How graphics have changed in the past 25 years

the-void · 17 Feb 2007 at 22:29

http://gamasutra.com/features/20070216/fleming_07.shtml

Taken from the history of EA. I remember that someone on the Rose Tinted Glasses thread told me that I would be dreaming or they would be in a wheelchair by the time you get "pulp fiction with same type of graphics of the real film". Well judging where we are now, I would say within 5 - 7 years.

SimonTW · 17 Feb 2007 at 22:43

Shows how things have changed a lot, but I think it should have showed more of the in between games. Perhaps made it a bit longer and not make such large jumps. A gradual change would be nice to see.

skullman · 17 Feb 2007 at 22:55

the-void said:
"pulp fiction with same type of graphics of the real film"

I take it you mean graphics that are so realistic they are indistinguishable from real life? I think it will be a bit longer than 5-7 years before that happens - certainly at a consumer level anyway.

the-void · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:06

skullman said:
I take it you mean graphics that are so realistic they are indistinguishable from real life? I think it will be a bit longer than 5-7 years before that happens - certainly at a consumer level anyway.

Really? I think 5-7 years about right. By that point you will be lucking an multiple's of CPU and GPU cores, and about the right time for software companies to actually harness all the parallel processing power. Just think how powerful a graphics card is today compared to 5 years ago. Now fast forward 5 years. Done that? Good, then multiple that power by how ever many cores the GPU has.

Sherbs · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:07

Some of those screenshots are pre-rendered graphics (videos), and don't count in my opinion.

the-void · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:12

SherberT* said:
Some of those screenshots are pre-rendered graphics (videos), and don't count in my opinion.

Point taken. The article is entirely about EA games and is really an illustration on how far they have come. I have no doubt that you could substitute your own games to make your own visual time line that highlights the change in graphic quality more succinctly.

skullman · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:14

the-void said:
Really? I think 5-7 years about right. By that point you will be lucking an multiple's of CPU and GPU cores, and about the right time for software companies to actually harness all the parallel processing power. Just think how powerful a graphics card is today compared to 5 years ago. Now fast forward 5 years. Done that? Good, then multiple that power by how ever many cores the GPU has.

Yes in 5 years or so hardware will have advanced and gfx will look better but they still wont look as good as a live action film lol. I'd be surprised if DX10 wasnt still supported in 5 years.

dun · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:20

5-7 years for indistinguishable real life graphics? Not a chance. It will be a lot better than today but not life like.

the-void · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:32

dun said:
5-7 years for indistinguishable real life graphics? Not a chance. It will be a lot better than today but not life like.

Ok then, 10 years max...

skullman · 17 Feb 2007 at 23:46

the-void said:
Ok then, 10 years max...

..and the rest

imo, it wont ever happen - not in our lifetime anyway. I reckon 10 years (give or take) you might see the quality of real-time visuals on a home computer that rival the kind of stuff you see in cgi feature films of present times, and thats being optimistic.

Vulcan · 18 Feb 2007 at 00:05

Surely it will take a very long time to produce/develope games with real life graphics in them?

agnes · 18 Feb 2007 at 00:38

Longbow said:
Surely it will take a very long time to produce/develope games with real life graphics in them?

not rele, its the engines behind the games that take years to develop, once a engine has been developed (take the quake engine for example) it is used in many games until a better engine comes out. all that has to be done by the game developers is the design, gameplay, and all the looks and stuff.

the engine is what makes the generation of games.

i think.... ags

the-void · 18 Feb 2007 at 01:21

skullman said:
..and the rest

imo, it wont ever happen - not in our lifetime anyway. I reckon 10 years (give or take) you might see the quality of real-time visuals on a home computer that rival the kind of stuff you see in cgi feature films of present times, and thats being optimistic.

No doubt this was said by atari 2600 owners about 3d graphics with millions of colours at HD resolutions on flat panel monitors updated at over 100fps with millions of polygons.... Long live the sprite...

carlazai · 18 Feb 2007 at 01:36

hehe reminds me of a stoned moment playing GT3 with mates about 4 years ago

me: "wont be long till all these graphics are photographed in"

friend (comp student): "dont be so stupid, life like gfx are 10 years away"

Goes to show we havnt really progressed very far since then, gfx are no where near what anyone could lifelike, its still far off in the future

Unless you count that rebel strike PC-CD game of 14years ago

gord · 18 Feb 2007 at 01:57

the-void said:
Ok then, 10 years max...

There was an article about the Unreal 3.0 engine in PcZone quite a while ago now, and the Epic guys all sat down at a meeting and extrapolated how long they thought it would take to get life-like graphics. I think they concluded that in about 20 years we will have the graphical power, but ultimately if you want a fully life-like experience with still just a monitor your looking at 50 years until the combined processing power is available. A lot of speculation.. but who knows what will happen in the next 50 years..

HangTime · 18 Feb 2007 at 09:10

the-void said:
Just think how powerful a graphics card is today compared to 5 years ago. Now fast forward 5 years. Done that? Good, then multiple that power by how ever many cores the GPU has.

Graphics cards are indeed vastly more powerful today than they were 5 years ago (geforce 8 compared to geforce 4). However, the improvement in graphics we have seen over that time isn't even remotely proportional to the increase in power.

As hardware gets more and more powerful, we start to see diminishing returns as the limiting factor is no longer solely the hardware power, but also the ability of developers to fully exploit it.

Or in layman's terms, a 20x increase in processing power doesn't yield graphics which are 20x as good (rather subjective admittedly, but you know what I mean).

So essentially, dramatic leaps forward on the hardware front cannot be directly interpolated to assume that the visuals we see in games will improve by the same amount.

skullman · 18 Feb 2007 at 15:05

Damn. I was really looking forward to converting the spare room into a Holodeck too in a couple of years! Oh well.

Kamakazie! · 18 Feb 2007 at 16:51

Once GPUs get powerful enough to handle real time ray tracing, then we will start to see much more life like graphics. No soft shadowing and bump mapping and the like, just light rays bouncing off the surfaces created and then poroducing a realistic result.

banja · 18 Feb 2007 at 18:29

Carmack said (around the time Doom 3 was released) that moving through an environment that was fully photo realistic was already possible on home PC's.

Only problem was that absolutely nothing else could be happening other than moving about.

Zefan · 18 Feb 2007 at 18:34

Kamakazie! said:
Once GPUs get powerful enough to handle real time ray tracing, then we will start to see much more life like graphics. No soft shadowing and bump mapping and the like, just light rays bouncing off the surfaces created and then poroducing a realistic result.

Spot on.