What is stopping us from achieving photo-realistic video games?

>you'll notice that hollywood movies, despite exclusively using raytracing, don't go for the realistic look because it's a waste of time
hollywood movies are full of CGI and they use real actors

>moore's law slowed/died in the past six or seven years
>Dennard scaling ended in 2005, which significantly hampered the growth in performance per transistor (i.e. clock speeds), leaving the only significant area of growth to be through scaling (i.e. more cores)
>rasterised graphics becoming increasingly convoluted as they try to emulate real-world physics (i.e. the behaviour of photons), which slows progress as AAA games become more and more ambitious with the real-world effects they try to emulate (this can be avoided in most cases though, Path-traced lighting follows a far simpler set of rules, thus making game development far easier if it is used, with the main caveat being that it is far more computationally expensive hence why it isn't used today - RTX does not count, it is nowhere close to what it 'needs' to be
>law of diminishing returns applies as you approach an asymptote (in this case, the asymptote is absolute photo-realism in 3D gaming)
>diminishing returns from gaming companies (normal people are perfectly fine playing games that look as good as Fortnite) and far greater cost per step in render quality than was the case 10+ years ago

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Yes and when they use CGI it's still obvious and looks fake.

>What is stopping us from achieving photo-realistic video games?
Reality is complicated and artists can only approximate, but under close inspection the illusion always breaks down.
That is why most games today are stylized to a certain degree and do not attempt to imitate the inimitable.
This is also the reason why modern art is so "strange". At some point in (fairly recent) history artists realized the futility of trying to copy the reality, and went their own way.

not really, CGI is pretty fucking good these days, it's only really noticably fake on humans in specific circumstances

Why would I want to play games that look like real life? I'm playing games to "escape" it.

The first step into achieving semi-realistic render quality is the adoption of raytracing. Once we've done that, it's a matter of refining GPU architecture to more efficiently process rays of light in a scene. However, that's still imperfect and you do have limitations on the CPU side for realistic objects, so the best answer is that we need to think smarter, not harder (as we have been with raster graphics).
The biggest jump from graphics was during the 90s going from wolfenstein/doom to quake to half life. Half life 2 is where developments hit a wall, which is why Valve is still using its engine.

Disagree, I can't even watch movies anymore because of how fake everything is

the barrier to photo-realistic games is lighting, you need to do some technique like path tracing to get light to be accurate but integrating that function is almost impossible and using a Monte Carlo sampling technique is slow

What are you on? Even modern high budget CGI capeshit looks worse than some movies from 80 and 90s because those used actual props

Lighting is literally the only thing people have figured out
Realistic lighting is easy

Leaving subjectivity aside, it's a fact that raytraced CGI has become a mainstay in cinema. Disney doesn't invest millions into slowly rendering each and every frame of their movies for nothing. For example, recreating the faces of dead actors in Star Wars is pretty convincing, and without the CGI developments we've made in this millennium we wouldn't be able to get quite as close.

so you think 80s special effects look better than modern CGI?
if you put a realistic CGI effect in an otherwise realistic movie you wouldn't be able to tell the difference

Time.
Most game devs don't have enough time to make any decent R&D takes time and with lack of most important resource it's all down the drain.

>mub realistic graphics
Everyone but kids got tired of this meme.

Actual crysis did not look that good, even at 4k

>recreating the faces of dead actors in Star Wars
Saw that, it was awful, fake looking and completely pointless. When that came on screen was literally the moment when I lost interest in film as a medium

Except nowadays CGI is needlessly used for literally everything, and as a result it all looks fake.

Because realistic graphics doesn't mean a game will be enjoyable, so 99% devs and companies stopped giving a shit about spending billions on a pipe dream.

Ray-traced CGI has been the standard since day one, dude, it's older than rasterization.

I didn't say it wasn't.
The point is that video games don't have that technology, which is to answer OP's questions about why they aren't looking much better than before.

? "lighting" is practically rendering, you calculate a pixels illuminance based on the position of the light source and other objects. rendering is basically simulating light which is why its so slow. that's what ray tracing is, for each ray of light follow its path till it shoots off somewhere not visible.

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yes and people have pretty much nailed it
photorealistic rendering is here
it's motion that gives away than things are CGI

are you retarded? if motion looks like a give away it's because the lighting is weird and your brain can subconsciously pick it up. also we're talking about real-time applications and not movies that have been pre-rendered.

>? if motion looks like a give away it's because the lighting is weird
no, it's because the motion is wierd. We've pretty much figured out lighting. And yeah, we don't have capable enough hardware for real-time photorealistic graphics, but if you only consider lighting then we are close, unlike motion while requires astronomically more processing power and we haven't even figured out how to do realistic motion in offline graphics

>motion is weird
>of a plane, flying above clouds
Yea, you are retarded.

the development of computer graphics comes to an exponential halt.

an animation is a series of still frames that you re-render for each movement, which means re-rendering the whole scene for each time an object's position changes. again, if the motion looks weird it's lighting, unless the animator is garbage but that's not technology's fault

no, simple motion of rigid bodies is fine, its soft bodies, deformations, impacts that look wrong in CGI, everything appears too smoth and weightless

based

>unless the animator is garbage
Realistic CGI doesn't really have "animators" like tradtional animation does, it's a complex process of physical algorithms and motion capture and hand tweaking

I 100% disagree
youtube.com/watch?v=KKuIb1bFoEQ

Phororealistic graphics age like milk, and a unique artstyle is more enjoyable anyway.

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I hope you're being sarcastic

>in a thread about real time graphics
>keeps bringing up CGI

Cost.

>No argument
Nice, good job on agreeing with me.

follow the conversation thread

You can easily fool anyone with a still CGI image. Put someone infront of a CGI movie and you can tell when something is computer animated. It looks too smooth. Posting a video demonstrating the techniques they use doesn't change that

>Still no argument just rhetoric
Good job on agreeing with me, twice.

that is an argument, you're just butthurt about it for some reason
pretend that people can't pick out CGI if you want, they certainly can

>nothing has better graphics than real life
My eyes are so shit that video games actually do have better graphics.

Hardware couldn't keep up with Moore's law.

you should take your own advice, you'll notice the first post you replied to of mine said "photo-realistic games"

as long as we have gameworks and nvidia that is willing to pay the devs to slap it on and also do their job we will never have any game that will reach the limits..

It's not an argument, it's video that showed and explained everything you were talking about and how it's done, how physics of different actors affect animation, how lighting affects it, how soft bodies are created. Everything you were talking about, explained and showed that it's not only doable but also looks fantastic, and realistic.
All you have is "But I can see it" that is everything you have, you have no argument.

well it's kind of boring to talk about "why aren't games photorealistic" because the answer is obviously that hardware isn't powerful enough

this

I enjoyed Half life more than any rayman games ever created.

That video shows an approximation for the things I was talking about. The approximations people use aren't realistic enough to fool people. That's my point. You're saying "it looks fantastic". You're emotionally invested in it and offended by what I said instead of looking at the facts. I'm impressed by what they can do aswell, but we haven't achieved motion with CGI that's convincing enough to fool people yet

>You are saying it looks fantastic
That's because it looks good, realistic, movement is spot on.
>You're emotionally invested in it and offended
I'm not offended you fuck nugged, i'm making fun of you. You have no arguments yet here you are trying to dispute ME instead of the video, proving that you would rather Ad hominem than argue.
>, but we haven't achieved motion with CGI
Yes we have, and that video proved it fully.

I said we haven't achieved motion that can convincingly fool people. It's easy to tell when something is CGI by the way it moves. Again you're arguing from your emotions instead of looking at the facts

developers are just fat fucks that's why also VR

no, you're just a brainlet

That's fine. It was merely an example to get my point across. Would you however claim that it holds up well visually?

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back to arts school with you faggyboy

You have said that, but I have said we have achieved it, but I also provided video as proof. Again you're arguing from your emotions instead of looking at the facts

Realtime raytracing is essentially the "final solution" to photorealism as it is a physically accurate simulation of photon behavior.

We had photorealistic games in ps2 era and even before that

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Half life? Yes. Thing about photo realistic graphics is that you don't have to make them photo realistic but resemble them as realistic and your brain will do your job for you.
Like Golden eye for example still looks good, even if it's old game with old graphics, I know what they are trying to represent and thus I can fool myself into seeing it.

With highly stylised things, same shit.

That video doesn't prove anything. How can that video fool people? You don't even see the final render, and you can obviously tell it's CG because it's spiderman fighting a fucking monster. You're confusing "good animation techinques" with "animation techniques good enough to fool people into believing they're real"

Never been there, but Disney employees could sure benefit from taking an art class instead of just making whatever dumb bullshit pops into their heads

>art
the more fidelity the more it costs, there's a reason why there's a bigger gap between B games and AAA than in the playstation 2 generation.
>design
real life sucks dick. we pay designers to make fun hyperreal spaces, when was the last time you went through an office in a videogame that had small cramped interiors and thin doors? never because realistic spaces aren't fun to navigate with a controller.

That is video explaining shit that you said we can't do, softbody animation to be realistic. We clearly can.
>and you can obviously tell it's CG because
Oh I'm the one who is appealing to emotions, not the guy who literally says "BUT I CAN SEE IT"

I never said we can't do it. I said we can't do it convincingly enough to fool people. Stop being retarded

And to proof this you have what? You as non biased sample saying that "I CAN SEE IT"?
Well, colour me convinced.

imgur.com/gallery/ib8nW

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You want me to conduct a study for you?
I'm sure you've seen plenty of CGI stills that are indistingishable from reality
It's much harder to do that with something in motion

It's difficult to do and often requires so much hardware capabilities, it's never fully possible until a few years after release. Crysis was made to show off what the engine was capable of. Witcher 3 is the last example I can think of that was a benchmark title like that.

I also have seen CGI in motion and never knew it was CGI.
You are biased, you have no argument and you keep showing that every time to reply.

instead of writing games ground up, more and more bloated tools got used, slowing the whole thing to a crawl.
How many modern games are using webbrowsers as interfaces?
A lot of work doing nothing.
The number of times the whole interface is rebuilt because of a single button click...
We're making advances in technology, but whenever someone attempts to apply it, it gets counteracted by the generic-tool cancer.

Those were prerendered though, and even then we already have real time rendered games that surpass them.

If you want photorealism you need to take actual photos.

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Because standards are low. The average gamer doesn't give a shit. Games need to look "good enough", not good. Developers only care about how they can monetize every little thing. Games today follow a simple formula: copy a popular game, change it up just enough to be different enough not to get sued, don't actually finish the game before release as that's what paid DLC is for, bonus points if you can get away with making them buy the DLC and still not deliver a finished product, that way you can make them buy the missing pieces a la carte. Even MORE bonus points if you can add the missing shit on individually but not give the players control over what missing features they get even when they pay real life money for them (e.g. loot boxes)

>I also have seen CGI in motion and never knew it was CGI.
me too, but usually rigid objects, not close ups on characters
You're calling me biased but you come in here posting something saying "you're wrong because look how good this is", if that doesn't reek of bias I don't know what does, I have no bias against CGI

Prerendered just a 100gb of assests that come with todays games.

>"you're wrong because look how good this is",
Wrong, I reputed your points with ONE fucking video. it wasn't about "how good it looks" it was about points you made, that video reputed 100%.
I am biased as we all are, but I try my hardest not to bring bias into my arguments, but you on other hand have "BUT I HAVEN'T EXPERIENCED IT!" woothy fucking doo, I can also deny anything, it's fucking easy.
You have no argument, and you never made a single valid point in this thread.

I dunno, my dude. I'm not him, but the only CGI I've seen and not known it was CGI is when it is only to augment real effects. Like, for example, Mad Max Fury Road, most of the explosions and fire were real but with additional fire and explosions added in to enhance the scenes.

Your bias is incredibly obvious
You didn't refute any point I made, I said soft body motion wasn't realistic yet and you posted a video with an extremely cartoony fight scene
I am saying from my unbiased perspective that motion isn't good enough to fool people like lighting is
if that upsets you and makes you say WELL YOU CANT PROVE THAT then you have the right to your opinion

CGI is good at particle effects. It's soft bodies and things colliding with each other that really gives it away. Although all CGI tends to look too smooth in a way practical effects don't

Looks isn't the problem, I'd argue that games that aren't even for PC right now look damn photo realistic like Red Dead Redemption 2.

Making a game that looks like real real life isn't much of a trouble these days with the current technology, the problem comes with making that realistic game feel organic and natural, not just something that plays with a game pad, that breaks the inmersion more than anything else, that's why VR is next big step in video games, but it's too damn green right now.

Also, realism is worth shit if the gameplay sucks, that's why game like Super Mario 64 are such mater pieces, they prove that you don't need super fancy graphics if your game is fun and plays really well.

>extremely cartoony fight scene
Showing that you don't understand animation, and you didn't understand what you have to see in the video. Good job on showing your lack of understanding on the topic.
>I am saying from my unbiased perspective
You don't have unbiased perspective, your experience is your biased perspective.
>motion isn't good enough to fool people like lighting is
Good job on appealing to your senses, this isn't an argument this is a fallacy.
>if that upsets you
Bringing my emotions into this isn't an argument, it's a fallacy.

Hey, 0 arguments, how nice, I'm so glad you are agreeing with me.

>What the fuck happened? What the fuck went wrong?
(((THEM)))

Also, just to add to my comment, the gaming industry is a multi billion dollar one and by making games more realistic it means that more time will be spent on the game, that also means the game will be more expensive to produce and aside from a few studios, the video game industry can't afford long development times in the current market.

>appealing to your senses
are you fucking serious mate
the discussion is about FOOLING YOUR SENSES
I'm not some eagle eye who tries to spot CGI in every movie I watch
And yes, that animation is cartoony, it's a fucking superhero movie

>the discussion is about FOOLING YOUR SENSES
So what you were saying this whole time is "I think that CGI can't fool MY senses."? With is irrelevant because I give 0 shits about your senses, you and your opinions are not important to this topic.
>And yes, that animation is cartoony, it's a fucking superhero movie
Good job on again, showing you do not understand topic to any degree to have this conversation with anyone who isn't your mate at the pub.

rendering one realistic frame takes hours, if not days

>I give 0 shits about your senses, you and your opinions are not important to this topic
Like I said, if you're so afraid of my opinions you can bail out any time, I don't believe the way I percieve movies is any different from the average viewer
That fight sequence is cartoony as fuck, so are all CGI action sequences these days, they're full of people dancing around in ways people absolutely don't in real life
Your butthurt is getting embarrassing

What is stopping us from achieving video-game-realistic photos?

You only think Crysis still looks good because you learned it was the best looking video game years ago and never reexamined that belief. In 2019 it looks like an indie game. It was a huge advancement but every AAA game these days beats it easily.
We're nowhere near photorealism in games either. The lighting in games is still mostly cascaded shadow maps and SSAO. Materials have gotten better but they are still an approximation. The assets are very low resolution compared to what you see in the real world. There's LOD popping and flat textured surfaces everywhere. They don't even try to tackle the hard problems from offline CGI.
Maybe another 10x or 100x jump in GPU power will get us there.

>Like I said, if you're so afraid of my opinions
Why would I acre about your opinions? They are not conducive to this argument. You are irrelevant.
>That fight sequence is cartoony as fuck
Yes it was, but it also wan't the point, you missed the point and now are trying so hard too understand the point, yet failing hard.
>Your butthurt is getting embarrassing
All I did was point out that you have no argument and your use of fallacies is grater than one of flat Earther, I do not have emotional attachment to this conversation.