Gaming Effects Versus Hollywood, Part II

Features
By Tino Kreiss
published

Photo-Realistic Backgrounds

One of the greatest weaknesses in modern titles are often menus and displays showing information like life or stamina. The possibility of including photo-realistic displays are there, but these are not used. One example of this is Oblivion. The game world is intended to look real, but if you switch to the inventory, the magic menu or to the map, you are punished with a raw mass of pixels. This has even gone so far that the players themselves have put together a high resolution map modification.

The reason for this often lies in the origin of the game. For example, Oblivion was produced for the Xbox, and thus the developers assumed a TV screen would be used. As TV screens very often have a low resolution, and the writing needs to remain readable, the menus were designed for use with a lower number of pixels. As a result, PC gamers with high-res LCD displays are subjected to the full horror of colorless areas flickering.

This problem is less understandable when it comes to games developed for the PC, though. Why have the graphics designers of Stalker: Clear Sky gone to all the trouble to draw the PDA specially, when a photo-realistic background looks more professional? Game producers should take a page from the Hollywood production book; they are much better when it comes to futuristic displays and consoles.

Tino Kreiss
29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • lucuis
    It can only get better :)
    Reply
  • roynaldi
    Wasser -1, Wasser -3, -5, Wasserfall, Bewegungsunscharfe*.....

    German Tab names for the pics... Very Nice guys!
    *movementSharpness!?!?
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    Part 1 had german names for the images too. I don't see how that is of any importance though as the titles for the respective pages were translated. Some of the games were in german too in case you missed it btw (bioshock amongst others)

    Anyway. I read the article and can't help to somehow be disappointed. Sure it's well written and explained, but somehow there's something missing! it seems to be more of the first part and not enough hollywood somehow. There are like 85% gaming screenshots, 8% reallife and the remaining 7% are hollywood. Also the article only covers stuff hollywood uses and games do too - nothing mentioned of stuff that pc's cant do yet other than visual enhancements that aren't treated as manipulatable objects - but then hollywood doesn't really supply that either, as all their stuff is static each time it's displayed.

    In short : not enough hollywood, and too much pc tech.
    Reply
  • thr3ddy
    roynaldiWasser -1, Wasser -3, -5, Wasserfall, Bewegungsunscharfe*..... German Tab names for the pics... Very Nice guys!*movementSharpness!?!?Bewegungsunscharfe
    Reply
  • thr3ddy
    Crap sorry about the double post. Bewegungsunscharfe = Motion blur.
    Reply
  • Why are there no examples of the Source engine in these articles? The physics is unparalleled in a lot of ways. The new cinematic physics engine? Hello? What they do with characters alone (mostly in animation/facial animation) is amazing. I also don't notice any Gears/UT3 examples, which is just weird.
    Reply
  • Tis a shame you mention water graphics and have no references to Uncharted.

    @Anony-Guy the first example was UT3 engine (stranglehold. I must admit though gears 2 had better water graphics.
    Reply
  • hellwig
    I remember a cool water effect in Giants. If you ran through a body of water, the water would appear to react to your legs, and waves of water would rush up against the them. Of course, this wasn't really the water reacting, it was just a secondary effect being drawn at the point where the legs met the water. It still looked cool for a game from 8 years ago.

    I'm surprised there were no examples of water from Serious Sam. SS had transparent water, shadows cast underneath by the ripples on the water surface, etc..., and again, all back in 2000/2001. The Serious Engine was so impressive when it came out, far better than Quake III and UT, the other options at that time.
    Reply
  • cruiseoveride
    Where is the Playboy Mansion PC vs Real life comparison????
    Reply
  • JonnyDough
    What they need is better ripple effects now. When you walk through water, your character needs to slow and teeter more. Each stride should make noise, not just a general noise of sploshing. When you drop a gun in water, it needs come out dripping wet. When you swim, you need to do it in lunges, not smoothly. When the tide rolls in, the sand needs to change a bit over time. Your footprints need to disappear with each wave, etc. These little things aren't that hard to implement, and should not be taking up much system resources. I think it's just laziness on the part of most developers. There's always this "time limit" and "budget" that interfere as well...but then you have a monster giant corporation like EA who is spending money on stupid things like SecuRom instead of producing great games that will make sales.
    Reply