Do Videogames Need More Graphical Grit?

Thanks to GamerDad for its editorial discussing whether some recent videogames, such as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, look "too sterile and perfect" . The author explains: "The animation is fine but the world Snake runs through is too sharp edged. There's no dirt and grime in the graphics because they're perfect versions of what was seen in the original game. Somehow, these better graphics have detracted somewhat from my opinion of the newer game." He continues: "DOOM 3, for as great as it looks, suffers from a lack of grit in still shots. I'm hoping the final game will not have the plastic look of the current pictures. Even the highly polished Quake III Arena didn't come across as being plastic to me." Do other gamers share this perception of graphical sterility in some recent games?

Comments

Games need a dirt filter

[nadadogg]

This is true. Too often games are overpolished, and look sterile to me as well. Hell, once they come up with a "dirt" filter for textures, games will feel a good bit more immersive than they currently do.

Re:Games need a dirt filter

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

Notice how it's usually real-time 3D that looks a little too pristine. Pre-rendered stuff tends to look much more realistic (look at Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0 on the GameCube to see what I mean - the backgrounds are gorgeous and realistically dirty where applicable). I'm not saying that it's only 3D games that do this; it's even rare in 2D games where dirt can be represented as easily as swapping the colors on a sprite. It's a matter of developers not paying attention to the same details (by accident, by design, or by force) that some other gamers might.

In my opinion what should be a nice short term goal for game graphic engine developers would be for real-time rendered grime to adhere to character models in a believable fashion. A game character shouldn't look like he just had his outfit dry cleaned if he's just been in the middle of a mudslide.

Re:Games need a dirt filter

[Trillian_1138]

I think we're also reaching what's called the "Uncanny Valley" (good explanation: http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html ).
"Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human "look" . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete."

The website explains it very well, with helpful graphs. Basically, people are willing to accept unrealistic portrayal of a 'live' thing (teddy bears or straight animation). As you approach actual photo-realism people continue to accept the visual as looking 'good'. Take Toy Story or Finding Nemo for examples. But then there is a sudden dropoff where the object looks real enough to be creepy, but not real enough to be convincing. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within arguably suffered from this.

Relating it to videogames, Mario was only the vaguest representation of 'reality' and everyone was fine accepting this jumping 2D. figure. No one was saying the graphics in Mario were disturbing or whatever. Leap forward to Mario 64, and it's still cartoon-ish enough that it doesn't look weird. But games are beginning to reach the Uncanny Valley where they are real enough to be disturbingly lifelike, but where the movement animation and graphics aren't actually realistic enough to jump out of the Uncanny Valley.

This isn't directly related to what the article is talking about, as this is more about movement animation than the environment of the game world, but it's on the same topic. Games are becoming real enough that we're beginning to have problems with the discrepancies between game and reality. No one complained Mario 64 or Sonic or Final Fantasy VII looked 'unrealistic' because they were clearly only attempts to model and emulate specific parts of reality, to give an idea of the world rather than model every single blade of grass. But as graphics attempt to move towards modeling every single blade of grass they suffer the danger of hitting this Uncanny Vally wall.

-Trillian

Realism

[oO Peeping Tom Oo]

I belive that as the technology to have "perfect" animations continues, we will be hitting a celing soon. Through adding "grime" to those animations in proper areas, we will be able to further add to that realism by bringing "real world" effects into the games with realism. Even with more advanced engines we will be able to see this. Splashing muddy water on a character, anyone?

Half-Life...

[Tickenest]

I'm one of the few people who didn't like the game, and it was largely because of the sterility of the levels. It felt like work.

It's not just dirt

[superpulpsicle]

If you play a sports game for example, dirt isn't the only thing that makes it feel "real".

1.) Inconsistent lighting
2.) Fog in the air
3.) Dirt everywhere
4.) Fans that look different in the seats

Damn I can go on forever

Just like System Shock 2...

[ConceptJunkie]

SS2 was an awesome game with an incredible spooky atmosphere, but there was the glaring problem of everything being pristine and clean... even broken stuff. Worse, there were no no bodies, debris and very little damage in the environment. And of course, killed enemies would disappear shortly after being dispatched. I realize this was a technological limitation (the game came out 5 years ago), but I think it's one of the biggest barriers to real immersion in an environment. If I'm walking in a derelict spaceship overrun with zombies and cyborgs, there should be bodies everywhere and lots and lots of busted stuff. Also, if I'm struting around with a plasma rifle, I want to be able to blow stuff up. Descent 3 provided black scorch marks on the walls if you shot at them, but I want to see chunks of metal or masonry flying around and if I spent enough time and ammo, I want to be able to blow my way through walls or doors or really abuse the environment in other ways. When this happens, it will seem like VR compared to today's games.

I agree

[Torgo's Pizza]

Doom 3 definitely needs more smeared blood on the walls and floors.

BTW, if I'm responsible for getting the most GRIT into Doom 3, do I get some cool prizes?

Boxes

[J_DarkElf]

Videogame worlds are staffed by really efficient janitors, who store all the dust and grime in boxes. Which is why you see those everywhere.

double edged sword

[ArmenTanzarian]

Grit in a real image and fog in a game can become confused if you don't handle it just the right way. You have to worry about which zealots you're offending. Crisp graphics, smoothly rendered edges, and the use of fog/grit for style (not lazy rendering) are all a very delicate balance.

IANAGD (game developer), but I say lay the groundwork, focus on gameplay and come back to throw these details in with some market testing. Time and processor speed permitting.

artifacts are a feature!

[beegle]

How long before nVidia and ATI fanboys get into wars about which company's "dirt and grit engine" is better?

I predict that nVidia's next driver release actually adds back in some of artifacts that their old drivers used to leave all over the screen. They will claim that this is their new Enhanced Reality Engine and sic lawyers on any site that bitches about the artifacts.

Blame Direct X

[NickFusion]

The ability to cheaply do reflection mapping means anything glossy now gets a perfectly focused reflection mapped on it, which looks cool for about 5 minutes, then starts to grate.

Reflections are rarely perfect. What a lot of these new games need to take the edge off is a blurred reflection.

Here's a test render I did a while back comparing hard & soft reflections: Chrome_Soft_test.jpg

Much like chrome was a craze back in the early days of pre-rendered CGI, these hard reflections in real-time graphics are about to jump the shark.

This sounds like...

[ivan256]

...something I said almost 4 years ago. In fact, that comment was about 3dfx technology that began to address this exact problem right before nVidia bought them and killed it. All most people care about is framerates, polygons per second, and fill rates. When is the blood going to run down the wall when you shoot somebody? when are we going to have soft edges? Texture and bump maps don't help when you get to the intersection of two surfaces, and it's the biggest thing standing in the way of a believable scene in a 3d engine.

Re:S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[ivan256]

That looks terrible. Sure I can't give you an example of something that is signifigantly better, but dirty textures don't fix that plastic feeling. What brick wall have you ever seen with a perfectly straight edge like that? What wall has ever gotten all pixelated when you get close in real life?

I think we have the technology nescicary to handle the data that would be required at the speeds that would be required, but nobody is focusing on things like smoothly increasing the resolution of a texture as it gets closer to the camera, or making it so that the edge of an object isn't a perfectly straight line, or simple curve. We could probably even work it such that an object changes from a large flat texture mapped surface to a complex object when you get close enough to know the difference with todays hardware. That's the kind of stuff that I want to see. Any engine writers out there listening?

Something else that bothers me is intersections of objects. They're all too perfect. Look at those railings in the screenshot you linked? The connections aren't mechanically believable. Sure, it would take the guy creating the scene way longer to have complex intersections, but it would add so much more realism. What I've seen of Doom 3 looks like the people there care about this kind of thing, so there's some hope, but I don't think that many developers have the same patience when it comes to setting release dates.

It's not about grit

[laxcat]

It's all about the artistic style you are going after. Too often gamers assume that the ultimate goal is perfect realism, which would be amazing but limited. The real future of games is in applying artistic styles and sensibility to games. I loved Viewtiful Joe because of its extreame style. The Wind Waker too. These games have styles that were neither grity nor realistic, but thier unique feels did an excellent job creating worlds that was easy to get lost in.

I'm not saying every game should be cell shaded, but developers should more often utilize the limitless possiblities of style in modern games.

Re:S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[idiot900]

That looks terrible.

Actually, I think it looks pretty good compared to the current crop of games.

- The people throw shadows.
- There's a leaf floating in one of the barrels (look carefully).
- There's random crap lying around down below. (I think this is really important to have).

On the other hand, there are some problems:

- Shadows may be too crisp. Is everything under a spotlight? Either soften the shadows or (preferably) throw multiple shadows. There can't just be one bright light in that scene.
- The people should throw shadows onto themselves.
- The railings, among other things, appear as if they are held together by superglue. How about rivets? Screws?
- The flying debris resulting from the gunshot doesn't appear to have broken off anything. It just magically spawned there. Also the flash of light from that doesn't seem to throw a shadow.
- The pattern of rust on the platform the soldier is kneeling on is duplicated in the platform directly below.
- Do doorframes exist in videogames? Electrical outlets?
- Mortar lines in brick walls are not carried all the way around.
- The background should be just slightly out of focus.
- Et cetera ad nauseum.

I realize it's easy to say these things from the comfort of my non-game-developer chair. But I'd be surprised if I didn't see these things happen as technology catches up. It's the little things (and there are a lot of them) that will make all the difference.

My guess is that this sort of thing will move into the procedural realm. Developers will license libraries that do nothing but generate nice-looking world geometry procedurally, as well as textures, physics, etc., and plug into the rest of the game engine. When you upgrade to the Geforce42, you'll be able to display 2x the screws in metal structures and 3x the litter on the street.

Grit is nice but not necessary

[gothrus]

Grit is what made the Star Wars universe unique in its day. It seemed more realistic because the sets reflected some of the seedier elements that populated them. Personally, sterility or grit doesn't make too much difference for me. I've never seen a game that looked like the real world because 2d/3d graphics haven't replicated the way the human eye works. In a game, everything is always in clear focus no matter how far away or how far into your peripheral vision. In newer games, such as HL2, distant items appear with less detail, but still are in focus. I would be curious to see a graphics engine that can replicate the way a human eye views the world.

Hmm...

[NanoGator]

Well this is an interesting topic for 3D rendering in general. The world is 'imperfect'. The moment something is exposed to human interaction, it gets nicks, cuts, scratches, dents, fatigue, etc. The common way to communicate the 'used look' is to make things look beat up and dirty.

Yes, it does look better. Yes, it does look more lived in. Yes, it does take away from the 'perfection' that computers achieve and look more like we expect. Is it the right thing to do? Well, interestingly enough, I'm running into this problem right now. I'm working on a 3D rendering of a futuristic particle cannon. Right now, I'm building a room around the machine. While texturing this bad boy, I realized something. You see, when I originally built the machine, I used Lightwave's more advanced rendering features. This means more time to render, but it looks more realistic. There is radiosity rendering, and subtle blurred reflections (you'd be surprised how much rendering time that eats up..) area lighting, the works. And you know, by the time I've got all these on, it is startlingly good looking. However, it was taking FAR too long to render an animation of, so I had to find ways of dirtying it up. Well, that's what I've started doing. Instead of using reflective chrome like you'd see in the CERN laboratory for its machines, I grittied it up. No more expensive reflection blurring there. Some of the photos I'm using for textures have some of the effects of 'realistic light' baked into them anyway, so I can stop using area lights and go back down to spotlights. Radiosity? Well the dirt on the machine gets so dark that radiosity wouldn't make a huge difference, so bye bye lengthy render times.

Maybe the dirt etc helps reduce the need for fancier renderings? Maybe, though it helps sell the idea that something is used, it's really covering up something that'd be more expensive to render? I say maybe because this may not be true in every artist's experience. I just found it interesting that when it came down to getting the rendering done in time to get an animation done, the grit texturing has saved my rump.

Yes!

[KurdtX]

I've been saying this for years to my friends, it's really hard to imagine you're in a real world if you keep seeing the same panel in the wall, or (worse) the same panel representing a wall (think Doom). It does make it easier to spot that one panel that is slightly off, indicating you need to blast it with a rocket or, or find a switch somewhere, but in real life every panel would be slightly different than the next. Even look at your cube walls, there are subtle differences between each one that let you sort of find "cloud pictures" (or try your ceiling tile).

I don't really have a solution, as the advances in lighting and level design, not to mention the increased amount of art that can be packed into a CD nowadays have taken care of all my ideas, apart from having an artist draw every single wall uniquely to start out with (ridiculously time consuming). Well, maybe have something like Diablo's random level generator, where a key is stored that is used to generate consistent (within the game) dungeons, but basically uses the same elements. Use it to modify certain parts of the panel, like maybe a few pixel wide micro-scratches or discolorations that you really only notice on a subconcious level.

Oh, and I'm sure someone's mentioned this already, but stop making everything look like plastic! Even plastic doesn't gleam like that, as there's dirt that settles on it (and settles in an uneven way). Materials might actually have whatever index of refraction your physics engine is set to, but if there's 50% dust, or 25% wear, that part isn't going to gleam like it was just polished yesterday. And I don't think sewers get polished very often.

Now that I'm rolling, do game publishers only work in brand-new office buildings? For those of you who are in a building a few years old, look down at the ground next time you walk around (no, not just to avoid eye contact, but actually pay attention to the ground). Notice how the carpet/tile is more worn in high-traffic areas? How next to the water cooler it's a little bit darker, due to splatter over the years? How the edges of wide hallways look like they were installed yesterday? How there are always marks on the walls in stairwells? And how even door handles start to show wear after a few years? It's the little things that we see but don't process that really make things look real - the wrinkles in people's faces. We just need "wrinkles" in our textures.