Frosty said:
This makes no sense. The motions of objects in the game hasn't much to do with graphics?
Exactly. Its a more or less physics problem. The CPU calculates angels for all limbs just as it does now. Just much better. You don't need an improved graphic to do motion. You need better motion routines. Why do you think we do motion capturing at this time? Because we cannot CALCULATE motion properly yet. But again - it is not a display issue.
Frosty said:
Except for when it is used, all the time.
Like? Tell me something (a move) the Warcraft 3 Engine allows that the Starcraft one doesn't.
Frosty said:
That sounds really inefficient to me. Instead of having a handful of models and textures, you have 800 billion little sprite animations.
Well in taht case you show how LESS you really know about graphics. Just take the WC series! WC1 and WC2 had exactly been your 800 billion little sprite animations. Only when PCs got stronger you got 3D. Scaling and rotating 2D images is incredibly less work then rendering a textured 3D model. And if you add up all the textures you'd probably end with more memory needed as well.
Frosty said:
No, that's one of those weird little lies that everyone believes. 32-bit color depth allows for a 24-bit color pallette and an 8-bit alpha.
Actually AFAIK 32-bit color depth means 24-bit color pallette and 8-bit wasted. Putting the 8 bit alpha into the pallette would be fairly inefficient computation wise so I'd avoid it. In any case it should be fairly irrelevant.
When I talked about color I ment color. 24 bit should be enough for everyone here.
If you want to talk alpha channel - then I agree 8-bit is too few. 16 bit would probably be sufficient however. These 16-bit alpha have as much todo with color depth as does the precision of the Z-Buffer however. None. So if I want to be picky (and by your definition) we already have 48 bit colors I assume.
Frosty said:
Yes, you say this, but that doesn't make it true. I don't think I've ever seen a game where bump-maps or specular maps weren't misused or poorly used.
Well it is a matter of people learning to do stuff. And also about hiring new people. In the start of computers programmers did all the graphics themself. They also did the sound themself. Now we have composers and graphic designers. We start to have 3D designers as well. But you'll need far more here. Again this isn't a tech problem.
Frosty said:
Ah but that's entirely impossible to prove, as nobody has been able to "get away" with anything yet, because no game's graphics have reached the point where any improvements are completely meaningless to the human eye, which is how we are defining "photo-real" in this case.
We aren't talking game graphics - not yet. But have a look at stuff like SigGraph. Prove by example I'd say. Now have a look at what they did 10 years ago and compare to todays real time graphics. Now take todays rendered stuff - we will see that one in 10 years real time rendered as well.
Frosty said:
Yes, but textures that are thousands of pixels by thousands of pixels in full color and uncompressed are very large in memory.
Indeed they are. Just as they are USELESS!
Frosty said:
About how big a texture do you think a game like Flight Simulator will need to cover the entirety of its landmass all at once without any repeating patterns, and without having a greater screen pixel to texture pixel ratio than 1:1 when seen from the perspective of an airplane on the ground? A pretty big one.
Maybe 5000x5000.
You don't cover its entire landmass all at once. That would be stupid. Why the heck would you want to do that. Just load new textures as needed. Also don't forget mipmapping and similar techniques. Not talking about natural distortions like motion blur, fog, ...
Don't expect 3D Modelling to provide MORE then reality does.
So all taht really would be needed is a big HD. But then your demand is unrealistic anyhow. Noone has pictures of that detail level of our world. That is just impossible.
Frosty said:
Also, I'm not sure I believe that claim about professional studios, but I will say that it's meaningless, because the images they are rendering are not photorealistic, and are also not done in real-time. You want to talk about comparing apples to oranges, comparing the movie industry to video games is exactly that.
? So stuff like Star Wars 1&2 isn't photorealistic?
And it is very relevant. Because what we saw 'yesterday' as prerendered we have today as realtime. And unless tech suddenly goes whacko this pattern will repeat.
