VFXVeteran
Banned
All,
Every single generation, I get a lot of people that think games will approach photoreal quality found in CG movies. And every year we get absurd threads claiming cutscenes from exclusive games are within that realm. We even have some developers bold enough to make those claims knowing that the hardware isn't anywhere close to making these kinds of claims. Yet, here we are..
Instead of fighting the opinions to no avail, I'd like to instill a dose of reality based on your own "judging" terms that you use for claiming these games will look CG (even in cutscenes).
Let's take a look at the cream of the crop rendering from current-gen and next-gen cutscenes and compare them to the best CG from the hit Netflix Original TV series - Love, Death, Robots. You should quickly come to the conclusion that we are still far far away.
#1 Claim - This console with optimization (whatever that is) will be able to create cutscenes near CG level quality (if not match) with enormous geometry bandwidth due to the SSD! Look at the Order 1886.
#1 Fact - These shots don't take a hard stare to know they are too gamey. While the color grading is great, everything else falls apart. The fog in the background is 2D, the skin on the werewolf is not accurate, his muscle don't have animation and his fur is not enough fidelity.
Here's LDR's implementation of a werewolf:
These images render every single hair folical as geometry curves with multiple verts per strand of hair, multiple bounce GI lighting within the fur, full path-tracing, extremely high resolution textures (with layers), sub-surface scattering and enough geometry primitives where LOD isn't even needed.
#2 Claim - PS hardware rendered this Spiderman game cutscene with just 1.8TFLOPS! You declare that this is amazing looking graphics! Look at the particles and dust! Imagine what it would look like with 10TFLOPS? 12TFLOPS?
#2 Fact - In this spiderman cutscene, the FX are jarringly bad compared to CG. The smoke disappears almost immediately and it's not fully volumetric and they are not lit with the same light source in the scene, so they "pop" out at you.
Here's LDR's implementation of a true volume lighting where particles persist and the FX are rendered with very complex algorithms not possible on hardware today (or even tomorrow).
#3 Claim - Hellblade 2 detail is incredible. XSX is capable of CG in cutscenes, look at the face animation and particles!
#3 Fact - Hellblade 2 looks the closest I've seen to CG from the trailer, but it still has things that give it away as a game. Look at the big pixels for particles. Also the fog in the background doesn't have enough range and you can see the transition. It's also a 2D effect. Facial animation is incredible though (using mocap).
Here's LDR's implementation of removing all of the tricks used because of lack of powerful hardware. The quality in rendering appears close when you look at face to face but notice the lighting. The differences in lighting is remarkable. Check out the volume lighting and how real particles are supposed to look (not colored circles from the old Quake days). The render of the blood is simply not possible for at least a decade. Those are real fluid simulations with sub-surface scattering, using implicit surfaces which blend spherical meshes together, ray-marching to get the final material color and fully physics-based.
#4 Claim - Cyberpunk will lead the way for next-gen consoles with ray-tracing and incredible lighting.
#4 Fact - while Cyberpunk has excellent art direction, great use of colors, incredible level design and good color palette. It is also restricted by the hardware with respect to true accurate path-traced lighting and expensive shaders.
Again, here is what we truly want in hyper-real scenes and excellent quality materials that are physically accurate.
Here is a scene in LDR that could *possibly* make it to next-gen targets as gameplay but highly unlikely!
In closing: Before everyone gets ahead of themselves and start making threads about these consoles (or even Ampere equipped PCs) putting out photoreal CG quality games, please take a look at this thread, take a deep breath, and continue to wait for it.
Every single generation, I get a lot of people that think games will approach photoreal quality found in CG movies. And every year we get absurd threads claiming cutscenes from exclusive games are within that realm. We even have some developers bold enough to make those claims knowing that the hardware isn't anywhere close to making these kinds of claims. Yet, here we are..
Instead of fighting the opinions to no avail, I'd like to instill a dose of reality based on your own "judging" terms that you use for claiming these games will look CG (even in cutscenes).
Let's take a look at the cream of the crop rendering from current-gen and next-gen cutscenes and compare them to the best CG from the hit Netflix Original TV series - Love, Death, Robots. You should quickly come to the conclusion that we are still far far away.
#1 Claim - This console with optimization (whatever that is) will be able to create cutscenes near CG level quality (if not match) with enormous geometry bandwidth due to the SSD! Look at the Order 1886.
#1 Fact - These shots don't take a hard stare to know they are too gamey. While the color grading is great, everything else falls apart. The fog in the background is 2D, the skin on the werewolf is not accurate, his muscle don't have animation and his fur is not enough fidelity.
Here's LDR's implementation of a werewolf:
These images render every single hair folical as geometry curves with multiple verts per strand of hair, multiple bounce GI lighting within the fur, full path-tracing, extremely high resolution textures (with layers), sub-surface scattering and enough geometry primitives where LOD isn't even needed.
#2 Claim - PS hardware rendered this Spiderman game cutscene with just 1.8TFLOPS! You declare that this is amazing looking graphics! Look at the particles and dust! Imagine what it would look like with 10TFLOPS? 12TFLOPS?
#2 Fact - In this spiderman cutscene, the FX are jarringly bad compared to CG. The smoke disappears almost immediately and it's not fully volumetric and they are not lit with the same light source in the scene, so they "pop" out at you.
Here's LDR's implementation of a true volume lighting where particles persist and the FX are rendered with very complex algorithms not possible on hardware today (or even tomorrow).
#3 Claim - Hellblade 2 detail is incredible. XSX is capable of CG in cutscenes, look at the face animation and particles!
#3 Fact - Hellblade 2 looks the closest I've seen to CG from the trailer, but it still has things that give it away as a game. Look at the big pixels for particles. Also the fog in the background doesn't have enough range and you can see the transition. It's also a 2D effect. Facial animation is incredible though (using mocap).
Here's LDR's implementation of removing all of the tricks used because of lack of powerful hardware. The quality in rendering appears close when you look at face to face but notice the lighting. The differences in lighting is remarkable. Check out the volume lighting and how real particles are supposed to look (not colored circles from the old Quake days). The render of the blood is simply not possible for at least a decade. Those are real fluid simulations with sub-surface scattering, using implicit surfaces which blend spherical meshes together, ray-marching to get the final material color and fully physics-based.
#4 Claim - Cyberpunk will lead the way for next-gen consoles with ray-tracing and incredible lighting.
#4 Fact - while Cyberpunk has excellent art direction, great use of colors, incredible level design and good color palette. It is also restricted by the hardware with respect to true accurate path-traced lighting and expensive shaders.
Again, here is what we truly want in hyper-real scenes and excellent quality materials that are physically accurate.
Here is a scene in LDR that could *possibly* make it to next-gen targets as gameplay but highly unlikely!
In closing: Before everyone gets ahead of themselves and start making threads about these consoles (or even Ampere equipped PCs) putting out photoreal CG quality games, please take a look at this thread, take a deep breath, and continue to wait for it.