Cinematic Game Graphics

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Posted by timothy on Sunday May 2, 2004 @06:42AM from the unfinal-fantasy dept.

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."

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And AI! by metalmario · 2004-05-02 06:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

Nice graphics is a bonus, but if the AI is still as stupid as it was 10 years ago, who cares? We need better AI! It shouldn't be that hard. Take for example Morrowind - no AI at all. Even I can do better than that. ;)
at the rate PC games are pushing the market by the_2nd_coming · 2004-05-02 06:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

low-impact game players like me are out of date in 3-6 months and can not play games until we upgrade our computers!!

this is insane and why I like consoles.

I mean I had a monster Fusion 3d card from the day it came out and it worked flawlessly until Black and white came out. after that I had to upgrade to a Gforce 2 GTS.

in recent years, the gaming industry is moving to fast for me to keep up anymore.

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I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Re:Storyline! by a+rabid+platypus · 2004-05-02 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Storyline is all well and good, but I hate a gmae that locks me into a plot. Instead of dynamic graphics, I'd rather see dynamic plotlines. I'd much rather shape the progression of the story than be a mere rider on the train that goes down the rail of the plotline. That being said, I believe better graphic capabilities can lead to more interactive environments, which in turn can lead to more interesting ways of changing, or progressing the plot.
Re:Storyline! by AKAImBatman · 2004-05-02 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

What was the "storyline" fot Mario? Or Space Invaders? Or PacMan? Storyline is only important depending on the type of game. The real focus should be on FUN. If you find the game tedious, it doesn't matter whether it has the best storyline since War and Peace. Thankfully technology can provide us with more interesting simulations, larger expolosions, better feedback, and other adrenaline pumping features.

Bridge Commander is the perfect example of how modern technology makes new games possible. Who *doesn't* want to captain a starship? Now if only other game makers would start building original and fun games instead of recycling the same old garbage.

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Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Technology versus Design by 401k · 2004-05-02 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sam and Max was a great LucasArts game with minimal graphics. George Lucas has a capacity to be wowed by technology and graphics much to the detriment of story -- look at the new Star Wars movies as Exhibit A. Incredibly impressive digital character like Jar-Jar, yet used totally wrong -- as opposed to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Or look how lovely Naboo is, yet how excruciating is the dialogue between Anakin and Amidala. How painful the plot. I worry that as games become more cinematic, with massive budgets, huge staffs, and herculean marketing machines behind them, the craft of game design and the art of storytelling will get lost. It's not just LucasArts ... Square with their movie and their over-rendered, RPG-lite Final Fantasy games (boring as all get out, to me) is another example of this trend. Meh, PC gaming will always survive though, and remain the most fruitful playground for original titles, because no publisher or license is required.
Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards? by Jezral · 2004-05-02 06:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

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").
1. Re:Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards? by duckpoopy · 2004-05-02 07:08 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  It's in the works... Very CPU intensive.
  O'Brien, J.F., Cook, P.R., Essl, G., "Synthesizing Sound from Physically Based Motion," In Proc. SIGGRAPH 2001, Los Angeles, CA, August, 529-536, 2001
  and other pubs by O'Brien.
  
  --
  word.
2. Re:Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards? by Jerf · 2004-05-02 07:16 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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! by MistaE · 2004-05-02 06:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

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?