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[kyser73]

For human animation I go back a long way to games like Karateka, Impossible Mission & the Epyx Games series on the C64.

For static landscapes, there were a ton of great looking games using bitmap backgrounds like Defender Of The Crown, back in the Amiga/ST days.

Since then the GT series has been pretty consistent in delivering stuff that feels real - I remember watching the intro sequence on GT and being amazed at watching the suspension compression, body roll & so on that looked like an actual car in motion.

I guess I've wandered off the real point of the OT at this point tho...I think for me movement & animation are what have always bought the 'real' part of photorealistic graphics in games.

 

[Skitso78]

double post sorry

 

[luka]

rtcw was nuts. max payne had digitized faces and textures a few months earlier, but rtcw blew it away with characters that could actually blink and move their mouths

i've been playing games since the mid 80s and i've certainly been impressed by a ton of things, often wondering how they would ever be surpassed, but i think rtcw was the first time i ever considered anything to be truly life-like

 

[Skitso78]

The first Dead Rising was amazingly photo realistic when it was released 11 years ago.

 

[mrklaw]

GT3 is a good shout.

It wasn't the backgrounds or anything like that - but the cars looked ridiculously good.

The dust in the rally stages were godlike.

It was a huge leap over everything at the time.

I think it was the 'golden hour' lighting too. I think they did a lot of that and it really helped bring the environments to life.

 

[supernormal]

First 100 hours of Gran Turismo 3, I was sure a game could NEVER look any better:

Came here to post this. Graphics were done for me at that point. In my memory that game looks absolutely real. I don't think I've ever felt the same about a game's graphics since then.

 

[Hidden One]

Does Uncharted 2 count? It was the first game I actually thought "holy fuck" when I saw it.

 

[Swimmer9800]

Call of duty 4 floored me

 

[PlayALLtheGames]

Not sure if Daedalus Encounter counts (had it for Amiga in mid-90's) as it was a lot of actual live capture (or whatever it's called) but there were some impressive digital assets that made it feel like Tia Carrera, god bless her, was really in an alien world. Video: https://youtu.be/8ZW4nRC4LPY?t=280

Half Life 2. Was lucky enough to run it at max settings when I first got it. Shit was tight.

Madden 06 I think it was for Xbox 360. I brought it over to a buddy's house and at one point we were playing and I paused it during a replay and the football happened to be really, really close to the camera and we absolutely freaked out because you could see the texture of the football, with individual bumps, so clearly. In fact I'll always remember it because one of my friends stood up and said, "Yo! That shit looks real! I'm kind of freaking out right now!" We were drunk too, but still...

 

[Gunslinger]

If you are talking about photo-realistic graphics MK 1,2,3 still looks great I think.

 

[Synth]

Metropolis Street Racer blew me away

This is what came to mind for me. I remember the print ads for the game were even placing shots from the game side-by-side with photos of the real world locations.

Gran Turismo for PS1 blew my mind when it came out. It was the first home console game that I honestly felt beat what you saw in the arcades at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLZbBvrqcQA

So... we remember that Virtua Fighter 3 and Scud Race hit the arcades over a year before GT hit the PS1, right?

 

[Man God]

Aged well....?

SH 3 still has better faces than any game released today. It was made with eldritch sorcery.

 

[Synth]

SH 3 still has better faces than any game released today.

Let's not get carried away now.

 

[dlauv]

Road Rash for Windows 95. I think the 3DO had similar graphics, but I'm not sure.

 

[potatohead]

Mafia 1

 

[batfax]

My most standout experience with graphics early on in gaming is Journeyman Project.

A glimpse into the future from 1993.

 

[Man God]

Let's not get carried away now.

I'm not. Those people look real in a way that no other game before or since has matched. I don't even like SH 3 very much but I watched a good friend play it top to bottom twice because I was enraptured by the faces.

 

[bosseye]

Can't get images to work on my phone (I know), but imagine there is a picture of Rise of the Robots on Megadrive here. I mean the game was awful, but the graphics honestly blew me away. That shiny man robot thing! Wowsa.

 

[Head.spawn]

 

[SillyEskimo]

Myst!

 

[Synth]

I'm not. Those people look real in a way that no other game before or since has matched. I don't even like SH 3 very much but I watched a good friend play it top to bottom twice because I was enraptured by the faces.

Well, I mean... I can believe you're being sincere... but I honestly can't see how anyone can look at Silent Hill 3 against a lot of the stuff that we have these days, and be of the opinion that SH3 has better faces either in regards to the modelling itself or the animations, than current games. When the faces in SH3 move, I can practically see the limited bones they have at their disposal in order to move their eyes and lips (with pretty much everything else being as rigid as wood).

Like, really?

 

[Dimmona]

Links 386 was the first VGA game I ever saw, and its glorious 256 colors blew my young mind

 

[malboroking]

Is that Seattle?

I played so damn much GT3. That and MGS2 blew my mind.

Edit: Found it.

Nice, King Street Station with Columbia Tower in the background. I can even see the Bank of America tower that I used to work at. Can't remember if they modeled the King dome though it would have been gone in 2001.

Why did they take the Seattle track out of GT? I loved that track.

 

[Dremorak]

So I'm blown away by the graphics in the new Far Cry. I feel like we've crossed some kind of threshold where humans and nature can finally be fully depicted without looking unnatural
[/QUOTE=RoombaDance;238233021]

You didn't think those trailers with the 3 characters was ingame right?

 

[akira28]

lol came here for pitfighter.

 

[Gitaroo]

Well, I mean... I can believe you're being sincere... but I honestly can't see how anyone can look at Silent Hill 3 against a lot of the stuff that we have these days, and be of the opinion that SH3 has better faces either in regards to the modelling itself or the animations, than current games. When the faces in SH3 move, I can practically see the limited bones they have at their disposal in order to move their eyes and lips (with pretty much everything else being as rigid as wood).

Like, really?

why people keep posting Ryse gif when most cut scenes are pre recorded videos. Play the damn pc version, video compression give away all pre recorded cut scenes.

 

[NinjaCatfish]

First 100 hours of Gran Turismo 3, I was sure a game could NEVER look any better:

There was a specific TV advertisement for GT 3 that I thought was literally just real life. Until some game element appeared on screen (I think not was a 'wrong way' indicator maybe?) I honestly thought it was video. GT3 blew me away.

 

[Nostremitus]

Gotta agree with some others on here, MDK blew my mind. Played it on PC.

 

[mr lurtle]

I remember how they compared Screenshots to real photos of STALKER in some magazine years before release and couldn't see a difference.
Also in my mind Fight Night Round 3 looks still as realistic as it could get, though I haven't seen it in years.

 

[opricnik]

Driver 2 on PS1

Felt like reality. While GTA 2 looked like below.

Also
World scariest police chases on PS1

 

[Synth]

why people keep posting Ryse gif when most cut scenes are pre recorded videos. Play the damn pc version, video compression give away all pre recorded cut scenes.

I ran off to grab a quick gif to illustrate with. Honestly, it could be substituted for a whole bunch of current-gen games, or even last-gen examples like Halo 4. The limitations for SH3's models and animations are super clear, but fine, I'll substitute Ryse out.

I mean... I wouldn't even compare any of the facial animations in SH3's cutscenes to what Ryse does during actual gameplay.

 

[bomma_man]

I remember thinking this was amazing back in the day

The ps2 GTAs never looked good

 

[SilverArrow20XX]

I remember that the first time I was truly impressed by a games graphics was when I saw a cutscene in Cyberia. 1994. I dreamed of a day when gameplay would look as amazing as that cutscene.

The company behind that game later made Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and even later merged with Treyarch to work on COD.

lol. I can still hear the cutscene in my head.
"Turn around, nice and slow, and disarm the weapon."

First game I ever played that had voice acting. Blew me away. I never did beat it. I got sick of freezing to death while not knowing where to go. It's the only remaining game I had as a child that I still haven't completed now that I think about it.

 

[Booya_base]

Metropolis Street Racer blew me away

Yeah, this one for me too. I have one really specific one where just the banana on the table in Micro Machines V3 looked super real and everything else didn't (by design) it was crazy impressive at the time. Now it's just funny

 

[nekkid]

Going from racing games in the previous gens, playing PGR3 blew my mind and that was the last time I was so impressed about a games graphics that I even showed people pictures of it on my phone and compared it to real life... god, I was such a fucking dork.

Yeah PGR3 was a massive step up in racing game graphics.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

To nine year old me, Track & Field II looked photorealistic...

 

[Huge Succeeded]

I'm not. Those people look real in a way that no other game before or since has matched. I don't even like SH 3 very much but I watched a good friend play it top to bottom twice because I was enraptured by the faces.

you might wanna check out Yakuza 0 or like two dozen other games

 

[Qronicle]

I gotta echo the Gran Turismo responses. I had played some other racegames, mostly F1, but when this came out it just blew me (and my cousins, who owned the playstation) away. This was photo realism, right?

But then came GT3 along. To this day, I think it's one of the best looking games ever. The reflections, the dust, the cars, the wet shader at night, the way the cars moved, ... it all looked so real.
I'd say the PS3 and now PS4 Gran Turismo's give away more that they're games because of imperfections caused by things like poor shadows, low-res aplha textures, aliasing problems around doors etc.

 

[Erevador]

Riven

 

[petran79]

In 1996 Bad Mojo did something interesting, scanning and digitizing actual locations, items, insects and animals in 640x480 resolution. Most photorealistic game of the decade

 

[Hilarion]

Do cutscenes count? If so, Final Fantasy VIII is pretty stunning for a game approaching its 20th birthday.

 

[KOHIPEET]

GT3. That game blew my mind.

Anyone remembering this?

Golden age of gaming.

 

[Qronicle]

GT3. That game blew my mind.

Anyone remembering this?

Golden age of gaming.

Feeder, Vipers and glorious heat haze effects. What more could teenage me need

 

[supernormal]

I gotta echo the Gran Turismo responses. I had played some other racegames, mostly F1, but when this came out it just blew me (and my cousins, who owned the playstation) away. This was photo realism, right?

But then came GT3 along. To this day, I think it's one of the best looking games ever. The reflections, the dust, the cars, the wet shader at night, the way the cars moved, ... it all looked so real.
I'd say the PS3 and now PS4 Gran Turismo's give away more that they're games because of imperfections caused by things like poor shadows, low-res aplha textures, aliasing problems around doors etc.

For some reason it feels like the games are extremely polish in one area at the expense of looking really poor in another. GT3 as I remember was extremely consistent and had none of these jarring elements. The only sort of give away that I remember the game having back then was that on headlight close ups you could tell they were 2D textures instead of being modeled.

 

[pottuvoi]

Can hardly tell it's a game.

Great game as well.

 

[Bancho]

Fight Night Round 3 was a big leap IMHO.

 

[MTC100]

I just realized that there are games nowadays that look better than this photograph xD

(google should really up the res of their streetview)

 

[uceenk]

final fantasy viii (cutscene)
crysis

 

[ShadowFox08]

The first one was mortal kombat..

The one that wow'd me the most back in the day though is.. Donkey Kong Country.

holds up amazing to this day. The SNES had a lot of games using photorealistic graphics, notably platformers.

 

[anothertech]

pit fighter