Photorealism is a few months away!

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Circuitbreaker8

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Last week we released a single screenshot from PGR3 which seemed to cause quite a stir all over the Internet...

Initially, people claimed it was just a photograph! I think people have pretty much come to the correct conclusion now though - this is what people can genuinely expect from the next generation of video games. Bizarre Creations are proud to be one of the developers leading the charge toward High Definition, and we're very pleased with the results so far.

As a small gift to all of you who still refuse to believe that last week's image was a real screenshot, here we have the wire-frame version of the same scene, captured from the same dev kit that the original screenshot was taken. After reading the comments from all over the web (ranging from "That's awesome" to "That's a fake!"), we felt we had to release something which proved we're not messing with you.
http://www.bizarreonline.net/news/images/studioupdate/nyshotwire.jpg

Some people also claimed that we only showed this particular building because it's our most impressive. That's simply not true... and I wanted to work out a way to prove it to you. So as I wandered over to Chris's desk to get this wire-frame shot I decided that I would ask him to grab whatever was on his screen at that particular moment. After a couple of seconds of fiddling with his 360 controller to get the best angle, Chris rendered out this new shot for us. This is New York City again, in a slightly different area of town - and as with the shot last week, it's just a random street rather than a specific 'showpiece' area that some were worried about.
http://www.bizarreonline.net/news/images/studioupdate/nyshot2.jpg

Yes, it is possible to get all areas of the game that need it up to this level of detail – that’s what you get for 2 years work with up to 35 artists here at Bizarre, plus additional help from outsourcing companies! Some areas (ie. those with simple buildings in real life) won’t be as detailed, but where buildings are that complex, the game will be that complex too. And in case you don’t believe me again, the wire frame screenshot is printed below, taken immediately afterwards from the same dev kit, by switching the game into wireframe mode.

http://www.bizarreonline.net/news/images/studioupdate/nyshot2wire.jpg

This is how PGR3's artwork looks right now. On actual 360 hardware. Please bear in mind, however, that you're still looking at a work in progress video game, and that the final in-game effects and lighting aren't even in place yet. We're still a long way from the finish line, but things will only improve from this point on. Start preparing now, and save your pennies for a widescreen HDTV and surround sound system. Although the game will still look stellar on a regular TV, you'll get the best experience when you go High Def.

In other news, Roger (our super code monkey) did a small show 'n' tell for the team. He demonstrated some of the new effects that have recently been put into the game. A whole bunch of us crowded into the meeting room, and saw the game running in all it's 720p glory on a huge projector. Running into barriers and watching the crowd scatter in terror never gets old!

In our debug build, we can detach the camera and wander over the cityscape, without having to worry about driving our car to the particular bit of track we want to look at. It really helps when you need to get a good look at some of the buildings or other geometry in the game. Whilst I was whizzing about in the debug camera, I stumbled upon something really impressive...

When you zoom right up to the back of your car, you can actually see gases being vented from the engine! You notice heat haze at the back of your car's exhausts! It ripples the air around it, and gives the impression of heat blasting over the back bumper of your super car. (I'll try to get a screenshot of this soon). It's simply awesome - Should. Have. Sent. A. Poet.

Anyways, check back next week for more updates!

SOURCE


EDIT: Please don't hotlink images from another site's server. - Lethal
 
The reason nobody believes this is quite simple.

For years now game designers have been loading their wireframes into better programs, such as 3d studio and maya and from there, rendering out screenshots. To give everyone an idea of ovject detail.

However, later, when the game is played, the graphics are far worse as it is instead using some sort of real time engine that isn't capable of producing the same quality as these more expensive programs can.

Most see the same with this, incredible renderings, however, when they go to play the game, the quality will be less.

Although, time will tell... it's still not what I'd call "photorealistic" but it's getting VERY close!
 
After Excitebike for the NES, graphics (and audio (and level editing, for that matter) ) just took a turn for the worse . . .

:shakes head slowly:
 
*yawn* I'll believe it when I see it. I'm sooooooo ridiculously tired of developers touting their "next big thing in graphics" only to have the game look like everyone else's. No matter HOW many times they say, "This time it's for real!" :eek:
 
Realistic backgrounds are all well and good, but as long as living things don't look alive and don't move in a realistic manner, the illusion is shattered.
 
WhyYouLoveMe said:
*yawn* I'll believe it when I see it. I'm sooooooo ridiculously tired of developers touting their "next big thing in graphics" only to have the game look like everyone else's. No matter HOW many times they say, "This time it's for real!" :eek:
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Why not? Doom3 delivered. HL2 delivered. People said the same thing about oblivioin when they first released screens, but now, everyone's positive it will deliver.
 
jon_k said:
People said the same thing about oblivioin when they first released screens, but now, everyone's positive it will deliver.
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Hey quit overhypin' my RPG. :D

HL2 did indeed look pretty impressive in spots. Great texturing. The above pic has just enough jaggies to be believable, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.
 
eggrock said:
Hey quit overhypin' my RPG. :D

HL2 did indeed look pretty impressive in spots. Great texturing. The above pic has just enough jaggies to be believable, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.
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Ya... I need pudding, eh.
 
I've looked at other screenshots for this game, and I have to say the building and street detail is photorealistic, however, the models they are useing for the cars still leave something to be desired. They are darn good, but in the actual game, it isn't going to be cinema quality because of the car models.
 
Not really, have you seen the other next gen titles? I mean, if X360 can run Unreal 3 with complete ease ( 720p/1080i + AA ) then this isn't very far off.
 
Steel Chicken said:
Fun > Eyecandy
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Project Gotham Racing 2 is one of the best racing games i've ever played! And i'm a huge racing nut ;) This one should be a blast online! Gotham TV looks sick :D
 
It looks like the whole building side is just one photo converted to a texture. The windows, the signs ect. From the right angle it looks perfect, but in game it will look pretty pathetic.
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
It looks like the whole building side is just one photo converted to a texture. The windows, the signs ect. From the right angle it looks perfect, but in game it will look pretty pathetic.
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"This is how PGR3's artwork looks right now. On actual 360 hardware. Please bear in mind, however, that you're still looking at a work in progress video game, and that the final in-game effects and lighting aren't even in place yet. We're still a long way from the finish line, but things will only improve from this point on"
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
It looks like the whole building side is just one photo converted to a texture. The windows, the signs ect. From the right angle it looks perfect, but in game it will look pretty pathetic.
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and you know that because you've played the game, right? :rolleyes:
 
jon_k said:
and you know that because you've played the game, right? :rolleyes:
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well no that guy has a damn good point.. you can easily plaster photo sourced textures all over flat poly's and will look lame when your viewing from an angle other than close to head-on.. and that's exactly what those pics look like, you can still tell practically everything on that building is flat, made of a single poly.. photo realistic in a screenshot maybe, but I think we can assume it won't be very photo realistic in-game
 
WhyYouLoveMe said:
*yawn* I'll believe it when I see it. I'm sooooooo ridiculously tired of developers touting their "next big thing in graphics" only to have the game look like everyone else's. No matter HOW many times they say, "This time it's for real!" :eek:
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I'm so ridiculously tired of fan-bois touting their system's "next big thing in graphics" only to have the games look like everyone else's. Fixed.

P.S. I don't remember anybody calling "render!" on Doom 3 or HL2.
 
finalgt said:
I'm so ridiculously tired of fan-bois touting their system's "next big thing in graphics" only to have the games look like everyone else's. Fixed.

P.S. I don't remember anybody calling "render!" on Doom 3 or HL2.
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I don't remember anyone calling Doom3 or HL2 "photo realistic" either. Dude, both those games looked gr8, I agree, but these "pics" that are being flung around of new 360 games are rumor-fodder. I'll believe it when I see it.
 
Meh...I'd hardly call those photorealistic. The graphics are impressive, but these are fixed, rigid structures. Photorealism here is simply a matter of high poly count and high-resolution texturing mixed with a little design talent.

Photo realism in anything but rigid environments is still a long way off. This sort of thing represents another step in a decade of incrementally better graphics.

Call me when you have photo-realistic fully interactive environments and characters, and we'll talk :p
 
finalgt said:
P.S. I don't remember anybody calling "render!" on Doom 3 or HL2.
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That's because id and Valve never released anything that could be mistaken for a render. They're both old-timers in today's game industry, and they know that the hard-core gamers that are their core audience aren't impressed by insubstantial flash.
 
PopeKevinI said:
That's because id and Valve never released anything that could be mistaken for a render. They're both old-timers in today's game industry, and they know that the hard-core gamers that are their core audience aren't impressed by insubstantial flash.
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This is perhaps the funniest thing I have read today.

It's not a photrealistic render, heck, even with pre-rendered stuff, things are STILL not photorealistic.

It looks good, but it's a lot of baked in light maps and some normal mapping to make flat mapped planes look nicer. Run around, dynamically light it, build an ACTUAL map, and you will see things look worse, or have to be scaled back.


HL2 and DOOM3 had the same things. The closer you got to screenies being a playable version, the less and less they looked liked the major eyecandy form the early mind-blowing demos. Evolutionary, and more than ever before, but you were still playing in a world of tradeoffs.

If it still looks that good with 10 other buildings visible, 20 people on the street, while I am running around looking all over, and regardless of me being (virtually) across the street or 5 inches from the wall, then it'll really be something.

other than that, hack in normal maps, and I think source could probably give you something 90% of that screenie with their process of baking in GI using softimage when doing the textures. Then carefully choosing the lighting for the map. (which is probably pretty close to what is going on in that pic).
 
Techx said:
well no that guy has a damn good point.. you can easily plaster photo sourced textures all over flat poly's and will look lame when your viewing from an angle other than close to head-on.. and that's exactly what those pics look like, you can still tell practically everything on that building is flat, made of a single poly.. photo realistic in a screenshot maybe, but I think we can assume it won't be very photo realistic in-game
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a single poly? Did you miss the wireframe screenshot? :rolleyes:
 
jon_k said:
a single poly? Did you miss the wireframe screenshot? :rolleyes:
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Yeah, the wireframe was the one that proved it. It only had better textures. The upperpart is just a normal box with windows painted on it. Same with the banisters, it's a box with railings painted on. For all the flash, it's still basically just a plain box with stuff painted on it.

You need more than just higher res textures to be called photorealistic. If it was that shallow, then all you need is take a few snapshots with a digicam and map it on a box and presto, a photorealistic house!
 
I dont think you guys realize this is a RACING game, and there are going to be hundreds of buildings like this :rolleyes: Name a PC game that can even come close to that before talking trash about it. Heck, the lighting effects aren't even implemented! It'll look a lot better when the textures are bump mapped.
 
FlatLine84 said:
I want quality like the final fantasy movie.
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Wait til the next-next gen console :)

About the kind of quality in the screenshots, the game it's from is PGR3...I doub't you would be able to notice such fine quality anyway while moving at 120mph trying to get some "kudos" points, unless you stopped to look, and by then you'd have already lost the race.
 
Circuitbreaker8 said:
I dont think you guys realize this is a RACING game, and there are going to be hundreds of buildings like this :rolleyes: Name a PC game that can even come close to that before talking trash about it. Heck, the lighting effects aren't even implemented! It'll look a lot better when the textures are bump mapped.
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Exactly. We've got people ooohhhing and aaahhing over a racing game and calling flat buildings photorealistic :rolleyes: Save those oohs and aahs for the games that really deserve it.

BTW, the lighting effects are implemented. Look at the upper right, you've got the sun reflecting off the wall :p
 
It really does not look all that real to me. Lots of big polys.

But the good news is that Bizarre does not have the best artists. Many games look better than PGR2 so you can expect even better from a handful of other games.
 
How about making games more fun to play instead of better looking. I am tired of game developers talking about the revolution in graphical realsim and not disussing new ways to make games fun.
 
1186 said:
How about making games more fun to play instead of better looking. I am tired of game developers talking about the revolution in graphical realsim and not disussing new ways to make games fun.
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Gotham TV allows every player on Xbox Live to be someone in the crowd and watch a race

They haven't talked much about anything else..
 
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