5 ms·

I am a long-time 3D graphicist, and have written numerous software and accelerated renderers. I am really struggling to see the point of this article (it seems

by benched 13y ago

I am a long-time 3D graphicist, and have written numerous software and accelerated renderers. I am really struggling to see the point of this article (it seems trivial and tautological to me), although I'll be glad if it generates some discussion. This is an area where I feel very strongly that perception is reality, or at least so close to it as to make no difference. The game world is virtual, so the fact that say a rock is not made of zillions of atoms computing quantum chromodynamics doesn't come as a surprise to anybody. Well, that's a shortcut right there. Immediately, the game world is not arbitrarily "realistic". But I don't think that's what the word "photorealism" usually means. I know I've never used it that way. I use it to mean "feels subjectively real". By that definition, as the OP alludes to, today's most advanced game engines come very close. In my opinion, they come so close, that the rest is gravy. That's what will be coming in the next decade. More gravy, more cake, more icing. In the next year or so, somebody (Sony? Everquest Landmark?) will start the inevitable development toward Minecraft-style procedural/cellular automata based worlds, combined with increasingly photorealistic rendering.

rntz 13y ago
As I see it, the OP is frustrated that people mistake mere graphics (and in particular, realtime raytracing) as the gold standard for "realism" in games, when there are open problems both more challenging and more important that are still unsolved (truly dynamic behavior, scalable content creation). I don't know about industry, but in academic CS graphics is a huge field; by contrast, my impression the other problems mentioned are rather neglected (though certainly not unknown). However, graphics and games aren't my specialty; I would love to be mistaken.
- ilaksh 13y ago
  No, actually he dismissed realtime raytracing out of hand on the false premise that it still requires manual artist texture creation. We have solutions to "truly dynamic behavior", its called a physics engine. Scalable content creation has solutions also, i.e. 3d scanning and procedural generation. Real time path tracing is where its at these days, not ray tracing anymore. All of this stuff can go in hardware and it will within a few years. Main thing holding it back is a lack of resources. I.e., you have billions of dollars being spent on tweaking hardware and software for cheaty approximations and manual artistic endeavours rather than on advancing the technologies I mentioned.
resu_nimda 13y ago
I am really struggling to see the point of this article (it seems trivial and tautological to me) That's because you're a veteran of the industry he's talking about. I see this as directed at people less familiar with 3D game programming: "This is a reminder that our simulations are less complex than reality by orders of magnitude, despite what you see while playing Crysis." I agree that the focus on "photorealism" as it pertains to graphical rendering techniques was a bit off, because he was also talking about animation and kinematics, content generation, and good old processing horsepower (i.e. we already know a lot of math that would make more accurate simulations but it can't be done in real-time). Again, the tone of it feels like he was responding to a more populist sentiment (e.g. "photorealistic" catching on as a buzzword maybe), but I think a better term would have been the more general "digital simulation of real-world phenomena" rather than just "photorealism." I think it's mostly just a "hey guys, we're a lot farther away than a lay observer might think, here's a few reasons why."
RyanZAG 13y ago
> so the fact that say a rock is not made of zillions of atoms But that's the problem. When the player misses the target with a rocket and hits the rock, it gets a strange looking explosion and then the rock is either still there, or simply 'removed'. Sense of realism? Lost. In an open world game, the player might want to pick up the rock. If you took a shortcut and just made the rock an object that sits on top of the ground plane, when you pick up the rock there is normal grass underneath. If you throw the rock at a building, it bounces off and rolls around stupidly. Sense of realism? Lost. > That's what will be coming in the next decade. That's what the article is saying - you're deluded into thinking we're close to solving this stuff. There is no way it's coming in the next decade, it is a long way off with a huge number of very difficult problems to solve. This is like the AI debate. AI is always 'just around the corner'. No it isn't, we are nowhere close to even beginning to understand what we actually need to accomplish once the tricks are taken away.
- dragontamer 13y ago
  Which is why tons of people play "Minecraft", because the voxel technology and ability to deform the environment is much more real than many other games. There are some advancements in this field, but really... at the end of the day... the best "deformable field" is Minecraft still. And it hardly even tries to be realistic. Fortunately, most gamers don't care about realism to this degree. Many FPS gamers want a tight engine, fun mechanics. Bunny Hopping was left in the Halo series for this reason. Ditto with super-cancels in Fighting Games (tell me if MMA-fighters cancels their jabs into super-attacks). Realism for the sake of realism is hopeless. Game programmers need to focus upon entertaining the gamer. Some gamers require a degree of realism... but it should never be the primary point of a game.
  - SixSigma 13y ago
    We were deforming the world in Populous in 1989 ... and people drowned.
    - dragontamer 13y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7424517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7424517 I know. Early 90s gaming was awesome. Such flexibility in games is a rare sight today.
pizza234 13y ago
The article's point is essentially that the progress on graphics is much slower than it would seem. This is not so obvious, because looking especially at static frames, it's very easy to think that graphics have done leaps and bounds in the last decade. Well, when I look at the animations of the real gaming experiences, honestly, I think that there has been very little advancement, which is an example mentioned by the author. I personally doubt that there will be any significant advancement in the next decade, assuming the current advancement rate (which of course, it's hard to predict).
- nightski 13y ago
  Except graphics have improved leaps and bounds in the last decade, even if they do not live up to the expectations of you or the OP.
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    What we had four years ago: http://www.filewin.com/cdn/images/img-filewin--3-GTA-San-Andreas.jpg http://www.filewin.com/cdn/images/img-filewin--3-GTA-San-And... What we have today, on eight year old hardware: http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GTA-5-gameplay.png http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GTA-5-g...
    - JetSpiegel 13y ago
      GTA3: 5 cars and 5 people in one frame GAT5: Static world and a single car
    - qbrass 13y ago
      San Andreas came out almost 10 years ago and had to run on the PS2 with 32MB of ram. GTA 4 came out 5 year ago. http://media.gtanet.com/images/4488-gta-iv-screenshot.jpg http://media.gtanet.com/images/4488-gta-iv-screenshot.jpg
      - jamesaguilar 13y ago
Detrus 13y ago
Well the article says they don't even come close. If you focus on screenshots and scripted playthroughs then maybe. But if you play a simple 3D physics demo where everything can be destroyed and Battlefield 4 where only 5 buildings can be destroyed, the subjectivity of realism is lost. It feels constricted. An ugly 3d physics demo with hundreds of boxes becomes about as entertaining and feels subjectively as realistic as BF4, if you ignore screenshots and pay attention only to gameplay. Believe it or not, shooting hundreds tank and artillery rounds into the environment turns it all into rubble. A major priority of game studios is marketing. Currently they depend heavily on screenshots. That means they'll constrict environmental destruction to 1 building per level to preserve screenshot fidelity. If they turned down graphics settings and allow physics engines to contribute to the subjective feeling of realism, they're afraid it won't sell enough. That's an approach some indie games have taken. Naturally it's more efficient to develop. Maybe efficient enough to get rid of $100 million a year teams and be profitable with lower sales.

by benched 13y ago

rntz 13y ago

As I see it, the OP is frustrated that people mistake mere graphics (and in particular, realtime raytracing) as the gold standard for "realism" in games, when there are open problems both more challenging and more important that are still unsolved (truly dynamic behavior, scalable content creation). I don't know about industry, but in academic CS graphics is a huge field; by contrast, my impression the other problems mentioned are rather neglected (though certainly not unknown). However, graphics and games aren't my specialty; I would love to be mistaken.

ilaksh 13y ago
No, actually he dismissed realtime raytracing out of hand on the false premise that it still requires manual artist texture creation. We have solutions to "truly dynamic behavior", its called a physics engine. Scalable content creation has solutions also, i.e. 3d scanning and procedural generation. Real time path tracing is where its at these days, not ray tracing anymore. All of this stuff can go in hardware and it will within a few years. Main thing holding it back is a lack of resources. I.e., you have billions of dollars being spent on tweaking hardware and software for cheaty approximations and manual artistic endeavours rather than on advancing the technologies I mentioned.

resu_nimda 13y ago

I am really struggling to see the point of this article (it seems trivial and tautological to me) That's because you're a veteran of the industry he's talking about. I see this as directed at people less familiar with 3D game programming: "This is a reminder that our simulations are less complex than reality by orders of magnitude, despite what you see while playing Crysis." I agree that the focus on "photorealism" as it pertains to graphical rendering techniques was a bit off, because he was also talking about animation and kinematics, content generation, and good old processing horsepower (i.e. we already know a lot of math that would make more accurate simulations but it can't be done in real-time). Again, the tone of it feels like he was responding to a more populist sentiment (e.g. "photorealistic" catching on as a buzzword maybe), but I think a better term would have been the more general "digital simulation of real-world phenomena" rather than just "photorealism." I think it's mostly just a "hey guys, we're a lot farther away than a lay observer might think, here's a few reasons why."

RyanZAG 13y ago

> so the fact that say a rock is not made of zillions of atoms But that's the problem. When the player misses the target with a rocket and hits the rock, it gets a strange looking explosion and then the rock is either still there, or simply 'removed'. Sense of realism? Lost. In an open world game, the player might want to pick up the rock. If you took a shortcut and just made the rock an object that sits on top of the ground plane, when you pick up the rock there is normal grass underneath. If you throw the rock at a building, it bounces off and rolls around stupidly. Sense of realism? Lost. > That's what will be coming in the next decade. That's what the article is saying - you're deluded into thinking we're close to solving this stuff. There is no way it's coming in the next decade, it is a long way off with a huge number of very difficult problems to solve. This is like the AI debate. AI is always 'just around the corner'. No it isn't, we are nowhere close to even beginning to understand what we actually need to accomplish once the tricks are taken away.

dragontamer 13y ago
Which is why tons of people play "Minecraft", because the voxel technology and ability to deform the environment is much more real than many other games. There are some advancements in this field, but really... at the end of the day... the best "deformable field" is Minecraft still. And it hardly even tries to be realistic. Fortunately, most gamers don't care about realism to this degree. Many FPS gamers want a tight engine, fun mechanics. Bunny Hopping was left in the Halo series for this reason. Ditto with super-cancels in Fighting Games (tell me if MMA-fighters cancels their jabs into super-attacks). Realism for the sake of realism is hopeless. Game programmers need to focus upon entertaining the gamer. Some gamers require a degree of realism... but it should never be the primary point of a game.
- SixSigma 13y ago
  We were deforming the world in Populous in 1989 ... and people drowned.
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7424517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7424517 I know. Early 90s gaming was awesome. Such flexibility in games is a rare sight today.

pizza234 13y ago

The article's point is essentially that the progress on graphics is much slower than it would seem. This is not so obvious, because looking especially at static frames, it's very easy to think that graphics have done leaps and bounds in the last decade. Well, when I look at the animations of the real gaming experiences, honestly, I think that there has been very little advancement, which is an example mentioned by the author. I personally doubt that there will be any significant advancement in the next decade, assuming the current advancement rate (which of course, it's hard to predict).

nightski 13y ago
Except graphics have improved leaps and bounds in the last decade, even if they do not live up to the expectations of you or the OP.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  What we had four years ago: http://www.filewin.com/cdn/images/img-filewin--3-GTA-San-Andreas.jpg http://www.filewin.com/cdn/images/img-filewin--3-GTA-San-And... What we have today, on eight year old hardware: http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GTA-5-gameplay.png http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GTA-5-g...
  - JetSpiegel 13y ago
    GTA3: 5 cars and 5 people in one frame GAT5: Static world and a single car
  - qbrass 13y ago
    San Andreas came out almost 10 years ago and had to run on the PS2 with 32MB of ram. GTA 4 came out 5 year ago. http://media.gtanet.com/images/4488-gta-iv-screenshot.jpg http://media.gtanet.com/images/4488-gta-iv-screenshot.jpg
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago

Detrus 13y ago

Well the article says they don't even come close. If you focus on screenshots and scripted playthroughs then maybe. But if you play a simple 3D physics demo where everything can be destroyed and Battlefield 4 where only 5 buildings can be destroyed, the subjectivity of realism is lost. It feels constricted. An ugly 3d physics demo with hundreds of boxes becomes about as entertaining and feels subjectively as realistic as BF4, if you ignore screenshots and pay attention only to gameplay. Believe it or not, shooting hundreds tank and artillery rounds into the environment turns it all into rubble. A major priority of game studios is marketing. Currently they depend heavily on screenshots. That means they'll constrict environmental destruction to 1 building per level to preserve screenshot fidelity. If they turned down graphics settings and allow physics engines to contribute to the subjective feeling of realism, they're afraid it won't sell enough. That's an approach some indie games have taken. Naturally it's more efficient to develop. Maybe efficient enough to get rid of $100 million a year teams and be profitable with lower sales.