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PGR3 Achieves Near Photo Realism
rtt writes "After some accused them of faking screenshots, Project Gotham Racing 3 developer Bizarre Creations have released some more information to prove their critics wrong. Thanks to the extra grunt of Xbox 360, trackside buildings are covered in 1024x1024 textures that are so detailed, they really do look like almost photo realistic. From the article: 'This week, the debate moves on to Textures. Thanks to the extra grunt of the Xbox 360's ATI-designed Xenos GPU, the trackside eye candy is clothed in super-sharp 1024x1024 textures, rendered in astounding detail.'"
me. in-game. non-replay. scenes. already.
/. as usual.
A texture file which you can import from an actual photo image makes a news story these days.
I don't see this would be hard for folks to believe.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand graphics programming: high-rez textures are relatively easy. It's getting the light in the gameworld to behave dynamically and realistically and to interact with those textures realistically that is the hard part and requires serious programming skills.
I could be 100% wrong, so, anyone with some insight care to elaborate or clarify?
Big Textures don't make games,
they only make pictures.
nothing travels faster than light - except the mind
I may be wrong here, but in the past 10 years or so of video game development, I haven't seen many improvements in the subtleties of the environment.
Let's take [generic street racing game]. The textures have gotten upgrades in terms of detail. Sure I can see the sides of these buildings as I fly by them at a simulated 150 miles an hour... not that I see very much of them, but they are becoming considerably more detailed. But there's still no traffic whatsoever. I mean there's the occassional pickup truck, and every now and then a semi, but you just don't see a traffic jam or a motorcycle gang.
Then there's [generic circuit racing simulation]. The cars are looking absolutely stunning, and the details of the track are becoming even more impressive... but again, something seems to be missing. You don't see pit crews, audience, or any detail more finite than the race track and the cars.
Don't get me wrong, what they're doing is impressive, but at a (simulated) couple of hundred miles per hour, you don't pay attention to the fact that the textures on the fire station are at 1024x1024. In fact... dropping the res down 480x480 probably wouldn't be too noticable for most users, even those with proper HDTVs.
One could argue that at those speeds, one wouldn't notice many of these details, but many would add something to the total experience.
It seems to me, though, that the use of these resources would be better utilized by making the experience more satisfying. Oh well.
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
So why dont they just show a movie of a car crashing into one of the buildings? should be fairly easy to do. Until then I cry FAKE.
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
'till I see the game running. Those images look very nice indeed, but I'm not getting excited untill I see real live screenshots of the game iteself running on real live 360 hardware.
The textures in GTA:San Andreas look almost as good in isolation. Whislt I can't say the graphics in that game are bad, in fact they're very nice considering the age of the game enigine, it 'aint photo realistic.
We've been hearing about photorealism in games for a long time now, ever since the birth of the CD rom, but it's yet to happen. Im not saying it's impossible, but I think it's going to take more than some nice textures to make computer graphics indistinguishable from photos. Heck, Hollywood can't manage it, even with huge render farms, it's not going to happen on a games console anytime soon.
Also, most games that have attemted photorealism in the past have been a bag of wank.
This is just more work of the Hype Factory.
It's a good strategy to make a big deal of those who say your game must be faked! "Look, it's so real people think its fake!!!!"
It looks like a video game to me. Nothing unbelievable.
Now I've seen Everything
I don't know anything about what the goal is, but beautiful backgrounds and models don't mean much if they're static and if you can't interact with them as in life. I'd rather see processing cycles dedicated to creating a sprawling city where no buildings are repeated... Or, as his is a racing game, making crashes as realistic as possible, so you feel like you're hitting a real physical object (and damaging that part of your car.)
No more games where the edge of the road is a giant wall, and where your car is a uniform block that runs until it hits something and explodes.
If you slap a large photo of a building on a texture, then it will be photo realistic as long as the geometry is fairly flat, and you don't get too close.