Confed said:
Of course not. That's not what I meant at all.
If you had the choice of being blind & deaf or not, what would you choose?
Besides you don't honestly think that the people who create the graphics nowadays are programmers? They don't write the images in code but they draw the 2D/3D images on a computer & often even mold the 3D figures in clay, and then use a 3D scanner to feed them into the computer.
Don't misunderstand me, I respect your opinion, that you much rather use your own imagination. I just disagree with it.
Are you sure you know how to work a computer, son? You know those 3d models aren't created by a 3D scanner, right? There's prototypes of such things, right now, but they aren't how those pretty 3d models get created.
That's right - those images are mathematical constructs which get transformed by your MMOG client (itself a lot of lines of computer code) which talks to your graphics card via drivers (computer code again) into that picture of an elf you can view at all the angles the camera's capable of. Most of the models in games these days started life in a modelling program, and even static backgrounds which were once 2d or 3d art are encoded (that's right, they're turned into computer code) so the program can show them in the menu screen or on a wall as a painting. Programmers work with computer artists (who are also sometimes programmers, due to the way some of these programs work). It's all code - anything that shows up on your PC is coded or encoded into data files translated by a program into audio or visual output, from your MP3s to your JPEGs to whatever flavor of model in your Unreal, Half-Life 2, or Halo games.
It's all code, when you get down to it - whether it's a MUD sending a text string that says 'you see an 8x12' room with an orc in it' or one that uses Direct3D to draw an 8x12 room with an orc in it'. Pictures still aren't always an improvement, however; there are some things I'd rather not see, like undead in bikinis, or fat ogres dancing around in bondage wear like they do in World of Warcraft.
Incidentally, text is NOT like choosing to be deaf and blind; I take it you don't know how to read my post either, do you? Or read much in general? Imagination's what those directors and artists used (often by translating text descriptions) to create those blockbuster movies or games in the first place, and the visuals and sounds involved. Peter Jackson read Lord of the Rings, and translated the words
THROUGH HIS IMAGINATION into the visuals that wowed audiences everywhere. Or did you think he suddenly found a way to travel to Gondor, or telepathically communicate with Tolkien to get both inspiration and the story? Or, heavens forbid, found the movie somewhere, since text descriptions cannot match visuals in conveying anything.
(or, of course, if they bring out something true to Wing Commander)
