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[Blade2.0]

It's hard to put into words what I'm trying to say as a thread title. So, games haven't changed that much since the PS2 days, graphically, yes, they look much better but the underlying tech is still very similar.

Like, a racing game still has the car stationary in the engine, while the world moves around it, not that the car is actually driving on top of a road.

So while we inch ever closer to get out of the uncanny valley, the closer we get to that, the easier it is to see the gamey mechanics of these titles.

What made me start thinking about this was when I played Uncharted 4 on the PS5 recently. It was very easy to tell when the foliage loaded in from far away foliage to near foliage. It actually took me out of the immersion quite a bit. And with the 4k resolution I could tell that the Jeep wasn't actually moving, it was the world around the jeep moving. Things like kissing, you could tell they were two models that weren't actually locking lips. Just two very well rendered models that will never feel each other's embrace. When Nate eats an apple in the marketplace, I could tell it was just a new model being loaded in at each bite, and Nate himself never actually bit into anything. A slight of hand that we've only ever iterated on and made more refined, but never actually changed. It's why Ray tracing is such a breath of fresh air. A light source actually exists within the machine. Literally creating light in a world instead of just another texture made to look like light. And don't get me wrong, Uncharted 4 is a damn good looking game, but it's still just using the old tricks from bygone eras.

Do you think we'll ever get real worlds that characters actually run on and not just a simulation of running while new textures are loaded in? Will tracks actually exist that a car actually drives over in a game or are we destined to keep the illusion up indefinitely?

I guess when computing power can actually handle it, but for right now it gets easier and easier to tell that, yep. Grass just loaded into ram. Nate isn't actually running over something, rather he's running in place while the world loads around him. Not saying it doesn't make for a convincing picture, but these mechanics are getting easier and easier for me to spot as time goes on.

How do you feel about this? Do you agree with me? For myself, I feel the grainy nature of old resolutions obfuscated the wool being pulled over our eyes much more and better than now.

 

[Johnny Concrete]

I’m pretty sure the cars in modern games (Uncharted included) are actually moving and the world is stationary.
It might look that way since the camera is locked to those objects, but it wouldn’t make much sense to do it that way.

It would be an animation hell if you did and cost a lot of processing power to move all world objects instead of the main character.
Most engines like it when you can label stuff as ‘static’ since you don’t have to update light and shadows as much.

And the thing you mention about popping in is called Level Of Detail transitioning. And yes it sucks, it’s not just meshes either it happens with textures and shadows as well (even animations, go watch some distant animated animal or person: it often updates every 15 frames or less).

Some of that will definitely be fixed this and next gen with techniques like Nanite, though.

 

[buenoblue]

There is no car! It's a 2d optical illusion!

No all that's happened is you've matured enough to see behind the curtain. You will never have that child like wonder again. You are dead inside like us now.

Here's one for ya. Call of duty is just galaga with fancy optical illusion 3d graphics!!!
Think about it.

 

[nemiroff]

You made a reductive notion and for some reason you seem stuck in it. You could say the same about real life, it would seem like it's the world that moves around us and we're stationary.. which is kinda true depending on how you look at it.. I mean, our individual concience is always fixed in space to us..

Everything is a simulation of sorts, and LOD draw in doesn't mean the game doesn't track your coordinates and that it doesn't "move" you through its world per se. Star Citizen f.ex. excels at this, it is not "cheating" in that sense. The simulation is always in a 64 bit 3D accurate space even when space jumping, in real time. You should read up on how it works, it quite fascinating.

 

[Three]

 

[Three]

You made a reductive notion and for some reason you seem stuck in it. You could say the same about real life, it would seem like it's the world that moves around us and we're stationary.. which is kinda true depending on how you look at it.. I mean, our individual concience is always fixed in space to us..

While the OP has some details on how things work slightly wrong his point isn't the details. His point is that the magic is lost on him now.

It's like going to a magicians show and just enjoying the magic as a kid vs being old enough or interested enough to try and figure out how things are done then going to a magicians shows. You're no longer just enjoying the magic but concentrating too much on how things are achieved (even if you're wrong on some).

 

[TonyK]

I could tell that the Jeep wasn't actually moving, it was the world around the jeep moving.

This is almost philosophical.

 

[Griffon]

Like, a racing game still has the car stationary in the engine, while the world moves around it, not that the car is actually driving on top of a road.

How to say that you have absolutely no clue of what you're talking about.

 

[Filben]

This is pretty relativistic, isn't it? You could even argue the same in real life depending on your reference system. From our perspective the sun is moving around our planet, but if you change that reference system, leave earth and watch from another reference system you'll see the earth is moving. And the amazing thing is that both claims are true, as we see in every day's language when we say "the sun rises" or "the sun sets". You could also say the earth turned away but most probably don't do that.

When I'm on a train I don't feel as moving with 200km/h through the world, rather the outside environment moving past me. A person on the platform however will see clearly the train moving while the environment doesn't move past that person.

Neither is 'wrong'.

As for the kissing and apples... Well, it's fiction. You could ask the same questions in books and films and neither is from a "bygone era". It's how fiction work. You could even ask the same question about real life eating. You're biologically programmed to eat; don't eat long enough and you're whole personality, your whole being as a person is reduced to the single instinct of survival, of eating. Change a few things in your brain and every past experience, every future plan you had and everything that made you you is out the window and you're nothing but biomass, doing the most primitive code your cells are still able to execute. Maybe no consciousness any more? What's then real and what not? The term of "outside reality" loses its meaning with no reference system when you can't grasp it.

Anyways, I hope you're alright, OP. It's vidéo games and they're still awesome.

 

[Wildebeest]

 

[RoboFu]

You do realize it’s fake… right? It’s bunch of math equations.

 

[KuraiShidosha]

 

[BlackTron]

In other words, the better and higher quality everything gets, the more that highlights small imperfections.

No one worried about being pulled out of "the realism" on SNES. But now that we have ray tracing, VR, $500 consoles that act like a 3070, you see one jaggy seam and it looks "gamey".

He expressed his point poorly but it's easy to tell what he's getting at. This is true of everything, the more complete or close to perfect something is, the more a tiny imperfection will jump out at you.

Edit: I'm sorry but the examples of the way games work under the hood reminds me of talking about N64 when I was 13, you are TOTALLY clueless. Ray traced light is no more "literally light" than it was before. It's "literally" light in the same way it used to be, in that your TV is displaying it as light. Before it gets to your TV, it's just digital code and instructions. And light sources never worked as a texture. I get your idea -it's great that the way to display light is being calculated by a resource-heavy algorithm that allows it to realistically bounce off objects. But like physics code, no actual literal light or physics are taking place lol.

You are neither moving over the map, nor is the map moving under you. You are feeding digital instructions to a game console that will dynamically render the game world in accordance with wherever the camera needs to be. It's all 1's and 0's until you need to see it. There will never be a point in games where you can say "yay! I'm driving over the road now instead of the old way!" This association with the way the real world works takes place in your own mind only.

 

[HL3.exe]

Games are different from actual simulation calculation. That's why we call it 'game-logic'. Pretty much every aspect is smoke-and-mirrors, and duct taped together with a lot of hacky tricks just to make it run fast on consumer hardware, while still looking convincing.

There was an era where games used to strife more for accurate simulation calculation, mostly around the mid 00's, focusing on G.O.A.P ai tech and actually physics driven animation (instead of pre-made like we still use now). But all of these efforts where to computational heavy, especially on consumer grade CPU's (Combined with the stagnation in CPU leaps).

So most of these tech efforts where dropped and instead a lot of the focus went into GPU tech development, so mainly rendering leaps. That's one of the reasons why we see major jump in the form of ray tracing, and less so in the form of game-logic and simulation complexity.

This 'gamey-ness' could be overcome if tools and single threaded CPU tech would see a big leap and dev can use these resources to focus on better physicalizing game-worlds. Better/ more accurate collision models, physics driven animation, etc. But it'll be a long time before we get there. (If we ever will). So fot now, expect game to focus more on visual leaps (GPU based), instead of leaps in 'game-logic' (CPU based).

 

[LordMuffin]

OP, I'm afraid to break it to you, but there are no actual rays of light in your console, just as much as there is no miniature pianist inside your car stereo.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Like, a racing game still has the car stationary in the engine, while the world moves around it, not that the car is actually driving on top of a road.

Not sure what you meant by that, but have your heard of our lord and saviour Beamng?

 

[crackajack]

And with the 4k resolution I could tell that the Jeep wasn't actually moving, it was the world around the jeep moving.

I guess might be true for SP, especially for endless terrain, like the train ride in Uncharted 2, but no way a race track is loaded and moved around several cars in MP racers and then somehow synced to everyones display. Must be easier to load the entire track with its limits and move each car on this one track. Within the simulation rules and visual approximations games require.

Do you think we'll ever get real worlds that characters actually run on and not just a simulation of running while new textures are loaded in? Will tracks actually exist that a car actually drives over in a game or are we destined to keep the illusion up indefinitely?

Collision detection is probably still rather taxing for the hardware, therefore we get still weird behavior of dead enemies and objects jumping around. Something that seems super simple. Pathfinding still weird sometimes.
4k, fine, visuals kind of get close to real life photos, but there is so much stuff that is still years away before even coming close to Matrix or Holodeck levels of simulation it's not even funny. And I hope very much this gen we will get back to the revolutionary phases of the PS360 gen. The PS4 was great but sucked at offering anything real new, since the CPU was pratically equal to Cell, but now there should be a bit wiggle room.

 

[SmokedMeat]

You’re really ruining games for yourself, if you’re purposefully looking at them through such a critical lens.

 

[HL3.exe]

I hope very much this gen we will get back to the revolutionary phases of the PS360 gen. The PS4 was great but sucked at offering anything real new, since the CPU was pratically equal to Cell, but now there should be a bit wiggle room.

Yes, I hope so as well. But we'll probably see all those CPU cycles get spend/wasted on shader calling, even more draw calls then needed and maybe a couple more basic finite-state-machines (NPC pathing scripts) on screen then before.

 

[Fbh]

Can't say most of that stuff bothers me. In fact I think most games could do with more "gaminess" and less realism

 

[The Tourmaline Gorilla]

Although some of your understanding of how these engines work nowadays is incorrect (the cars actually move), I completely understand what you're saying. And as games try harder to push the cinematic experience/narrative, it becomes easier for the "gamey" bits to rip you out of the immersion; it happens.

Our brains know what is a natural, without even thinking about it, and as great as the best animations are these days, they're not perfect, by any means.

 

[brian0057]

If you treat videogames like the toys they are instead of the works of art people wish they were, you'll have a much better time playing.

 

[Blade2.0]

How to say that you have absolutely no clue of what you're talking about.

I've done some game making in Unity. At least how I did mine, the world scrolled, the character was just on a treadmill, basically.

EDIT: Granted, I am no expert and only made a flappy bird clone and an endless runner clone. If anyone can post some good in-depth videos of how engines are nowadays, I'd love to learn.

EDIT2: I thought racing games were still like this . I thought it was still mostly like F-Zero, etc. Just refined to the nth degree.