It's hard to put into words what I'm trying to say as a thread title. So, games haven't changed that much since the PS2 days, graphically, yes, they look much better but the underlying tech is still very similar.
Like, a racing game still has the car stationary in the engine, while the world moves around it, not that the car is actually driving on top of a road.
So while we inch ever closer to get out of the uncanny valley, the closer we get to that, the easier it is to see the gamey mechanics of these titles.
What made me start thinking about this was when I played Uncharted 4 on the PS5 recently. It was very easy to tell when the foliage loaded in from far away foliage to near foliage. It actually took me out of the immersion quite a bit. And with the 4k resolution I could tell that the Jeep wasn't actually moving, it was the world around the jeep moving. Things like kissing, you could tell they were two models that weren't actually locking lips. Just two very well rendered models that will never feel each other's embrace. When Nate eats an apple in the marketplace, I could tell it was just a new model being loaded in at each bite, and Nate himself never actually bit into anything. A slight of hand that we've only ever iterated on and made more refined, but never actually changed. It's why Ray tracing is such a breath of fresh air. A light source actually exists within the machine. Literally creating light in a world instead of just another texture made to look like light. And don't get me wrong, Uncharted 4 is a damn good looking game, but it's still just using the old tricks from bygone eras.
Do you think we'll ever get real worlds that characters actually run on and not just a simulation of running while new textures are loaded in? Will tracks actually exist that a car actually drives over in a game or are we destined to keep the illusion up indefinitely?
I guess when computing power can actually handle it, but for right now it gets easier and easier to tell that, yep. Grass just loaded into ram. Nate isn't actually running over something, rather he's running in place while the world loads around him. Not saying it doesn't make for a convincing picture, but these mechanics are getting easier and easier for me to spot as time goes on.
How do you feel about this? Do you agree with me? For myself, I feel the grainy nature of old resolutions obfuscated the wool being pulled over our eyes much more and better than now.
Like, a racing game still has the car stationary in the engine, while the world moves around it, not that the car is actually driving on top of a road.
So while we inch ever closer to get out of the uncanny valley, the closer we get to that, the easier it is to see the gamey mechanics of these titles.
What made me start thinking about this was when I played Uncharted 4 on the PS5 recently. It was very easy to tell when the foliage loaded in from far away foliage to near foliage. It actually took me out of the immersion quite a bit. And with the 4k resolution I could tell that the Jeep wasn't actually moving, it was the world around the jeep moving. Things like kissing, you could tell they were two models that weren't actually locking lips. Just two very well rendered models that will never feel each other's embrace. When Nate eats an apple in the marketplace, I could tell it was just a new model being loaded in at each bite, and Nate himself never actually bit into anything. A slight of hand that we've only ever iterated on and made more refined, but never actually changed. It's why Ray tracing is such a breath of fresh air. A light source actually exists within the machine. Literally creating light in a world instead of just another texture made to look like light. And don't get me wrong, Uncharted 4 is a damn good looking game, but it's still just using the old tricks from bygone eras.
Do you think we'll ever get real worlds that characters actually run on and not just a simulation of running while new textures are loaded in? Will tracks actually exist that a car actually drives over in a game or are we destined to keep the illusion up indefinitely?
I guess when computing power can actually handle it, but for right now it gets easier and easier to tell that, yep. Grass just loaded into ram. Nate isn't actually running over something, rather he's running in place while the world loads around him. Not saying it doesn't make for a convincing picture, but these mechanics are getting easier and easier for me to spot as time goes on.
How do you feel about this? Do you agree with me? For myself, I feel the grainy nature of old resolutions obfuscated the wool being pulled over our eyes much more and better than now.