I say bring on the next generation and have felt that way for at least 12 months. We probably haven't seen the best the current gen has to offer, but the days when current gen software could leave me spellbound are long gone. I want vastly more believable worlds with vastly superior AI and physics and that requires more powerful hardware.
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Have we got vastly superior physics and AI compared to the last generation though?Comment
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Physics certainly, it's pretty much ubiquitous now but not many PS2 games bothered with it. AI not so much. We're always at the bottom of the pile when it comes to handing out the CPU cycles
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I've yet to see good ai in a game. I doubt that's down to horsepower though. More likely a combination of how difficult it is to do it and lack of return on investment.
I would like to see realistic trees next gen. I've been expecting decent trees since the 3do but no one has delivered so far.Comment
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There are XBox and PS2 games with Havok physics. Although many games didn't bother, it clearly wasn't a hardware restriction.
Have things really improved 'vastly' since then? I remember being blown away when I first played Psi Ops on the XBox. Things have got slightly better, but incrementally imo.
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Exactly. I've never understood the argument that high end "next gen" hardware is absolutely necessary for good physics. Surely it's just down to coding?Originally posted by Brats View PostComment
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think this gen graphics have not bothered me in the least ...while there are some great looking games out there i have been just as happy playing super meat boy/shadow company/puzzle quest/and lots of wii games as i have say playing bayonetta and uncharted 2 its all about style and gameplay now
only thing i wish is that wii games didnt look as rubbish on my HD tv compared to them on a sd tvComment
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Originally posted by Ady View Post
Physics can be computationally very complex, or simple. To date, all games have done the best they can making things "simpler". For example, I don't know any game which has per poly model collision detection, it's all collision boxes - hugely simplified rectangles thrown over in game models.
They keep the realism of collisions very simple.
True physics would be a gameworld where all objects are supported correctly based on gravity. Buildings constructed from timber and metal, blocks and bricks. Imagine something like that in a shooter, and where it could lead gameplay
More physics would equal more pyrotechnics on screen; more particles, all elements on an explosion correctly bouncing. I was recently watching the BFBC2 VIP7 trailer and the movie was showing all kinds of incidental details that are missing in the console versions, particularly more "bits" flying off buildings when being shot. It may not sound a lot, but it adds up to a more immersive experience.
I can't emphasise how heavy going decent physics can be. I'm working on a music video right now, and we're "exploding" a mirror. Taking away all the rendering elements you'd associate with a mirror (refractions, reflections, 2 bounce ray tracing, global illumination, etc), the explosion contains 2,500 particles, spawning as little pieces of the mirror, as well as maybe 10 large pieces. The intro sequence lasts maybe a minute. PAL 25 frames per second. Before rendering (the CG guy is using Lightwave) you calculate dynamics - so what particle hits what. Please don't think of "particles" as small pixel size dots, in this instance they're a shard of mirror, maybe a couple of hundred polys each (probably far less). Now, per poly collision would be unrealistic, so we turn on a collision sphere which sits around each object. Everything has momentum, and you set a bounce to the sphere so when two particles / spheres get close to each other, they nudge each other out of the way. Basically, it's a very simple physics model and not per poly.
That minute of screen time takes around 45 minutes to calculate dynamics, on a quad core Xeon workstation
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