Is computer evolution slower then ever?

[Keops/Equinox]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

no, it's not.
Smoke is still dull billboard sprites in vast majority of cases, because our hardware are still not enough powerful to do real-time fluids sims, and real-time fluid sims are not yet researched enough in software terms.

Far Cry 6 has real fluid simulation for some of its particle effects.
Current games in development also use things like flowmaps on particles that are being rendered, to give better looking results than just consecutive puffs of smoke.
And again, most games nowadays have per pixel lit/shadowed particles, which was not the case 10 years ago (when they were just dull sprites).
You can also read about ID's lighting atlas tech for particles, it allows them to have amazing results on particles at 60 fps

Look at those particle effects at 1:35, it's a new world compared to Skyrim, I can assure you they are not just dull sprites / billboards:
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If you did not get a chance, try Red Dead Redemption 2, the volumetric fog and the volumetric clouds are stunning and are lightyears away from the simple textured skydomes we had for clouds 10 years ago (see at 5:30)
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Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

No, it's not.
Bioshock from 2005. Can still teach a lesson of proper lighting and mood to many modern games. Besides, realtime gi is visually not much difference, in comparison with baked lightning.
It's maybe even worse, because it still can't catch up with details of prebaked lightning.

You are talking about a game that's 100% in interior with no dynamic time of day.
As you as you work on a game with dynamic time of day, sun light and exteriors + interiors, it's whole new world of visual problems, the complexity reaches new levels, including how you treat exposure variations to make sure the game remains always fully playable during inside-outside transitions etc.
Bioshock was beautiful indeed, but its setup was very constrained and did not had to deal with those issues.

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

10 years a go, you also had SSD's, and they weren't very rare.

Consoles did not have SSDs 10 years ago. The speed of the PS5's SSD is 50x-100x that of the PS4, that's a significant breakthrough and will finally allow game designers to not have to deal with streaming constraints, which usually impacts a lot the way they design games


Finally, go read the tech presentations from the people who made the Nanite tech and the Lumen tech at Epic for Unreal 5, it's really something compared to what we could do 10 years ago.

[dreadnought]

Bioshock had great mood, setting, gfx, but in regard to gameplay it was not only not advanced but already derivative compared to its predecessors such as System Shock or Thief. Deus Ex is another case in point. ~20 years after the groundbreaking original they could only come up with more of the same.

And don't even start me off on GTA.

[Foebane]

What about Doom 3? I have been THE biggest fan and proponent of id Tech 4 ever since it came out, and I would say it's never been surpassed, even by future id Techs (not even its immediate successor, which sucked balls).

The original Bioshock came closest to id Tech 4 and was more colourful, but to be honest, it was just a souped-up Unreal Engine 2 game with LOADS of modifications. Hell, even Bioshock 2 with Unreal Engine 3 somehow looked INFERIOR.

[roondar]

I think when it comes to graphics we're just seeing diminishing returns happening. The new systems and new technologies are very much real and they do still add to the visual look, but the difference between a game from now and a comparable one from 10 years ago is notably smaller than it was the 10 years before (etc).

Example of what I mean: real time raytracing is a very nice technology, but in reality it seems to mostly lead to games that look a bit better. Of course, they actually do a lot more and if you look closely and understand the tech it's very impressive still. But the impact on looks is a lot smaller than you might think for such a big step in rendering technology.

[Foebane]

I haven't been impressed with RT raytracing at all, to be honest. I mean, the Quake 2 RTX port was interesting, but there were tons of issues with it, like lots of noise in the image unless filtered, and why did they attempt normal mapping on textures that weren't designed for it, so they ended up looking flat and vague no matter what? Why didn't they just leave the textures the way they appeared on original Quake 2?

[Havie]

And if you are playing a fast action game is ray tracing a significant or important improvement over light mapping techniques?

GT with environment mapping on a PS1 was amazing and technological leap - real time ray tracing is good but it may be a technological leap akin to environment mapping(?) but qualitatively does it improve the game?

PS4 v PS5 slightly prettier but is it a better game?

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[roondar]

Well, like I said - there's diminishing returns involved. From an objective standard the abilities are still increasing (some even quite quickly), but from a user position you're just seeing less and less of it.

It's the same with processor speeds. My new PC has a processor that is so much faster than my old one, but for most tasks the thing I notice most of all is the faster drives (NVME SSD vs HDD & SATA SSD) - not the faster processor. Though for the few tasks where I do notice it's pretty cool to see a 4x+ speed improvement.

[Havie]

Yes - does depend on what you do. Having a son who does a lot of rendering and movie making then I feel that a faster CPU would be a benefit but for browsing, Word and gaming (not an obsessed gamer) then a faster CPU will make no obvious difference.

I doubled the ram from 8gb to 16gb and I think it helps a bit with the movie/rendering stuff but again, no difference day to day.

In fact I am typing this on an i7 laptop from about 8 years ago that still works perfect well for all day to day tasks (and runs WinUAE very well for programming). Even managed to get it to run Fall Guys last summer (lowest settings to be fair).

Long gone are the days of having to get the fatest, bestest stuff...apart from a V1200 which really flies!

[dreadnought]

Ray tracing can be very impressive but it's still in its kindergarten phase. I've spent last few months testing it extensively and the only 2 games which use it to some significant extent are Control and Cyberpunk 2077. I do believe it did make a big difference in CP, but it has to be seen live, since it's very difficult to capture in screenshots or even on video.

Cyberpunk overall is quite next-gen when it comes to gfx, there are some jaw-dropping moments, but not totally across the board, there are also areas wher you can see lower quality assets - especially outdoors.

The biggest problem hampering real gfx progress is the rabbit hole of chasing higher resolutions - we can't even run games in 4K properly yet, and there is already talk about 8K. This has huge impact on game performance while the difference in actual quality is not that big. I'd definitely much rather have more polygons in 1440p than super sharp 4K, which is mostly underutilised anyway since stuff just gets upscaled.

[bni]

Its faster than ever.

Examples of things that happened since 2010:

Ray-Tracing mixed seamlessly with rasterization.
VR headsets that actually works (head tracking, graphics engines).
x86-64 starting to become obsolete, finally.
Hyper-scale cloud providers.
ML image upscaling.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

The biggest problem hampering real gfx progress is the rabbit hole of chasing higher resolutions - we can't even run games in 4K properly yet, and there is already talk about 8K.

(ohforgod'ssake)

Why this constant push for high HD? I'd rather have blisteringly fast games in 1080p MAX than push it any further than that! I've never understood the reasoning behind this. Is it immersion? You could achieve that on an old SD classic movie on a CRT with no problems, before Blu-ray steamrollered everything!

Some people can't even see the difference. My Doctor of Science father claims there is no difference between SD and HD, and so does a family friend of ours who is 18 years my junior. My sister was the same way, until they got hold of a player and she could see the difference for herself.

But the really good point my father made is that on the one hand, consumers are clamouring for higher and higher HD, and yet also clamour for small screens in the form of smartphones and tablets! It's like they can't make up their minds! At the very least, does anyone see an 8K smartphone screen popping up anytime soon? What would be the fucking point???

[AJCopland]

The real answer is No but it's getting harder to tell.

You remember the jumps, like phase transitions. Going from vector displays to 2D sprites with a few colours, then more colours/sprites/effects, then early wireframe 3D blows your mind, then filled 3D with texturing, then hardware accelerated 3D and video from CD!!! OMG!

But once you've reached a level of fidelity it gets really hard to see the difference. The engine I'm working on right now (for my job, not hobby) can use ray tracing for shadows, global illumination and a bunch of other effects. Or it can fallback to a software solution, or you can turn it off entirely and use shadow mapping etc...

...thing is, yeah you can tell, but it's like a change in the shading of something, that thing is still there being drawn and honestly... even when I can tell, I still don't care.

There's not a lot of mind blowing changes, there's some really hardcore and amazing tech, astonishingly complex maths, and deeply involved artwork etc. But it's going on rendering more realistic shrubbery.

So everyone's pushing this amazing tech and raving about how great the game is gonna look. But the previous game I worked on was Fall Guys which featured far more cartoony graphics, and was a huge hit from a small team.

I think the graphics matters less and people could be focussing more on the gameplay. Most of the graphics things that make me go "wow" these days aren't because of the neat rendering effects but more the composition or the fantastical nature. Those don't need to be highly technical, or ray traced, etc.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by AJCopland

So everyone's pushing this amazing tech and raving about how great the game is gonna look. But the previous game I worked on was Fall Guys which featured far more cartoony graphics, and was a huge hit from a small team.

Yeah, because it has amazing, innovative gameplay. This is why so many indie games succeed: they don't have budgets to try and turn their games into movies, so they concentrate on what's really important in games.

[AJCopland]

Yeah I agree, the other big hit of 2020 "Among Us", 2D and hand drawn
Or take "Untitled Goose Game", 4 people made it, very simple looking.

I'm really glad that there's a lot more space for Indies to succeed these days.

[freehand]

The last WOW factor for me entering VR for the first time in 2017.

I have always liked flight sims so when I first sat inside an A10 in dcs world on the nvada map at night parked up I thought I had reached heaven.

[Havie]

Just diving into the ocean on a PS4 did it for me and even a family member was so impressed, they had to have one too. A long way away fron the Amiga based virtuality VR in th 90s.

[aeberbach]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Bioshock from 2005.

Hell yeah. And if anyone ever asks me "what is art direction?" I'll have them play Bioshock.

[lmimmfn]

Lots of arguments that resolution doesnt matter and no progress.
I play on a 38" VA 3440x1440 ultrawide gsync panel capable of 120Hz but i play with 100Hz as i dont like overdrive and by god does it and progress matter.
Playing with ultra smooth upto 100FPS for me along with ultrawide is a game changer, unless youve seen it though you wont be a believer.
Im running an old 1080Ti with it so not doing the epeen thing

[roondar]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

Lots of arguments that resolution doesnt matter and no progress.
I play on a 38" VA 3440x1440 ultrawide gsync panel capable of 120Hz but i play with 100Hz as i dont like overdrive and by god does it and progress matter.
Playing with ultra smooth upto 100FPS for me along with ultrawide is a game changer, unless youve seen it though you wont be a believer.
Im running an old 1080Ti with it so not doing the epeen thing

I'm rather happy that PC's offer so much choice in this regards. I know several people with an ultrawide monitor and have seen them in action, but they're definitely not for me. Thankfully, this is not a problem at all because modern PC's allow you to customize pretty much everything about the display. So I can keep using my 16:9 monitor and you can use your ultrawide one (21:9?) and we'll both have fun

That said, I do like the 100Hz+ refresh rate of my current monitor. Not that I really notice it for most things, but when I do it's certainly nice!

[Anubis]

Either computers are getting faster (it is not just speed of processor alone) or we are aging and getting slower, or perhaps combination of those 2 things.

Games are just getting more complex, more detailed and more cinematics, with here and there some Indi game flipping it all around...