permutated
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^^^ :lol
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What is "the look" of the next generation?
- Thread starter Chittagong
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^^^ :lol
permutated
Banned
nib95 said:
ROFL.
You so funny.
disappeared
Banned
Sol.. said:
Same here man. With Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Gears 2 being huge graphical showcases, I really don't think we need to make any more visual strides for a while.
I seriously cannot fucking wait until in-game graphics start to look more organic, more smooth like CG, and move away from that shitty, jagged/aliased, low-polygonal textured look.
Pixel shaders so far have not done enough to change the basic polygonal texture-mapped look of realtime graphics.
Pixel shaders so far have not done enough to change the basic polygonal texture-mapped look of realtime graphics.
I would prefer improvements in animation over just technical stuff. Even the best looking games have a long ways to go to overcome stiff animations and rough transitions between animations. Uncharted was supposed to be king here but it still looks a bit unnatural. Sports games are still pretty bad too.
The Wii's GPU was way beyond low end at the time it came out. Nintendo has been very successful with the low tech low cost strategy and I doubt they change that next time around. I would expect a new GPU with performance similar to RSX/Xenos, which should become really cheap tech by 2011/2012.camineet said:
bigmakstudios
Banned
Maybe there will be a lot of games that attempt to emulate Bioshock's "period piece" design.
careful said:
Xenos/RSX are about 1/4th as powerful as RV770. I think a GPU with 1/2 or even as much power as RV770 could be done for Nintendo, still be concidered way underpowered for the time (because we know that has to be a feature of the next Nintendo system), and yet, still offer a significant improvement over Xenos/RSX.
dallow_bg said:
This needs more emphasis. I don't think you guys realize the sheer number of man hours it takes to make a top-tier game now, let alone something that looks substantially better. We've already had to raise the price to a (quite frankly absurd) $60 a pop just to keep pace.
And with regard to the original topic: Yes, we are in an aesthetic rut that seems to be the result of the demands from gamers to have both "realistic" and "mature" games.
abstract alien
Member
Hopefully its not a question of how it looks as with this gen, but rather how it animates. Hopefully animation and interaction systems are taken to a completely new level with the newer systems that are to come, because right now, a lot of what we get as AAA titles looks like its been rehashed from ps1 and n64. The exceptions(such as assassins creed, mirror's edge) are few and far between.
None of this hi-def shit even matters until the animation catches up with it.
None of this hi-def shit even matters until the animation catches up with it.
marvelharvey
Member
Here ya go...aeolist said:
Sadly, photoshop doesn't have a cubist filter
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
I don't understand why people automatically assume that this will be the case. This generation, Nintendo successfully switched the selling focus of their console from being functional to being personal. This allowed them to move into an uncontested market space* where they didn't need bleeding edge technology to stay competitive - they were the only game in town.camineet said:
Next gen, however, both Sony and Microsoft will be copying Nintendo's approach this gen. Mark my words, both the PSquadruple and the Nextbox will hit the market with motion-sensitive controllers and a marketing mix geared towards the casual gamer, effectively taking away Nintendo's current competitive advantage - the very advantage that lets them get away with low-powered hardware.
What will happen over the next few years is entirely unclear. Whether this gen will result in a split market or not will affect what happens next time around. If the market does split cleanly between hardcore gamers/AV enthusiasts and casual gamers, the consoles needn't compete in terms of hardware and can position themselves between the range of low-end console and low-end PC, then I could see the next Nintendo console being underpowered. If it doesn't split cleanly or if a split would not be profitable (as I suspect), then Nintendo would need to up the specs to compete in the same monolithic market.
Also, I suspect the next hardware leap to be either very modest or for this generation to be longer than most. Either one is bound to happen, so don't expect for both a normal generational cycle and the exponential power leap that we saw with the PS3/360 this gen to happen again.
* Which isn't to say that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo aren't competing for the same customers - they clearly are. The thing is that Nintendo addressed a need among these customers for something other than cutting-edge technology when purchasing an entertainment device.
Rlan said:
Those aren't actual in-game gameplay screens are they? Seriously, one of the best art styles and use of colour/imagery I've seen in donkeys.
Could almost pull off being a new ad campaign for Nike trainers or something. Very modern, retro, funky, pop, urban, simplistic, minimalist, slick, fashionable, street, clean cut vibe about it.
rollingstart
Banned
nib95 said:
All in-game. Mirror's Edge is some hot stuff. Video: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/33585.html
Death_Born
Banned
nib95 said:
It's kind of like the Twewy of first-person shooters
viciouskillersquirrel said:
This just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, as far as what you're saying in reply to my post.
Also, the graphical leap we got from PS2/GCN/Xbox1 to 360/PS3 was not really all that huge. It was significant, but smaller than the normal generational leaps we've seen in the past. Certainly not even close to the leap we saw from Saturn/PS1/N64 to PS2/GCN/Xbox1, which was absolutely massive in comparison. This 360/PS3 generation looks like Xbox1 in HD with some more polys, textures, better shaders, better lighting, and somewhat better animation.
Saturn/PS1/N64 to PS2/GCN/Xbox was 2 orders of magnitude improvement
PS2/GCN/Xbox to 360/PS3 was 1 order of magnitude improvement.
With that out of the way, I would be all for Nintendo going with a higher-end chipset (still $250-$300) that is far better than the highest-end of todays PC technology, in much the same way that GameCube was far beyond the highest-end PCs of 1996-1998.
I don't know what the next generation (lets call that 2011-2019) of consoles will offer in terms of hardware power. All we can do is look at todays technology and look at semiconductor roadmaps and guess. This thread is mainly about graphics, not controller/gameplay innovation, so, that's what it's about, graphics.
-Rogue5- said:
T-Buffer, you mean stuff like anti-aliasing and motion blur, introduced in VSA-100 / Voodoo4/5 ?
What about the 'Texture Computer' stuff in the unreleased Rampage that ended up deep inside NV40 / GeForce 6800, which, even after a refresh/upgrade to NV47/G70, is the foundation of PS3 graphics?
No Means Nomad
Banned
Everything from the Quake to Turok to Goldeneye was messy shades of dark green and brown back in the day. The only difference is the rise in popularity and prominence of shooters as a genre withing the industry.
Crayon
Member
On development budgets...
Part of the reason last gen was over too fast is that strides where being made in the technology of game content creation tools. Good things where happening and the problem of producing gigabytes of game world with limited man-hours was coming into focus.
Then NEXT GEN came and there's the big graphics push. Lots of focus goes into the big graphics push and now you are making content for 512 megabyte machines and you've got codehouses who are caught with their pants down with last gen tools for 64 megabyte machines.
If the tools were more mature it wouldn't have been such a financial and logistical kick in the balls to be cranking out 10 times as much animation, texture, and model.
The tools never stop developing. As they mature, the problem of feeding the 4 gigabyte machines of tomorrow will be tackled.
Next Gen could look just like current gen bullshots, but only just.
Bullshots look crazy good because of anti-aliasing. Not that 16x podunk bullshit you get on your dual-sli rig. Oh no. We're talking photo-mode on steroids, pixedust candyland shit. It doesn't just take out jaggies, it actually brings detail out of the scene.
I think if the extra transistors of the future end up somewhere that gave a huge jump in fillrate, we could have games that look just like the bullshots of today... of course... that would likely eat up most of the console's extra performance for the sake of flawless image quality. But then how would you compete marketing-wise with bulshots of games that use their performance budget on new bandwidth intensive new hotness like god knows what color model or compund blurring techniques they dream up.
The real look of next gen.
I think it has to be the animation and camerawork. The most advanced animation tools developed for use on the current gen will likely be constrained by CPU performance. We can see from the Cell that smart engineering will prevail over the spiraling clockspeeds of legacy processors and we can look forward to yet another magnitude increase in processing power.
Drake's intesive animation blending is really just a little preview of what we have to look forward to. In ten year's time, human game characters could animate so fluidly that we will look back at our Gears of Metal and War and jsut laugh.
Part of the reason last gen was over too fast is that strides where being made in the technology of game content creation tools. Good things where happening and the problem of producing gigabytes of game world with limited man-hours was coming into focus.
Then NEXT GEN came and there's the big graphics push. Lots of focus goes into the big graphics push and now you are making content for 512 megabyte machines and you've got codehouses who are caught with their pants down with last gen tools for 64 megabyte machines.
If the tools were more mature it wouldn't have been such a financial and logistical kick in the balls to be cranking out 10 times as much animation, texture, and model.
The tools never stop developing. As they mature, the problem of feeding the 4 gigabyte machines of tomorrow will be tackled.
Next Gen could look just like current gen bullshots, but only just.
Bullshots look crazy good because of anti-aliasing. Not that 16x podunk bullshit you get on your dual-sli rig. Oh no. We're talking photo-mode on steroids, pixedust candyland shit. It doesn't just take out jaggies, it actually brings detail out of the scene.
I think if the extra transistors of the future end up somewhere that gave a huge jump in fillrate, we could have games that look just like the bullshots of today... of course... that would likely eat up most of the console's extra performance for the sake of flawless image quality. But then how would you compete marketing-wise with bulshots of games that use their performance budget on new bandwidth intensive new hotness like god knows what color model or compund blurring techniques they dream up.
The real look of next gen.
I think it has to be the animation and camerawork. The most advanced animation tools developed for use on the current gen will likely be constrained by CPU performance. We can see from the Cell that smart engineering will prevail over the spiraling clockspeeds of legacy processors and we can look forward to yet another magnitude increase in processing power.
Drake's intesive animation blending is really just a little preview of what we have to look forward to. In ten year's time, human game characters could animate so fluidly that we will look back at our Gears of Metal and War and jsut laugh.
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
I was responding to your comment about Nintendo's next console being graphically underpowered. I was essentially saying that there are very good reasons for this to not be the case.camineet said:
The reasons are business related (competitive advantage, marketing mix and all that). Because of Nintendo's advantages in other areas, they were able to forgo the tech race this time around. Since those advantages will disappear next gen, they might not be able to do that next gen.
Also, my comment about the next leap not being so huge, I simply refer to the fact that both Sony and Microsoft are likely to be gun-shy about using such expensive tech in their next consoles given what happened to them this gen. I predict that the leap will be more conservative, because they won't be prepared to spend as much. I do admit though, that the technological leap as compared to cost may not have a straight-forward relationship.
time to whine & complain a little.
Bullshots don't impress me much.
True pre-rendered/offline CG impresses me, but then, that's why it's CG.
That said, if next-gen is only gonna look like bullshots, why bother?
Why bother investing many hundreds of millions of dollars if not a couple billion, into next-gen chipsets, and another round of $400-$600 consoles for an even smaller improvement over this gen? fuck that. I hope that's not how things will be.
I'd much prefer to have games in 480p resolution with visuals that are smooth, dynamic and CG-ish like.
HD resolutions really fucked this generation of consoles. 360/PS3 got GPUs that were barely adaqute for HD. producing HD graphics for 512 MB consoles costs so much, and yet, the actual graphical improvement we got was just, while noticable, was not impressive IMO. HD resolution was the biggest improvement, that's very noticable, but doesn't impress me because the graphics are too similar to Xbox1. This current-gen has actually gone backwards as far as framerates.
The other big improvement was the CPUs, we got a very large leap in CPU power, but that doesn't help much for pushing better graphics to the screen. current-gen CPUs, even CELL, still don't do anything special for graphics. They can only help with the front-end of the rendering pipeline, as far as I understand. Not the back-end, which is pretty much 100% upto Xenos/RSX, and they are both somewhat weak in that area, relative to the CPU increase and resolution increase. Not enough polygons setup and pushed to the screen, not enough AA, too few frames per second. Microsoft and Sony both aimed too low with the GPUs they went with, IMO. Somewhat 'less CPU' and somewhat 'more GPU' would've been nice. This gen would've been more impressive if we'd gotten Shader Model 4 GPUs with more ROPs, and fatter bus/more bandwidth. Crysis is more or less what I had in mind for this current-gen back in 2001-2004, after the last-gen was underway, but before the capabilities of current-gen were revealed.
/ramble
Bullshots don't impress me much.
True pre-rendered/offline CG impresses me, but then, that's why it's CG.
That said, if next-gen is only gonna look like bullshots, why bother?
Why bother investing many hundreds of millions of dollars if not a couple billion, into next-gen chipsets, and another round of $400-$600 consoles for an even smaller improvement over this gen? fuck that. I hope that's not how things will be.
I'd much prefer to have games in 480p resolution with visuals that are smooth, dynamic and CG-ish like.
HD resolutions really fucked this generation of consoles. 360/PS3 got GPUs that were barely adaqute for HD. producing HD graphics for 512 MB consoles costs so much, and yet, the actual graphical improvement we got was just, while noticable, was not impressive IMO. HD resolution was the biggest improvement, that's very noticable, but doesn't impress me because the graphics are too similar to Xbox1. This current-gen has actually gone backwards as far as framerates.
The other big improvement was the CPUs, we got a very large leap in CPU power, but that doesn't help much for pushing better graphics to the screen. current-gen CPUs, even CELL, still don't do anything special for graphics. They can only help with the front-end of the rendering pipeline, as far as I understand. Not the back-end, which is pretty much 100% upto Xenos/RSX, and they are both somewhat weak in that area, relative to the CPU increase and resolution increase. Not enough polygons setup and pushed to the screen, not enough AA, too few frames per second. Microsoft and Sony both aimed too low with the GPUs they went with, IMO. Somewhat 'less CPU' and somewhat 'more GPU' would've been nice. This gen would've been more impressive if we'd gotten Shader Model 4 GPUs with more ROPs, and fatter bus/more bandwidth. Crysis is more or less what I had in mind for this current-gen back in 2001-2004, after the last-gen was underway, but before the capabilities of current-gen were revealed.
/ramble
nintendo likes to err on the side of BIG FAT FUCKING PROFIT MARGINS AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL ELSE -- think n64 cartridges as much as gamecube turbo. and right now they've got to feel like they can do no wrong. unless this generation takes a drastic turn which makes it very clear that good hardware is back in style, i'm pretty sure nintendo's next console will be implausibly underpowered. i'm sure they could adapt respectable low-end pc hardware for their purposes -- but they could have done that with wii too
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