Is the technology looking more and more "nothing special"?

[dsm]

I gotta be frank here: I see absolutely no sense in AndrewB's arguments.
I view a game's graphics after how realistic and pretty it looks.
While Hitman 2 does look pretty, it does not have the CG movie quality graphics that Doom 3 has.
I see Doom 3 as a damn sweet looking game: graphics are both sexy and photorealistic and unless you're deliberately looking for flaws like certain losers here like to do, it can easily trick you into thinking that you're playing a movie.

I don't know where you got the wacky idea that Doom 3's stencil shadows look ugly, just because they're hard-edged???

All I see is a usual "AndrewB nitpick-for-the-sake-of-complaining-just-to-be-an-ass" set of wacky arguments that have no actual bearing on reality.
Count you lucky stars that I ain't the Mod here anymore, otherwise this thread would've been dead by now as it only serves to annoy some of us (while I admit that it would look hilarious in post hell).

Thank you very much.

[Tyockell]

dsm said:

I don't know where you got the wacky idea that Doom 3's stencil shadows look ugly, just because they're hard-edged???

When I saw those shadows it amazed the hell outa me it actully made me giddy it was so fuckin cool looking with that swaying light at the beginning of the alpha.
By the way dsm sweetass avatar.

[NiGHTMARE]

The FPS I'm most looking forward to this year is Dredd versus Death, it's just a shame that most people have never even heard of it. It has it's own engine which looks absolutely fantastic (like a live action comic book), and sounds like it'll play extremely well too (especially as it's from the creators of the first Alien vs Predator).

[Zoorado]

Heh. Dredd vs. Death looks cool. The engine is nothing amazing, but the re-creation of MegaCity One is spot on. From what I've seen in the trailer, the game shows plenty of promises, and from what I know of Rebellion, it will probably have solid gameplay to in conjunction with its style. Let's hope the game doesn't suffer from a buggy release...

I've met another fanatic for Dredd vs. Death on the 3DR forums. You may like to meet him there...

[geekmarine]

Ugh, I'm tired of hearing about graphics. Really, so what if Doom 3's new engine will totally kick all the other engines's butts? The fact is, computer graphics will never really be "photorealistic", so why does the industry insist on continuing to make them that way? Computer games can do a lot of things these days, but displaying completely lifelike graphics is simply not one of them, and there's really no point in getting close but not succeeding. I really like the recent trend of cel-shaded games myself. I mean, it's like you look at some cel-shaded scene, and because of it's cartoon-like quality, you get the feeling that the scene is exactly the way the developer wanted it to look. The problem is that every game I've ever played has a certain cartoon look to it, but developers go out of their way to try to make the games look realistic, and so it just ends up being silly. I'm not saying that like every new game should be cel-shaded, but I believe that game developers should move away from trying to make games realistic looking, and make them more artistic. Finally, don't get me wrong. I think Doom 3 looks absolutely beautiful. However, I really don't care one way or the other. In the end, graphics don't really matter that much.

[Zoorado]

Computer graphics can look photorealistic... Just not now.

I predict that in five years time, real-time graphics of this quality can very well be rendered on PCs.

[Tyockell]

Zoorado said:

Computer graphics can look photorealistic... Just not now.

I predict that in five years time, real-time graphics of this quality can very well be rendered on PCs.

Yea I wouldent see whynot If you have the processing power then whats stopping us.

[Yo-Han]

Doom 3 is setting a nice example for the lighting..everything is real time..not just enemies etc,but everything,HL2 fanboys love to say that HL2 has real time lighting too(HL2 looks good enough too, for me though),some charecters etc..but the main level lightin is pre lit..doom3's new tech stuff is just the beginning of a new standerd in lighting and graphics,yeah with real time lighting i understand every light casts a shadow on every object,just like in nature..for the rest it just remains a game for me.. doom3 does also an amazing job in de bumpmap section ..nature like lighting and poors and bolts noticable wit real depth,textures with depth add to realism ,and realism in graphics add more to being almost there

[Scabbed Angel]

If Silent Hill 3 had bumpmapping, (and more realistic shadowing, although I'm not complaining) it would look as well as Doom 3. That's just my opinion. I lost a lot of interest in SH3 when more D3 info was released, but now that I'm finally playing it (Thank God!) I am comparing it the other way. I know they are 2 different games and the vers I'm playing is PS2, but damn. But no, H2 does not look better than D3, AndrewB, why not find your own screenshot to enlighten us with? I'm not being sarcastic, its just that you obviously were impressed with H2, no one else seems to agree, why not try to convince us?

[AndrewB]

DSM

"I've gotta be frank here;" ever since I once threatened your precious Doom-3 fanboyishness with certain questions and doubts, you've taken a strong initiative to not read what I have to say and not even ever freaking understand what I'm saying. Every time I mention Doom 3 in any way, you're right there saying (paraphrased) "OMG U R BASHING DEEM 3 WHY DON U FKIN GROW UP I HATE U!!??"

Well, not quite, but if people are less than blown away by your favorite unfinished game, it's an Internet-crime in your eyes.

And if you really don't understand what's wrong with hard-edged shadows, I suggest you go out in the sun, or under a light bulb, and move objects around and study the edge of the shadows. Lord knows I would want to tear my hair out trying to explain it to you.

By the way, your argument reminds me a lot of people who like big-blockbuster B-movies with plot holes and cheap CG-special-effects. "Why can't you learn to turn off your brain and enjoy a decent movie despite its flaws??"

[AndrewB]

Scabbed Angel

Nobody ever said that Hitman 2 looks better than Doom 3. You completely fail to understand the subject at hand.

[Scabbed Angel]

Shaviro said:

uh?
Hitman 2 does not have real time shadows.
Do you really think Hitman 2 looks better than Doom3?
hah. No game can touch Doom3's graphics, not even Half-Life 2.

AndrewB said:

Are you calling me blind? I know what I saw, and I couldn't tell the difference.

I'd like it if someone who actually knew could fill me in on this.

Just as an example. Now what did I fail to understand? You didn't argue the fact that Shaviro was suggesting that you thought H2 was better looking than D3, therefore one would assume that you agree, yes? I appologize if I am wrong, that is how you came off. I must have had some idea of what you were saying, yet you didn't even catch my point. Is it safe to say without the threat of complete failure in understanding that the subject at hand is that you are blind? Bah. Nevertheless I still challenge you to defend your original point in a completely neutral way. Show us two pictures of your choice that demonstrate how H2 is close (or whatever) to D3's graphics as is your claim. Don't be so defensive that people are disagreeing with you. I was just suggesting that you prove yourself, I wasn't being an ass.

[AndrewB]

No, I was arguing that Hitman 2 did indeed have real-time shadows, not that it looked better.

Plus, I don't have anything to prove. I was asking some questions, and a couple of intelligent people responded. I didn't create this topic with the intent of proving any kind of point, just hearing what others had to say.

[Scabbed Angel]

Do you think that the shadows in H2 look better than D3's shadows? I just thought since someone (I'm tool lazy to check now) offered a pic comparison that wasn't entirely fair, I'd offer that suggestion to you. Sorry you seemed to be offended man.

[AndrewB]

Well, I was merely watching from an angle, but stencil shadows are stencil shadows. There's very little variation. I doubt they'd look better, but they're still far from ideal.

Geekmarine said it best.

[Captain Red]

It's seem AndrewB can dish it out but he sure as hell can't take it.

[Fredrik]

AndrewB said:

And if you really don't understand what's wrong with hard-edged shadows

Of course hard-edged shadows aren't realistic, but you're making too big a deal of it. It's a technology limitation, just like how objects consisting of polygons have sharp edges where they'd have smooth curves in real life.

What matters in the end is the purely aesthetical work on the design side (you've argued yourself that SMB3 looks better than Quake II and I agree), and by the way, the shadows look a lot better in motion, believe me.

[NiGHTMARE]

Considering AndrewB supposedly doesn't care about graphics, he sure as heck is whining a lot about Doom 3's shadows not looking very good.

[Scuba Steve]

Personally, I think you're nuts if you think Super Mario 3 has some of the best Graphics ever. Benefit of the doubt, for it's time, they were handsome graphics, but even IF we were being strictly "old school" there were plenty of NES games with better artwork. Batman Return of the joker is probably the best looking NES game ever, with Blaster master also being high up there. Both of which, from the perspective of a sprite artist, are far better looking than Super mario 3. Now, this isn't saying Super mario is bad, just that it's crazy to think that games Like Metal Slug 3 or Garou: Mark of the Wolf, both for the NeoGeo are not more impressive visually as far as 2D artwork goes.

[Fredrik]

Scuba Steve said:

Personally, I think you're nuts if you think Super Mario 3 has some of the best Graphics ever.

Who said it does?

[Scabbed Angel]

I think it ws mentioned earlier in the thead. Meh, who cares if it had better graphics at the time, its fucking Mario.

I pLa7 M@r10 4 teh gr@FF1x!! LLOL!!1

edit: . . . and read Playboy for the articles...

[insertwackynamehere]

I get the playboy channel for the shows. And I go to http://www.playboy.com for the news!

[Captain Red]

AndrewB said:
Super Mario Bros. 3, Duke Nukem 2, Donkey Kong Country, Quake 2, HL:Counter-Strike, Operation Flashpoint. Which 3 would you say have the best graphics?

No doubt in my mind, the first three.

In the hands of a good mapper: HL:Counter-Strike owns them all.

[Scabbed Angel]

insertwackynamehere said:

I get the playboy channel for the shows. And I go to http://www.playboy.com for the news!

heh

[Tyockell]

Fredrik said:
and by the way, the shadows look a lot better in motion, believe me. [/B]

Very true as I said before they really amazed the hell out of me and brought so much life into the game.

[AndrewB]

But it's like the argument in movies, and using computer-generated (obviously fake-looking) 3D models to replace real-life humans in some scenes. People say "It's simply the best they can do right now so stop criticising!"

Amazingly-realistic special effects in movies can be done without computers! But developers of these B-movies are too lazy or too talentless to use special tricks and effects to create realistic effects using old-fashioned, tried-and-true techniques. They become lazy and resort to vastly inferior polygon models.

What's the relevance? I don't think "It's the best they can do right now" is a meaningful excuse. I think it's silly to act all impressed by today's graphics (Doom 3 included) knowing full well that several years from now, they'll be considered inferior. It's not hard at all to imagine what graphics will look like in a few years. More polygons, soft shadows, and if we're lucky, maybe some special reflective effects.

[fun-da-mental]

There is no need to argue with these morons like AndrewB. He is one of those guys who come on message boards to spew their rethoric how smart ass they are , thats all.
BTW, he has proven his stupdity by by comaparing Hitman2 lighting with DOOM3. I bet he doesn't even know what real-time lighting is.

[EllipsusD]

AndrewB said:
stuff...

That's a stupid comparison to make, ya know. Movies v. games... with movies there is a choice to use standard special effects or to use computer based effects for certain things, not in games, dumbass. When somebody says that graphics today aren't perfect because of the limitations, then that doesn't mean at all that the graphics are bad, it means just that- the graphics are as good as the developers are capable of making them given what they have to work with. And so what if they'll be better in a few years... it's not a few years later is it? That's the same as saying that cars will be better in a few years, so all cars now suck, or that all computers will be better in a few years so all computers now are inadequate. And if everyone was stupid enought to take your opinion on this all then the graphics in games would never get better simply because they suck if they aren't perfect.

I'm not even going to get into how ignorant your comment on movie special effects is... I can't believe that you can post these things without feeling embarassed in some way...

[Fredrik]

AndrewB.

As far as movies are concerned, there's of course bad CGI and there's good CGI. An obvious example of bad CGI is Star Wars Episode II. Overused, badly rendered, overused, badly animated, overused.

An example of good, very good, CGI is Minority Report. Sure, you can tell that there's CGI, though it's not because it looks fake but because you know the scenery would have been impossible to make without the CGI.

But scenery aside, can humanoid characters be done well with CGI? Sure, Star Wars Episode II says no, but there are examples of the opposite.

I'm not speaking of Gollum - the animation of his limbs don't match his motion, the rendering makes him look like a paper cut-out in many scenes, his interaction with the non-CGI environment does not work well at all, and the acting is just bad.

No, I'm speaking of the very recent Hulk. A lot of people have complained about the CGI Hulk looking bad, but I disagree firmly.

First off, the rendering is awesome. In several scenes, definitely as real as it could get. Sure, he doesn't look human, but he's not supposed to be one. His skin often looks synthetic, but it looks like a real synthetic material and not a rendered one.

Second, animation. Like always, this is the weakest part, but it's still amazing. Every tendon and muscle under his skin moves while he breathes and moves. But the problematic aspects of the animation, such as occasionally moving an arm in a way that doesn't seem quite natural, is not a problem with CGI per se - the same kind of errors show up with mechatronics (the difference being that mechatronic animations are often too stiff while CGI animations are often too smooth).

Third, environment interaction. Hulk smashing tanks in the desert - unlike with the ever floating Gollum, you can really feel that Hulk has a weight and that the laws of physics apply :)

Now, I'm not saying that Hulk is a perfect or even near-perfect achievement in movie CGI. There are flaws, most noticably in the parts where the character does what more closely resembles regular acting. As you'd expect.

But the point is, anyway, that it would not have been possible to make the Hulk in any other way than with CGI. They could've used an actor in green body paint for a more "realistic" result, but it wouldn't be the Hulk. It'd look stupid.

Back to Doom 3.

You're saying that it's silly to act all impressed by today's graphics knowing that several years from now, they'll be considered inferior. Using that logic, we could as well dismiss any scientific progress with the argument that it's going to become insignificant, several hundreds of years from now.

What impressed people ten years ago doesn't impress us today. What impresses us today won't impress people ten years from now.

The bar is getting raised, simply. And we, as the adaptive human beings we are, move along with it. It's completely natural. Why do you keep pretending that you have no bound to the level of the bar? If you just dropped your silly prejudices, and realized that you can enjoy things for what they are, I'm sure you'd find a lot more things to enjoy.

But anyway, it's not the technology alone that impresses me. It's the way the technology is implemented to achieve immersion. The immersiveness of Doom 3 is without any doubt better than that of any other previously released game.

And I'll repeat this once more, the shadows in Doom 3 *do* look a lot better in-game, in-motion, than they do in static screenshots.

[fun-da-mental]

As some people trying compare HL2's Q3 type lighting with DOOM3.
here is an example of real-time lighting & stencil shadows.

http://www.doomworld.com/php/screenie.php?dir=/doom3_051303/&number=1