Graphics not improving much over the years...

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insideline

insideline

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I feel like over the past 10 or so years graphics in gaming haven't really evolved much, it's all gone a bit static.

When Crysis first came out in 2006 or whenever it was I felt that in 10 or so years time graphics would be jaw droppingly amazing but in truth they haven't really improved THAT much in those 10 years. A modded Crysis still looks like one of the best games ever made, and it's over a decade old...

I feel like we should be at a stage where even the worst graphics in gaming should be of the standard of games like BF1, Crysis 3 etc. Maybe I'm just expecting too much.

So whats the reason ? consoles with fixed hardware limiting devs ? a general feeling of satisfaction that graphics are good enough and don't need to be pushed to the next level ? Technology not improving at a fast enough rate ?

Genuinely not seen a game in many years that has left my jaw open going 'omg, this is the next level' in terms of visuals.

I know people will say its all about gameplay but this threads for the graphics whores.
 
Money.

As nice as amazing graphics are inevitably they'll lock off part of a potential user base. Not only could they lose money by increasing system requirements but it would cost them a lot more in terms of development.

Makes more sense to spend loads of money on a flashy trailer looking amazing than the actual game itself - looking at you Ubi.
 
I was thinking the same thing the other day. It's as though they have plateaued, yet system requirements have gone up.
 
If you look at a game from 2007 such as CoD Modern Warfare and compare it to something from today like Battlefield 1, there's a massive change. There are some exceptions like Crysis 1 still looking pretty good but overall there has been a large upgrade.

the 2007 Need For Speed compared to the 2016 Need For Speed and all EA sports games show the difference too.
 
you have to remember games have to sell and to sell well they have to run on most systems well.so straight off the bat you will not generally have games at the very full they probably could do.if they just wanted to run the very best looking they could possibly do.
 
You could make the argument that graphics these days are enough to be more than functional and can look great, but why are we still seeing poor games being made? I would rather stop development of graphics today and push towards game design.
 
smeaney said:
You could make the argument that graphics these days are enough to be more than functional and can look great, but why are we still seeing poor games being made? I would rather stop development of graphics today and push towards game design.
Click to expand...

Again, money :p
 
Plus whilst not really impacting upon triple A games there's been more of a shift towards the retro 8 and 16bit graphical style. If anything there's probably been more of an advance in the quality of that area of graphics.
 
Sargatanas2511 said:
If you look at a game from 2007 such as CoD Modern Warfare and compare it to something from today like Battlefield 1, there's a massive change. There are some exceptions like Crysis 1 still looking pretty good but overall there has been a large upgrade.

the 2007 Need For Speed compared to the 2016 Need For Speed and all EA sports games show the difference too.
Click to expand...


^^^^ This.
 
Nothing could run crysis with everything maxed on release though and sure it looked great but it wasn't that amazing (I remember the graphics on goldeneye being special.... not 4 different coloured blocks!)

Take something like wildlands or the division, the size of the area you can see and the level of detail - add in the fact it runs extremely well - i'd call it progress. (They are not the best looking games ever, just an example of ones that look good and run well)
 
I think before, we would have increases in resolution / texture sizes, and more triangles to make models look less pixelated, and those increases would have a direct, measurable, increase in the graphics of a game.

Now though. The resolution, textures and models are pretty much good enough, and we now we have to improve things like shadows, grass blowing in the wind, hair moving as we walk which isn't a case of just throwing more pixels at the problem, its developing complex algorithms to be run in real time to replicate the real world.

To be honest, I just made all this up, but it seams about right to me lol.
 
Comparing other games to Crysis is not really fair because Crysis was about 5 years ahead of everyone else :)

Other games from 2007 looked much worse.

Today, there are games that look absolutely stunning - AC Unity, Battlefront, Uncharted 4, Order 1886, Witcher 3, Hellblade...all these are significantly ahead to the point that they look like CGI movies at times.

But it is true that we are not seeing nearly the same jumps we saw back in Quake 1,2,3 days, simply due to multiplatform development and games being tied to platforms that last 5-8 years at a time.
 
Quite a big jump from good looking graphics to convincing "photorealistic" visuals as well which can be a bit of a problem - can have all the high res textures and advanced shaders in the world and still not make it look "photorealistic" or "next gen" if you don't have the art approach nailed down as well.
 
It's also worth mentioning that the rate of improvement in the late 90s and early 2000s was so fast because we were starting so slow. We would be doubling core speeds every year which is a big relative improvement resulting in doubling your polygon count (say 1,000 to 2,000) which gives much "improved" graphics. Today you might see an increase of several million polygons in one year but when you already have 15 million, it isn't as noticeable.

Think of drawing a circle digitally. A circle rendered with 8 sides increasing to 16 sides will give a massive improvement with kale an increase of 8 sides. Increasing from 1000 sides to 1500 sides Might not be noticeable but is a much bigger increase and requires many times more powerful hardware.
 
The current consoles were underwhelming when they were released and they dictate how the majority of multiplatofrm games are going to look for their 6 year cycle. The fact they are releasing slightly beefed up version half way through shows how rubbish they were to begin with. Once the 'next next gen' consoles are released we might start to see some improvements.
 
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