back in escapist days - something like there's no best pasta sauce, there are only best pasta sauces. Pasta sauce brand Prego wanted to create THE BEST pasta sauce and went great lenghts to do so. Among other things, they hired Dr Howard Moskowitz to help find out what people really liked. As expected, people didn't agree what was the best and not only that, they found out that there were no products available at all for some of the study group. Thus extra chunky spagetti sauce was born. This principle is well known in ad biz these days.
And this is relevant how in this topic. Well, I love cinematic games. Maybe one could argue that there are too many of 'em, but I'd say that's not true. There are good amount of 'em in AAA space but very few of 'em in indie space (yeah, there are telltale games and such), and I'd say they are not among the easiest to make even if small developers would like to make 'em. For me cinematic games are continuation from pen and paper rpgs, choose your own adventure books and (semi) linear games like Dragon's Lair mixed with TV and movies. Games like Torment or Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura would be better games if several gameplay and combat mechanics would be completely removed from 'em.
So, while Jim and many others hate this type of pasta sauce, I'm glad that it exist as I couldn't wait to get away from traditional sauce (like 2d platformers and sidescrollers)
And this is relevant how in this topic. Well, I love cinematic games. Maybe one could argue that there are too many of 'em, but I'd say that's not true. There are good amount of 'em in AAA space but very few of 'em in indie space (yeah, there are telltale games and such), and I'd say they are not among the easiest to make even if small developers would like to make 'em. For me cinematic games are continuation from pen and paper rpgs, choose your own adventure books and (semi) linear games like Dragon's Lair mixed with TV and movies. Games like Torment or Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura would be better games if several gameplay and combat mechanics would be completely removed from 'em.
So, while Jim and many others hate this type of pasta sauce, I'm glad that it exist as I couldn't wait to get away from traditional sauce (like 2d platformers and sidescrollers)
L. Scofield
Veteran
He just latches onto whatever the latest outrage is.
L. Scofield
Veteran
Usually when he's "giving them a hard time", somebody else already did it.
That reminds me. Give me more Bayonetta!!! Next gen sexual exploitation is still nowhere to be seen!!
VFX_Veteran
Regular
Is this a joke? The character has actual hair curves, much better accurate SSS, her chains have enough triangles to eliminate all forms of low polys, the demon is completely displacement mapped, and it has an incredible fluid simulation for the smoke and particles.
I would completely be able to tell the difference between this Blur video and a GoW QTE running on a PS4.
Of course you can tell but you are very in the know about the various tech techniques used. I love video game visuals but don't understand a lot of the tech talk but to me The Order's character models and environments are very close to that CGI trailer, the lighting / smoke effects from Second Son / First Light are very close to the effects in the trailer and the main enemy is actually less impressive to me than the dragon from 'Deep Down'.
Don't underestimate Sony Santa Monica, their God of War games on PS3 were absolutely stunning looking and ran on a 240 gflop GPU with less than 500MB's of RAM. What they will achieve with a 1.8 tflop GPU and 5GB's of RAM is going to be batshit insane. As I'm sure you know the most impressive visuals are about artistic talent / budget and the God of War series has both in very large numbers.
VFX_Veteran
Regular
No they aren't. I have The Order and it's characters, while very nice looking, are still several notches down from that character model. Just look at the outfit/face/hair. The environments also have way more detail. I can walk up close to a prop in The Order and it blurs out pretty aggressively due to texture resolution not being high enough.
The lighting/smoke effects in this trailer actually cast shadows, particles don't disappear as soon as they hit the ground and the smoke is volumetric with a real fluid simulation behind them.
How so?
I think you seriously need to check your sanity with regards to hardware rendering vs. offline rendering. The "sky" is the limit in offline rendering whereas the PS4 and it's capabilities (or even a PC with Titan X) are limited by the hardware which is always constrained by an order of magnitude with respect to the needs of offline rendering.
Now, I do agree that if the artists suck at their jobs, then presentation can look crappy no matter what the technology used. Put it this way, if I wanted to make that exact same trailer using hardware rendering, I would immediately have to stop because rendering the main character with the amount of geo, hair, and storing point cloud SSS (assuming it's a REYES renderer) with an actual physically based hair shader (containing several lobes not just 1 specular) and using texture maps well over 4k for each surface would be impossible in real time. That doesn't even include throwing other assets into the camera's view.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
Really?!?! All that for a phone game?!
Streuth!
Streuth!
Bah. Looks the same as Snake to me.
