Cinematic Game Graphics

CowboyRobot writes "LucasArts engineer Nick Porcino has an article detailing what to expect from graphics in the next generation of game systems including the "influence of cinematic realtime rendering, the promise of advanced lighting techniques and high-dynamic range images, the uses of the rendering pipeline, and the future of multiprocessor-based rendering and advanced geometry." These will allow run-time rendering of high quality backgrounds and characters, ultimately resulting in games that are closer to full-blown Pixar animations, allowing better narratives and more immersive user experiences."

Comments

Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards?

[Jezral]

Off-topic, I know, but I've been wondering...

ok, so we've been able render Toy Story in real-time for a while...

But, where are the cards that can generate the sound of one arbitrary object hitting another? I don't just mean positional sound of pre-recorded samples, but really create the sounds from scratch (or an "audio-enabled model").

Re:Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards?

[AKAImBatman]

You do realize that you're asking for what amounts to RayTracing for Audio? The idea of realtime raytracing has just barely begun to penetrate the research community, and they have to cheat like hell to make it work. Trying to calculate material properties, force applied, vibration vs. tearing, listener posistioning, doppler, etc. in realtime would amount to far more CPU power than is currently in the hands of the public.

Re:Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards?

[Jerf]

But, where are the cards that can generate the sound of one arbitrary object hitting another? I don't just mean positional sound of pre-recorded samples, but really create the sounds from scratch (or an "audio-enabled model").

Not to put too fine a point on it, but... we don't know how to do that .

Even what you may have heard of is wild, wild cheating compared to what you describe.

I've given some (intelligent, educated) thought to this issue, and here's the problem. Light is adequately simulated with a line in the macroscopic world. It is, technically, a wave, but it is so high frequency that we can ignore it unless we're trying to simulate at quantum scales. This keeps the complexity down to merely polynomial, and some smart people have figured out how to shrink that polynomial down to a surprising degree.

Sound is not so friendly. Imagine some reasonably complex object, like, oh, a chair. We'll even cheat and make it all out of one material and go ahead and make it as geometrically simple as you like, as long as it's a chair, which is to say, at least three legs and a sitting surface, preferably with some sort of back support. Now, mentally give the chair a tap.

Now, odds are you're not too practiced at this sort of mental visualization, but here's what happens. For the sake of argument, let's tap it on the direct middle top of the sitting surface. Let's cheat some more and assume that one impact is what makes the sound, rather then an oscillation at the tap point. (See how much we're cheating, and we'll still end up with an uncomputable scenario.) So the tap radiates outward from there and starts wiggling the legs. The sound partially bounces off the legs, and goes back, and some of the sound wiggles into the legs. The sound bounces all around in the leg, and every time it bounces off of the edge, it loses some of the sound to the atmosphere and some of it bounces back. By the time it hits the bottom, it's bounced several times. (See, sound can't turn except at one of those boundaries, where it is essentially absorbed and re-emitted.)

Meanwhile, the same thing is happening in the back of the chair. Plus, on the sitting surface, we have reflections of reflections of reflections to deal with, and thanks to the wonders of resonance, we absolutely have to track each and every one of them until they hit a really low level. In a fraction of a second, we have hundreds upon hundreds of seperate waves to track, and they aren't even rays, they are "wavefronts".... imagine a wavefront hitting the edge of the chair at an angle, like an ocean wave bouncing off the beach. It doesn't bounce like a particle, it is two entirely new waves, the one that reflects and the one that continues on.

Basically, we can't even simulate this horrid simplification, the real world is even worse. Sound is highly, highly parallel. Ultimately, sound simulation is firmly exponential and the constants are very, very high. Maybe if those magical quantum computers come online we'll get this, but we'll quite possibly never get it with conventional technology; we're always going to have to cheat.

(One can try to imagine a transformation of the chair where the sound travels in a straight line in some space, but I'll be damned if I know what that actually looks like in real code, nor am I sure that it would be any easier to compute then a straight-forward simulation anyhow. Bright ideas in this regard should probably not be posted on Slashdot and saved for your PhD thesis in Mathematics/Physics/Computer Science; they'll all be waiting with bated breath.)

Re:Storyline!

[MistaE]

I agree with ya dude, but one thing that must be taken into consideration is that developers can't be carried away with a game focusing on narrative too much. I really don't think that gamers would like to play "interactive movies" like Xenosaga (I enjoyed the game, but geeze, the cutscenes were way too long and plentiful).

The trick is going to be balancing the amount of graphical detail with story lines and such. We know that a game that combines the two in just the right amount is pretty damn rare, but I look forward to the days developers get it right.

Personally, tho, I feel that one of the more important aspects is game play. You can have a beautiful game with an interesting story, but if you can't even stand to work inside of the world in terms of control and rules, then what's the point?

Re:at the rate PC games are pushing the market

[ols22]

This is right on. Of course we should expect computing power to grow according to Moore's Law (although there was a recent article indicating this may fail soon for laptops: Wired).

But if one looks into Moore's Law for Software (Googled) you find a different analysis. In short it looks like algorithm development has lagged sufficiently behind the computational power.

So what does this mean for gaming? It seems developers are hanging onto old ideas and relying on the growth in proc speeds (and bus speed and etc. etc.) to enhance their graphics/rendering. Thus the improved visualization comes to the cost of the consumer by forcing them to purchase faster and faster computers. Now we can run the newest games on the tricked out settings only on the fastest/cutting edge computers. This trends seems to be getting worse recently indicating that Moore's Law for Gaming Software is indeed lagging Moore's Law for computing power. IMO...

This seems bogus in many ways.

[Zobeid]

The hype this article lays down in the first page turned me off.

The next generation of console and home computer hardware is going to bring a revolutionary leap in available computing power; a teraflop (trillion floating-point operations per second) or more will be on tap from commodity hardware.

How much power will it draw? How are you going to cool it? The laws of physics appear to present certain obstacles, these are starting to become real problems. But even if you can make this kind of power happen in a game console -- will it make the game drastically better? Will it even make the graphics drastically better? I have doubts.

It looks to me like we've reached a point of diminishing returns with 3D graphics. Each new generation of hardware is resulting in less dramatic improvement to the images we're seeing. Continuing to throw more hardware at games and calling it a "revolution" will lead only to disappointment.

Our stories will have the potential for the same depth and sophistication as is expected today in a film or television show.

Ha, I say! Ha! This is the kind of drivel I've heard from game industry pundits going all the way back to the mid 1980s. Somehow it never seems to happen. We've got plenty powerful enough hardware today, and advanced enough AI algorithms, if only there was a serious push to use them. Yet, this article seems to be implying that a deeper and more sophisticated story is somehow tied to better graphics.

I was recently looking at screenshots from upcoming games: Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft. EQ2 definitely has highly advanced graphics, from a technical standpoint. Tons of polygons, massive detailed texturemaps, advanced lighting effects, yadda yadda. . . So why does WoW often look more attractive? I think it's because Blizzard focussed on art with a sense of style rather than flogging the technology.

Blizzard are also working hard to create a well-designed, well-balanced game that's fun to play. Sony, on the other hand, are bragging about their voice acting and how cinematic everything is. Is it a game, or is it a movie? I'd like to play a game, please. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way?

After the introduction the article dives into a lot of technical subjects that I'm not qualified to comment on. At the end it wraps it with a surprising admission. . .

The graphics revolution that is upon us will be a creative one; present work methods are too labor intensive to scale to the volume of data that we will need to create to support the medium.

The author implies that this is a problem to be overcome -- probably by borrowing techniques from film and television. I'm thinking instead: Maybe this is the point where we should take a step back and ask if we're even on the right path, if this is the direction videogames (and computer games) should even be going? Is this real progress?

Re:Storyline!

[a rabid platypus]

Good points! Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by "dynamic". Dynamic as in there is a war going on, the actions of my armies influence the direction of the war and the types of missions I can under take. Note there is a general plot: war; however, I can work within the war to influnce and change it's outcome. Just becasue the game changes according to my actions doesn't mean it doesn't have a theme or "plot". It just means I have more control over the eventual outcome. Games that make me run the same missions, over and over are quite frankly, boring. Replay value is nill, and there is no real sense of accomplishment. In the type of game I just described replay value would be pretty good, as there are many ways to win a war. An example of a game that is too well defined would be Mech Commander 2. Pretty and a good premise, but the same missions. It would be better if the missions were generated according to my actions, and if I could do things inside of missions that would affect future missions. Just becasue a game changes, doesn't mean it doesn't have a theme or an overall plot. It just means I can reach those end goals MY way.