UE4 engine (PS4)

[Don Carlos]

It's a tech demo, dearest.
Just another way it can be used, like the LOTRish one earlier

[seremtan]

and there was me thinking the point of a tech demo was to show off an engine's strengths rather than its weaknesses

[Don Carlos]

What would you say the weaknesses are from those tech demos?

[DTS]

^

environments full of point and strip lights yet still somehow dark and gloomy and the customary indoor fog

The bit about lighting should answer your question, Don Carlos. Also I thought fog went out with the PS1. It was used to hide graphical limitations; same in that tech demo?

[Don Carlos]

Yeah, because fog and smog don't exist IRL

[DTS]

"indoor"s? ...

Besides you can still see what's there in that pic, unlike the infamous PS1 fog.

[obsidian]

DTS, you don't know what you are talking about (as usual). Fog is not automatically occluding. Fog has a relatively high rendering cost on old engines and still impacts performance on modern ones. The only reason why fog was used on old engines was that they can use it to fully occlude objects in the distance with 100% opacity and therefore not draw them. The performance benefit of not drawing background objects is better than the performance loss of using fog, therefore the net benefit makes it worthwhile.

Here is how it works in Quake 3.
http://members.multimania.co.uk/quakero ... oghull.htm

If a bit of fog is there but you can still see through it, it has no occlusion properties and was added just for effect, and has a performance overhead. It does not "hide graphic limitations". I'm not sure if you're smart enough to understand any of this or if it just bounced off of the dozen or so brain cells you have floating in your cranium.

[seremtan]

my overall point was: games are looking more and more like movies rather than reality. in movies, the lens flares and the camera bobs. in reality, they (i.e. the eye/visual system) don't. in movies, areas with many light fittings set in the 'on' position are mysteriously dark and gloomy. in reality, they're well-lit. in movies, dry ice = 'atmosphere'. in reality, dry ice = Live at the Apollo

anyone remember those guys in the msm about 10 years ago saying that "photorealism in games is just around the corner"? what bollocks. the nearest thing i've seen in gaming recently that looks like it's trying to copy the 'real world' is the Arma 3 engine, and no one's jizzing their pants over that (and it still has lens flare :/)

[GONNAFISTYA]

Remember when the blocky, pixelated sprites in Doom were considered "so realistic"?

People r dumb, etc and their judgments of what constitutes "realistic" changes more often than Taylor Swift's boyfriends.

[Plan B]

More importantly:
I don't want games to look "real".
I want them to look like games.

[MKJ]

<fucking a.

[GONNAFISTYA]

More importantly:
I don't want games to look "real".
I want them to look like games.

I personally would love to see a game be so photoreal that I couldn't tell, just like VFX in film today. On the flip side, it doesn't bother me that games aren't all photoreal and "cutting edge"...which I've noticed tends to bother most people....especially o'dium.

Photorealism is a style choice, like any other. The reason photorealism is always talked about whenever advancements are made is because that particular style choice was always hard to achieve, while cartoonish and highly stylized choices were easier to do and were readily accepted by audiences because the content reinforced the style choice (squash and stretch, sound effects, etc). I'm quite sure that a game made 5 years in the future with UE4 that uses a cartoonish style will probably get shit on by morons who don't know anything besides shootin things and blowin shit up in foggy environments wearing a space marine outfit.

[Eraser]

More importantly:
I don't want games to look "real".
I want them to look like games.

Roll in The Croods again. 80 million rendering hours and you've got something that looks like an elaborate cartoon.

More processing power and advanced engine don't (shouldn't) necessarily mean more realistic graphics. An artist should choose a style and then use the processing power to achieve it. Not try and replicate the real world.

[seremtan]

what was that game someone posted screens of here that was all sunny city streets, with shops and awnings and cars etc and actually did look very realistic?

btw i hear what you're saying about choosing a style and going with it. Bioshock Infinite does that really well and looks great, if a tad Pixar-y. just wondering why so many games cater to these people:

morons who don't know anything besides shootin things and blowin shit up in foggy environments wearing a space marine outfit.

[obsidian]

Apparently because they sell well and morons will buy anything if it has a guy in an army suit in whatever Battlefield: Call of Honor sequel. I see screenshots from games and I will often not be able to tell which game they were from because they all look the same.

Pretty graphics sell well but won't have any lasting value if it lacks originality and gameplay.

[Don Carlos]

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/30/ps4-e ... extension/

[seremtan]

Battlefield: Call of Honor

awesome game. my favourite part was when you could clearly see the reflection of Ramirez's diamond ear stud rippling over the battle-scarred surface of his shoulder armour. that moment alone was worth the $10,000,000,000,000 Crybox Infinityvision spent on making this masterpiece

[seremtan]

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/30/ps4-elemental-demo-of-unreal-engine-4-gets-an-extension/

my this-gen brain cannot comprehend all this next-gen awesomeness

[bitWISE]

Roll in The Croods again. 80 million rendering hours and you've got something that looks like an elaborate cartoon.

More processing power and advanced engine don't (shouldn't) necessarily mean more realistic graphics. An artist should choose a style and then use the processing power to achieve it. Not try and replicate the real world.

I'm just spouting nonsense but perhaps one could argue that Pixar doesn't necessarily need to have the most efficient renders when you can just scale it out horizontally and present the finished product at a later date. I would bet that if they really needed to, they could get that rendering time down but its just cheaper to throw hardware at it. And much of their final product is artistic style rather than some kind of limitation.

[Plan B]

If you think that any current, or soon to be engine compares to prerendered Pixar quality, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

[Plan B]

Don't make me go all o'dium on your ass.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Doesn't Pixar render their frames at 8k? That's alot of pixels to figure out.

[bitWISE]

This has nothing to do with PS4 or UE4 but since we're talking about general graphics quality, check this shit out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WZZARzpckw

[Don Carlos]

Something about that video is awesome yet wrong at the same time...