Top Technologies of Next-Gen Gaming

SlappingOysters writes "Gameplayer is running an article that examines the key technology developments of the next-generation of gaming. They go into plenty of detail as to why they believe each piece of technology is helping to take gaming on the PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii to more spectacular heights. They also have a related story which takes a look at the best game engines of next-generation games."

Comments

Mind Control?

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Widespread use of non-standard inputs. You know, like a little wand we could wave around... or a light sabre ... Only, this time, with decent graphics.

Re:Mind Control?

[Singularitarian2048]

Exactly, that's what's missing from this list.

I want a set of cameras to track my movements (in my living room) and map them onto the movements of a video game character. Eyetoy does this somewhat already, but you need multiple cameras to do it right.

Re:Mind Control?

[spyrochaete]

Sega licensed a third-party motion detector product for the Genesis in the 90s, but took it off shelves almost immediately. People were flailing all over the place, knocking objects and other people all around their living rooms. Profits don't outweigh the legal responsibility for a product like this. Plus, it'd be pretty exhausting to play Mario.

Wait....

[AKAImBatman]

...are we talking about the next generation, or this generation? Because the formerly "next-gen" systems are already here. We can stop referring to them as "next-gen" now. In fact, using that moniker is starting to get a bit confusing as consumers are beginning to look out toward what the 2011-2012 generation will bring (if anything!).

Re:Wait....

[AKAImBatman]

on the next gen (ps3/x360)

See, right there. You did it. "Next-gen" and "PS3/360" right next to each other. That's bloody confusing. PS3 and 360 cannot possibly be "next" generation as they are here today and have been here for 2-3 years. The "next" generation is whatever comes after them. Even worse, the title of the article (Top 10 Game Technologies of the Next-Generation) uses a hyphen between "Next" and "Generation". Are they referring to some generation called "Next"? Maybe the kids who grew up with "Next" magazine?

Is there something wrong with saying, "Upcoming technologies for the latest game systems"? Or is that not hip enough for the Next magazine generation?

Please stop the abuse of the English language!

Re:Wait....

[chromatic]

However, do you not understand the meaning of a hyphen between nouns means?

Subtraction?

Re:Wait....

[moderatorrater]

There's no generation on the horizon. PS2 still dominates the market by large numbers. The best selling of the new batch is the one most like the last generation. The 360 et al are certainly not yet the current generation by most measurements.

I'm not trying to flame or troll or anything, but until the 360 or ps3 dominate the landscape or the generation after them is announced, they're going to be next generation. For the majority of users, the ps3 or xbox 360 are not their current consoles, they're the next one.

*sigh*

[Knara]

Still no VR total immersion interfaces =(

Also no sex droids =(((

Procedural Generation vs Virtualized Textures?

[SanityInAnarchy]

#5 is procedural generation -- which suggests that, rather than drawing each individual texture, we'd write algorithms and let them generate themselves.

#7 is id's megatextures, which suggests that, rather than doing anything algorithmic, we'll just add more and more detail to a gigantic image.

These seem to be pretty much direct opposites of each other. Are they suggesting that each will be good for different areas? Or do they just not know what they're talking about?

Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

Re:Procedural Generation vs Virtualized Textures?

[FroopY]

Procedural generation can be used for anything from models to textures to AI. In the case of textures it gives games the ability to generate them on the fly, allowing variation each time - so you can do things like making a different pattern of spots for a creature each time one is loaded. This also saves you storage space as each texture does not need to be kept on the drive, but comes at the cost of some processing power and RAM from generating everything and storing all the information in memory (for an extreme example check out http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger, a game in 96k).

MegaTextures on the other hand are a way of reducing memory requirements by only loading the needed parts of a giant texture - so rather than have say 20 different ground textures loaded into memory it only grabs the part of the texture corresponding to the ground that's currently in the player's view. The texture file itself still takes up a lot of storage space. You can also use the texture to let the game know what kind of surface a player is walking on - say if you wanted to slow down movement when running over sand or something it's easy to do by checking which part of the texture you're loading.

Each has it's own benefits and applications, and it's not like using one precludes the other. They both provide ways of making textures unique and non-repeating but this is only a part of what they can do.

Re:Missing one key tech

[meta-monkey]

Uh, because this is about the technology. And new technology can make new kinds of fun.

For instance, have you played the Star Wars: Force Unleashed demo on the 360? It's a free download, so go grab it. And it's AWESOME and FUN. And what makes it so much fun? Because you have control over everything. You can use the Force to manipulate pretty much any object in the game. For instance, I wanted to destroy a TIE fighter that was zipping around the hanger. Instead of just shooting at it like you would in any other game, I chose to use the force to rip one of the support beams for a walkway right out, and BEND IT in any way I wanted to put in the path of the flying vehicle. This isn't pre-scripted, or one of those things where it's "what you're supposed to do." You can deform most of the environment in whatever way you want. And it bends and deforms and breaks realistically, in real-time, based on the user's inputs.

And why can you do that? The brand new Euphoria engine the game runs on, which uses Digital Molecular Matter, that allows any object in the game to be defined in terms of basic properties that describe how it will break/bend/deform, etc. So now, instead of there being only certain objects in the environment you can manipulate in certain pre-scripted ways, you can do whatever you want to any object. It's fun as hell! And what makes all this fun possible? New technology, and a next-generation engine. (and yes next-gen is the correct term here, because we're talking about next-gen engines, not next-gen consoles)

Re:What about Star wars forced unleashed.

[severn2j]

Which is a perfect example of how you can put the latest technologies into your game and it will still be mediocre, unless you think long and hard about the gameplay..

Re:These are the top 10?

[A Pancake]

Graphical fluff works towards making a game a more immersive experience. Could Bioshock tell the same story and have the same expereince with the graphics engines of 6 years ago? Probably. Would the experience have been as immersive and therefore memorable? Probably not.