Videocard Development slowing down?

Buy the upper mid range hardware. Don't buy the newest, it drops in price far too fast to make it worth it.

We do need bigger and better hardware, we'll always want better. Nothing you buy now will be of much use in 10 years, beyond simple tasks, and running outdated games.

We had this argument when the 7-series came out. We're not gonna hit photorealism, deal with it. Videocards'll get more and more complicated until we can physically no longer construct them.

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Original post by Ravuya We had this argument every single freaking time a new series comes out.

Fixed.

And sliceanddice, holy crap when was the last time you looked outside? Does Oblivion look like that to you? Are you legally blind?

On the contrary, I think we'll soon be reaching some kind of generalized 'uncanny valley' for video games. I run Oblivion on its highest settings, and while the character models look pretty excellent (probably because they haven't yet reached near-photorealism), the scenery looks pretty crappy in most places. There's so much detail everywhere that the low-res textures stand out like a sore thumb.

My guess is that real-time photorealism is going to require some 1000 to 10,000 times more computational power than we have now in a top-of-the-line PC. When are we scheduled to have that much available?

I mean that in the next ten years, photorealism will be a reality.

I was thinking that the highest grade cards of today will be the standard for videocards when photorealism is common.

And for the side note, I am nearsighted, but that really doesn't matter too much for this situation, does it?

If those high grade cards can run this-gen games at highest settings without blinking, I don't think they'll have much trouble with photorealism when it is a commonplace in the industry. I am certain we are not too far off from photorealism, look at the technological benchmarks humanity has surpassed in the last 5 years. I'd give it 5 to 10 years MAX.

I think that graphics of today are acceptable (or do you prefer Final Fantasy 7's?) If no improvements were ever made on graphics, I would be satisfied with what we as human have thus far accomplished.

Call of Duty looked very realistic to me. If anything, we would need higher resolution displays to properly show photo-realistic graphics. Also remember, it's unlikely your grading your graphics with the proper equipment. (Are you running your games in a HD TV?) Chances are unlikely.

sliceanddice

Plus, you need to keep an eye on those quadcore processors coming out this year - those will put a dent into the problem were discussing...

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Original post by sliceanddice Call of Duty looked very realistic to me. If anything, we would need higher resolution displays to properly show photo-realistic graphics. Also remember, it's unlikely your grading your graphics with the proper equipment. (Are you running your games in a HD TV?) Chances are unlikely.

I run my games on a refurbished high-end CRT monitor that cost $1,200 when it was new. You, sir, definitely need a pair of glasses. And also a minute to look outside and appreciate how much better it looks than anything that could conceivably be rendered on a video card even several hardware generations from now. [grin]

Nah, it's business as usual. The current generation of cards will be completely obsolete, say, 2-3 years from now.

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Plus, you need to keep an eye on those quadcore processors coming out this year - those will put a dent into the problem were discussing...

CPUs have very little direct impact on visual quality these days, unless they're slow enough to drag performance down despite the quality of your video card...

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Original post by twix Quote: Original post by sliceanddice Call of Duty looked very realistic to me. If anything, we would need higher resolution displays to properly show photo-realistic graphics. Also remember, it's unlikely your grading your graphics with the proper equipment. (Are you running your games in a HD TV?) Chances are unlikely. I run my games on a refurbished high-end CRT monitor that cost $1,200 when it was new. You, sir, definitely need a pair of glasses. And also a minute to look outside and appreciate how much better it looks than anything that could conceivably be rendered on a video card even several hardware generations from now. [grin] Nah, it's business as usual. The current generation of cards will be completely obsolete, say, 2-3 years from now. Quote: Plus, you need to keep an eye on those quadcore processors coming out this year - those will put a dent into the problem were discussing... CPUs have very little direct impact on visual quality these days, unless they're slow enough to drag performance down despite the quality of your video card...

You don't seem to understand my point. Yes, you have a right to say games don't look photorealistic, but I doubt even 10% of the people on these forums has a HD display for their computer.

Your just one lucky guy :P

And the point I was making about the quadcores, I doubt if they work well on the
makret that nVidia won't begin to load them into the next-gen videocards, therefore solving your "need of CPU" problem.

4 GB of video is a lot of possibility to reach photorealism. That;s also assuming the "subjet" computer doesn't have TWO of those cards, that would be 8 Gigabytes of video processing power. That should be enough to make graphics lifelike.

sliceanddice

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Original post by sliceanddice If those high grade cards can run this-gen games at highest settings without blinking, I don't think they'll have much trouble with photorealism when it is a commonplace in the industry. I am certain we are not too far off from photorealism, look at the technological benchmarks humanity has surpassed in the last 5 years. I'd give it 5 to 10 years MAX.

Are you suggesting that within 5-10 years graphics cards will surpass the power of Pixar's render farm? (pics here) Yes, I am aware that real-time 3D graphics and prerendered CGI movies are very different problem domains, but...

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In all, the blade system contains 1,024 Intel 2.8GHz Xeon processors, and it runs the open-source Linux operating system.

[wink]

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Original post by sliceanddice You don't seem to understand my point. Yes, you have a right to say games don't look photorealistic, but I doubt even 10% of the people on these forums has a HD display for their computer.

Isn't HD output anything 720p or over? Wouldn't that make my games of HL2 in 1080x768 HD? What qualifies as HD for computers?

Anyway, I want 60fps ray-tracing / photon-mapping with real-time fluid dynamics. Also, a pony.

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Original post by twix Quote: Original post by sliceanddice Plus, you need to keep an eye on those quadcore processors coming out this year - those will put a dent into the problem were discussing... CPUs have very little direct impact on visual quality these days, unless they're slow enough to drag performance down despite the quality of your video card...

On the other hand, it seems to me that CPU power is levelling off. The difference between a 60 MHz Pentium and a 90 MHz one was much greater than the difference between a 1 GHz Athlon and a 1.4 GHz Athlon. These days, the difference is smaller yet; even switching from my single core machine to the spiffier dual core machine of another person in my group doesn't open significantly more options for me.

Anybody know how close GPU's are to reaching this sort of limit?

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Original post by Way Walker On the other hand, it seems to me that CPU power is levelling off. The difference between a 60 MHz Pentium and a 90 MHz one was much greater than the difference between a 1 GHz Athlon and a 1.4 GHz Athlon. These days, the difference is smaller yet; even switching from my single core machine to the spiffier dual core machine of another person in my group doesn't open significantly more options for me. Anybody know how close GPU's are to reaching this sort of limit?

Assuming that the models are the same, wouldn't a 60-90 and 1-1.5 difference be exactly the same, by definition?

I'd be interested to see if CPU processing power has been following its standard exponential trend, or if it's been levelling off. For some reason it seems like the rate of progress has been slowing, but it's hard to say without some numbers. If it really is slowing, then maybe it's time to break out a new computer architecture paradigm to get back onto our good old exponential trend. [grin]

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Original post by sliceanddice Quote: Original post by twix Quote: Original post by sliceanddice Call of Duty looked very realistic to me. If anything, we would need higher resolution displays to properly show photo-realistic graphics. Also remember, it's unlikely your grading your graphics with the proper equipment. (Are you running your games in a HD TV?) Chances are unlikely. I run my games on a refurbished high-end CRT monitor that cost $1,200 when it was new. You, sir, definitely need a pair of glasses. And also a minute to look outside and appreciate how much better it looks than anything that could conceivably be rendered on a video card even several hardware generations from now. [grin] Nah, it's business as usual. The current generation of cards will be completely obsolete, say, 2-3 years from now. Quote: Plus, you need to keep an eye on those quadcore processors coming out this year - those will put a dent into the problem were discussing... CPUs have very little direct impact on visual quality these days, unless they're slow enough to drag performance down despite the quality of your video card... You don't seem to understand my point. Yes, you have a right to say games don't look photorealistic, but I doubt even 10% of the people on these forums has a HD display for their computer. Your just one lucky guy :P And the point I was making about the quadcores, I doubt if they work well on the makret that nVidia won't begin to load them into the next-gen videocards, therefore solving your "need of CPU" problem. 4 GB of video is a lot of possibility to reach photorealism. That;s also assuming the "subjet" computer doesn't have TWO of those cards, that would be 8 Gigabytes of video processing power. That should be enough to make graphics lifelike. sliceanddice

While I agree that the rate of increase in video card processing power has been staggering, I think you greatly underestimate the challenge of photorealistic rendering. I'd say my 1000-10,000 estimate is pretty conservative. Barring a major technological breakthough, it'll be over 20 years before we get to that point. And for us to get there, your brand new video card will have to be obsoleted in a couple of years. Ah, progress. [wink]

It always bugs me, advertising photo-realism. We're nowhere near photo-realistic items. Call of Duty 3, Oblivion, look nowhere near real life. They don't look like real people. They don't walk like real people. They don't act like real people.

That's why I am happy with my sub $500 computer. I don't need these new graphics, I don't see a difference truly. Doom 3 looks the same as Doom, which is not realistic.

There was a video that was talked about before, not sure if it was posted here, I think it was a commercial for a game, but it had Rain in it, and featured a girl being interviewed. Alot of people called it uncanny valley, because it looked realistic but because of a few things, it popped out as strange. I didn't see it, I just saw CGI stuff, that didn't look realistic at all.

Personally, I don't think we'll ever achieve true-realism, and will be stuck in uncanny valley forever, even if we achieve it, which I think will be in the next 25+ years.

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Original post by Ueneth Echil Personally, I don't think we'll ever achieve true-realism, and will be stuck in uncanny valley forever, even if we achieve it, which I think will be in the next 25+ years.

I think it's only a matter of time before we get to the point that we can't tell the difference anymore. If not, then I'll be sad. I don't want all those awesome full-immersion virtual reality games I've been promised in the future to look uncanny. [sad]

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Original post by Ueneth Echil There was a video that was talked about before, not sure if it was posted here, I think it was a commercial for a game, but it had Rain in it, and featured a girl being interviewed. Alot of people called it uncanny valley, because it looked realistic but because of a few things, it popped out as strange. I didn't see it, I just saw CGI stuff, that didn't look realistic at all. Personally, I don't think we'll ever achieve true-realism, and will be stuck in uncanny valley forever, even if we achieve it, which I think will be in the next 25+ years.

You're talking about

">Heavy Rain for PS3, the spiritual successor to modern adventure game / interactive movie Indigo Prophecy on PS2 and Xbox.

I can certainly see what they meant by "uncanny valley". By very definition, it can't be realistic if it's in the uncanny valley, because uncanny valley is what things look like when they are approaching realism.

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Original post by Will F Are you suggesting that within 5-10 years graphics cards will surpass the power of Pixar's render farm? (pics here)

Why not? Today's top processors do surpass the supercomputers of 10 years ago.

If Oblivion and CoD are your ideals, then you've got embarassingly low standards.

I don't see uncanny valley in the HEavy Rain video. Just bad CGI. Uncanny Valley is when you *know* something is off but you can't put your finger on it right away. You can immediately see what's wrong in Heavy Rain. The eyes are off. The hands badly animated. The mouth is horribly animated, totally unreal and synced sloppily, and the overall movement is too exaggerated. It's a nice tech demo, but far from uncanny valley.

What I want to know is why do you want photorealism? Honestly, the engines used for "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter" and "Unreal Tournament 2004" have enough features between them to implement just about any game I want. Sure, it might take a bit more power to implement all the features of both than was available back then, but these days I think the cards and computers can handle everything they have plus more, and that is good enough for me.

Where I'd like to see improvements are in the games themselves - increased avatar control, improved interaction systems, more dynamic content, etc. Those would go a lot farther to make games realistic, and it would equally improve many different types of games. Invisible walls, helpful items that do nothing more than decorate tables, and other such phenomena are what prevents immersion in 3d games for me.