Why are games harder to play than videos?

[fgocards]

I know this is kind of a dumb question, but I've always wondered; how come low-end PCs can play videos of big explosions and high detail objects no problem, but when it comes to gaming, a much much higher end GPU is needed?

I mean, you can go onto YouTube with a sucky computer, watch a Battlefield 3 video in 1080p, and have no lag. I guarentee though when Battlefield 3 comes out on October 25th, it will take a very high end PC with at least a 6870 to run the game at max settings with fluid FPS.

Why is this?

Thanks for taking the time to view, and hopefully answer this nooby question.

 

[The Halo Don]

3D>2D

Meaning, your just watching a video thats flash, while with a game its an entire 3D application.

 

[illfindu]

Also the OS can preload video thats coming up, While with a game it doesn't know exactly what its suppose to display next. Not a huge difference but it does change things you could load a hole video in to ram but you cant load every texture, model , or physics effect that could happen in the hole game

 

[mjsharma]

lol
thats the difference between 3d and 2d?
what you see in the video and the game is same thing still a difference ?
well i think thats because in a movie all the things are already processed and your gpu dont have to process the entire graphiocs of the video, I mean the vectors and all those things dont have to be created again there is not calculation and lighting and all those things involved because its already done..
when you play a game try running fraps and capture the video play it in media player later on and you can see the difference in gpu usage
but have you ever tried rendering 3D images? try Autocad you can see how much time it takes just to render one frame..
you need a Quadro to get things done fast in this case
for some info you can go through these links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(computer_graphics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_rendering
all these calculations are done to create a dynamic object in a game so its a bit heavy task and if a game has more detail then it gonna be really difficult to process so you will need a more powerful gpu to preocess the frames
I dont have much info on these things.. so i can be wrong.. correct me if I am

 

[iam2thecrowe]

+1, a video is rendered in 2d and no intelligence is required to calculate anything in the scene, it is all pre set. A game is rendered in 3d and has to have all the effects calculated in real time and takes a lot more processing.

also, think about a movie like toy story.....all that had to be rendered in 3d before they put it on a DVD. Your DVD player doesnt render the scenes, they are already there. Otherwise we would all be using our dvd players for gaming......

 

[illfindu]

Idk if you where talking about me but i wasn't saying thats the difference between 2d and 3d i was just making a comment about keeping things in ram.

 

[mjsharma]

Idk if you where talking about me but i wasn't saying thats the difference between 2d and 3d i was just making a comment about keeping things in ram.

I wasn't talking to you buddy