4 ms·

Looking at these image comparisons with the sliders I'm both amazed at how far real time rendering tech has come and the ingenuity on display, but also by how r

by simias 5y ago

Looking at these image comparisons with the sliders I'm both amazed at how far real time rendering tech has come and the ingenuity on display, but also by how relatively little it matters at this point. Like the shadow comparison, it's undeniable that it looks better and more details in the "shadow map raytracing" version, but it's not like the reference picture looked all that terrible. I don't have a particular point to make, but as time passes I feel so privileged to have grown up with videogames in the 90's and early 00's. A watershed moment in computing, where we went from low res 2D graphics to high resolution 3D graphics. We've clearly hit diminishing returns since then.

amelius 5y ago
That might be different once you start wearing VR goggles. The experience becomes more immersive if you see a realistic world, and not pixels.
ehnto 5y ago
The difference is likely in how hard it was to get the original result, and some unseen limitations in the technology. Game lighting has always been dozens of tricks and shortcuts to get lighting to look like it behaved properly, without it actually behaving properly. But newer technologies work on getting better at lighting and material behaviour and that allows a level of "overall correctness" that is much easier to achieve. I've made a similar comment previously, but Raytracing can make a Minecraft world feel like real life, because the lighting is correct even if the world is surreal. PBR was a huge leap for lighting correctness, and it's part of the reason why a game with "okay" textures can still feel just as good as a game with incredible textures. I think our brains can pick up on these lighting cues.
skohan 5y ago
I think the difference real-time lighting makes will become more obvious as games cease to be cross-gen and really embrace current generation hardware. Baked lighting can achieve very good, near-photorealistic results in staticly lit scenes with static geometry. Once we see games really take advantage of dynamic lighting in highly dynamic scenes with a lot of moving elements, I suspect we'll look back at current and recent games and see them as lifeless by comparison.
aspaceman 5y ago
The main advantage of new technology is interactivity. Dynamic illumination is _dynamic_ instead of statically baked. That has obvious environmental advantages. Comments like yours that pixel peep screenshots miss the point. These limitations seem imperceptible to you, but are very real in terms of an artists ability to execute on their vision. Most games do not currently have multiple dynamic light sources in a scene. You can go back and play Fear on PC to see that and it's awesome - Doom 3 as well. But graphics tech optimized away from that direction (rightfully), and now we need to account for dynamic illumination and transparency. Better shadows (especially in interactive moments) is a nice bonus.
darkteflon 5y ago
Funny you should mention that! I’m around your age or perhaps a little bit older. I was playing 2015’s Arkham Knight last night - a triple-A title in its time and by any measure a good looking game - and was struck actually by how far we’ve come in just the last 5-6 years. I finished The Last of Us 2 recently and the gap between Arkham and that is night and day on every dimension: resolution, lighting, particle effects, textures, animation, temporal reconstruction techniques. I won’t disagree with your central point about diminishing returns. On the other hand, the jumps are probably bigger than I realised until I went back and looked.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

by simias 5y ago

amelius 5y ago

That might be different once you start wearing VR goggles. The experience becomes more immersive if you see a realistic world, and not pixels.

ehnto 5y ago

The difference is likely in how hard it was to get the original result, and some unseen limitations in the technology. Game lighting has always been dozens of tricks and shortcuts to get lighting to look like it behaved properly, without it actually behaving properly. But newer technologies work on getting better at lighting and material behaviour and that allows a level of "overall correctness" that is much easier to achieve. I've made a similar comment previously, but Raytracing can make a Minecraft world feel like real life, because the lighting is correct even if the world is surreal. PBR was a huge leap for lighting correctness, and it's part of the reason why a game with "okay" textures can still feel just as good as a game with incredible textures. I think our brains can pick up on these lighting cues.

skohan 5y ago

I think the difference real-time lighting makes will become more obvious as games cease to be cross-gen and really embrace current generation hardware. Baked lighting can achieve very good, near-photorealistic results in staticly lit scenes with static geometry. Once we see games really take advantage of dynamic lighting in highly dynamic scenes with a lot of moving elements, I suspect we'll look back at current and recent games and see them as lifeless by comparison.

aspaceman 5y ago

The main advantage of new technology is interactivity. Dynamic illumination is _dynamic_ instead of statically baked. That has obvious environmental advantages. Comments like yours that pixel peep screenshots miss the point. These limitations seem imperceptible to you, but are very real in terms of an artists ability to execute on their vision. Most games do not currently have multiple dynamic light sources in a scene. You can go back and play Fear on PC to see that and it's awesome - Doom 3 as well. But graphics tech optimized away from that direction (rightfully), and now we need to account for dynamic illumination and transparency. Better shadows (especially in interactive moments) is a nice bonus.

darkteflon 5y ago

Funny you should mention that! I’m around your age or perhaps a little bit older. I was playing 2015’s Arkham Knight last night - a triple-A title in its time and by any measure a good looking game - and was struck actually by how far we’ve come in just the last 5-6 years. I finished The Last of Us 2 recently and the gap between Arkham and that is night and day on every dimension: resolution, lighting, particle effects, textures, animation, temporal reconstruction techniques. I won’t disagree with your central point about diminishing returns. On the other hand, the jumps are probably bigger than I realised until I went back and looked.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]