NextGen World Progression

[originalbadboy]

Fair enough, I agree that the draw distance on JC2 was impressive. I don't remember being able to see the details so far away like I can with second son.

Back On topic:

Open world interaction should include the ability to go into ALL buildings, and interact with ALL objects. It should be banned to put old arcade games in open world's that can't be played too.

I would like an open world game that is smaller in geographic size, if it allows me to go inside buildings. This could be something the cloud could help with? The interior design and persistency could be on the back end server, with assets streamed locally?

I am not even sure you would need the cloud for that in all honesty .. And if that were true does that not put the ball squarely back in Microsoft's court... Considering Sony doesn't really have a 'cloud' as it were.

But yes any of the above would be truly next gen ... I am just considering what a current gen version of and Elder Scroll game is going to be like. Just think ... A random world created every time you play with auto generated dungeons ... Would certainly be possible now, especially with the 'cloud' doing all the background computing.

[charlesr]

Let's imagine for a second that no one had invented HD screens and that 480p @60fps was the limit. What would games be like?

[originalbadboy]

Let's imagine for a second that no one had invented HD screens and that 480p @60fps was the limit. What would games be like?

They would just be games and we would still be enjoying them rather than having these stupid arguments ad infinitum.

[capcom_suicide]

Let's imagine for a second that no one had invented HD screens and that 480p @60fps was the limit. What would games be like?

a lot cheaper.

[Asura]

For me, it's not so much about draw distance but rather "active" draw distance.

Many games use LOD tricks so that whilst you can see "into the distance", everything more than a hundred yards away is fake. Saints Row 3 did this on PS3; distant traffic is fake, and if you jump off a building you can see the cars disappear and be replaced by "real" traffic as you get up close (to explain a little more, the more detailed cars are in DIFFERENT positions to the fake ones, so it genuinely is fake).

Sometimes this doesn't matter, and it's fine, as in many games, range isn't a factor in the gameplay other than looking for distant landmarks, which you can do fine in games like Saints Row or Assassin's Creed.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I was playing World vs World in Guild Wars 2. For those who don't know, WvW is a huge multiplayer mode where armies of players fight over possession of a continent-sized map, taking and securing large fortresses and outposts in an ongoing war. I was exploring one of the outposts, and I heard something in the distance. Looking down from the tower upon which I was stood, I noticed a fracas across the lake about half a kilometre away. I soon realised it was one of my team who had been jumped by two enemies, and I was able to shout him and tell him to drag them towards the fortress.

I jumped down from the top of the fortress and plunged into the water below, before swimming beneath the water and jumped the enemies from behind, as the bloke made his way toward the entrance. I was able to ensnare them and slow them down, running past them to join him inside.

All of this was only possible because I was able to see really, really far.

[capcom_suicide]

The discussion is as old as games. Why did some like to play afterburner in the arcades, rather the precise perfection of R-Type. Games graphics and technology are a very important aspect for many consumers, in the same way high scores and skill are for others. I've been fascinated in the visual side of games since the zx spectrum, where my mother likes to remind me that one Christmas on opening Knight Lore I was very keen on the expression "great graphics!" Which amuses her at the time. The reality is that every generation that goes by, I say exactly the same thing and enjoy it just as much each time. So if gaming had been limited to 480p and that progression was stopped my guess is the gamers with skill and gameplay mechanics would be in cloud heaven, and the tech geeks like me would have found a new hobby.

[charlesr]

CS, can I present an alternative? I think the graphics would have evolved to be more realistic at a faster rate. 480p film footage on DVD looks far better than anything we see on current gen. Take that final fantasy movie - all CGI - if we weren't constantly chasing high resolutions, isn't it perceivable that we would be arriving at a 480p real-time game version of that FF movie much sooner? It would require a world that responds in a more realistic way instead of just being a solid polygon mesh.

Crumbling rocks, cars blasted out of the way in a realistic way, enemies that move in a more intelligent way and learn from your movements making it unique each time.

[capcom_suicide]

CS, can I present an alternative? I think the graphics would have evolved to be more realistic at a faster rate. 480p film footage on DVD looks far better than anything we see on current gen. Take that final fantasy movie - all CGI - if we weren't constantly chasing high resolutions, isn't it perceivable that we would be arriving at a 480p real-time game version of that FF movie much sooner? It would require a world that responds in a more realistic way instead of just being a solid polygon mesh.

You can, but a closer example would be Ryse. Crytek have arguably the best looking next gen game on all platforms, and it?s not 1080p. PC gamers have long had the pleasure of lowering pixels in order to add effects. But it would be very cool if a dev tries DVD quality gaming that looks like CGI.

[EvilBoris]

A couple of people have destructible scenery as being some kind of godlike benchmark that all games need to reach in the next gen, but ultimately a game having that option would fundamentally change the underlying mechanics of the games we play.

It's like adding destructible gameplay into Monopoly, just because they put a rule into the game that allows you to pick up the board and hurl it across the room at will, it doesn't mean the game plays any better for it!

[Asura]

CS, can I present an alternative? I think the graphics would have evolved to be more realistic at a faster rate. 480p film footage on DVD looks far better than anything we see on current gen. Take that final fantasy movie - all CGI - if we weren't constantly chasing high resolutions, isn't it perceivable that we would be arriving at a 480p real-time game version of that FF movie much sooner?

No; it doesn't work like that. The CGI you see in films and the graphics of games are related fields, but they're fundamentally different. Ditto for things like visual simulation, between the kind of effects we see in games and the stuff that is made to produce crumbling skyscrapers for architecture systems and movie effects.

If we were still at 480p, and were satisfied with it, our visuals would look slightly more detailed in a certain respect, but woefully poor in others.

When you draw a scene in a videogame, traditionally, for each pixel, you "sample" once. This means that you perform your drawing process to work out what colour that pixel should be. However, this leads to jaggies, so in reality, often today we "sample" multiple times, and blend the results to give the pixel colour value. Also, each frame onscreen tends to be a still image that represents an instant in time.

"Real" footage works because each "pixel" on the light sensor in the camera (assuming digital film, for simplicity) captures light coming through the camera lens. This is an analog process (up until the sensor reads the data) meaning that the accuracy and number of "samples" is huge. Real footage also isn't captured in "frames", but rather "exposures", which each frame represents a duration, rather than an instance.

To simulate a real camera at 480p in a videogame world, you'd have to render each pixel many, many times (giving you a much higher resolution, in terms of overhead, than even 4k) and then you'd need to do that multiple times and blend together the result per frame. That'd require computing power orders of magnitude higher to get a result like something approaching Gears of War.

Conversely, the methods we currently use to render at HD resolutions, and basically "fake" the other stuff, give a good result without some of these headaches. Never lose sight however that much of it is smoke and mirrors. We're nowhere near rendering and simulating video games to the kind of degree you're suggesting.

So even if we'd stuck with 480p, we'd still be pretty much seeing what we see now - just in lower res.

[capcom_suicide]

That was a fascinating post! Thanks!!! So what should we expect of next gen? Persistent worlds? Slightly better visuals? Anything that will actually feel like a generational leap?

[nakamura]

Apart from the fact increased resolution takes much more processor power?

Regarding destructible scenery, it does change how a game play if used correctly and it should be seen as somewhat godlike especially when people are so obsessed with simulating reality. I have played games like Red Faction and Black and on many occasions taken a route not planned by the game to outwit an enemy. It's satisfying and fun.

[Asura]

Apart from the fact increased resolution takes much more processor power?

I suppose what I was trying to say is that yes, 1080p takes up a lot more processing power than 480p, rendering something like Assassin's Creed IV. However, if you were going to try and render something photorealistic and simulate a real-world camera with real accuracy, even if you output at 480p, the processor power required would be immensely higher.

Regarding destructible scenery, it does change how a game play if used correctly and it should be seen as somewhat godlike especially when people are so obsessed with simulating reality. I have played games like Red Faction and Black and on many occasions taken a route not planned by the game to outwit an enemy. It's satisfying and fun.

I would certainly like to see more games play with the concept; the few I can think of have been very fun at times.

[nakamura]

I don't really understand the tech too much but I would imagine the limits of 480p would be distant detail.
I think think you could make incredible worlds at that resolution.

[Asura]

I don't really understand the tech too much but I would imagine the limits of 480p would be distant detail.
I think think you could make incredible worlds at that resolution.

It's OK, I'm not explaining it so well

It's all to do with what you might call visual information.

Take a 480p aerial photo of New York, and let's pretend we had a videogame render a 480p image of the same scene, people, traffic, everything, using only one sample pass.

Now, take one pixel showing a very distant location, the same location on each image. The two pixels would not be the same. This is because the photo image's pixel is a blend of all of the blurry colours of loads of things that can be seen in that pixel; cars, people, traffic... Whereas the videogame one is an exact colour sample of the very centre of what should be on that pixel.

The photo pixel might be a murky yellow, because the colour comes from blurred light from road, people, building concrete and yellow taxi cabs. The computer pixel might be a very bright yellow, because a taxi cab might have been right in the centre of that pixel.

The photo image's pixel conveys a huge amount of visual information. The computer image conveys only a very small amount.

Does that make more sense?

So even at 480p, you can still convey distant stuff. It might be blurry and out of focus, but then again, your eyes can only see a certain amount of distant detail too.

If you wanted that computer pixel to be the same as the photo image, it'd have to render everything that the photo image renders - all of the crap that is mushed together to make the colour of the photo image pixel - all of the people, cars, road... And you can't even really see all of it! But some element of that visual information is preserved in the pixel colour.

Whereas you could just cheat, and get your computer to try and "guess" based on some clever maths, or blending in some extra colours you just keep handy, because they tend to give the right result. That's the kind of thing we actually do, and that tends to look better in higher res than in 480p.