BBC: photorealism in games 2 years away

[CptStern]

Super-realistic computer games which will feature human faces as they actually look are at most two years away, developers have told the BBC.

At present, developers have not been able to create games characters with photo-realistic faces and expressions.

David Kunkler producer for Obsidian Entertainment and makers of Neverwinter Nights 2, said games are currently in an "uncanny valley."

"They look strange - they're too close to real, but not quite real," he added.

"Give us another year or two, and we'll be able to completely get across that uncanny valley," he told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6376479.stm

I disagree ...the more realistic it gets the more unrealistic it looks ...I mean Oblivion had stunning graphics but chracters looked like the walking dead ...it's the eyes, they never seem to get it right ..even HL2 which has very convincing npcs still suffers from that unrealistic realism. Computer animated films, arguable the forefront of computer animation have much larger budgets with a good portion of that going towards the actual animation and eventhey havent come close to realism ..video games that have to focus on many areas I cant see them all of the sudden throwing much more resources onto animation

they'd like to solve this problem with motion capture but that takes some of the creativity that the animator might have otherwise instilled into his work ..it just seems it's more of a cost/time saving feature more than anything else ..but we've yet to see anything so I'll reserve my full judgement till then

I for one would like to see realism but not so close that you'd have a hard time distinguishing between the two ..nothing spoils immersion like an npc who looks like he just walked out of an open grave

 

[Leviticus]

Guaging by faces then, yeah, two years from photo-realism doesn't seem all that far-fetched. Take a look at the environments in these games and it is a totally different story. Even the most simple room contains only a fraction of the detail that is required for photo-realism, let alone the actual picture quality itself.

It isn't like Neverwinter Nights 2 was some graphical achievement, anyway. Why is this news?

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6376479.stm

I disagree ...the more realistic it gets the more unrealistic it looks ...I mean Oblivion had stunning graphics but chracters looked like the walking dead ...it's the eyes, they never seem to get it right ..even HL2 which has very convincing npcs still suffers from that unrealistic realism. Computer animated films, arguable the forefront of computer animation have much larger budgets with a good portion of that going towards the actual animation and eventhey havent come close to realism ..video games that have to focus on many areas I cant see them all of the sudden throwing much more resources onto animation

they'd like to solve this problem with motion capture but that takes some of the creativity that the animator might have otherwise instilled into his work ..it just seems it's more of a cost/time saving feature more than anything else ..but we've yet to see anything so I'll reserve my full judgement till then

I for one would like to see realism but not so close that you'd have a hard time distinguishing between the two ..nothing spoils immersion like an npc who looks like he just walked out of an open grave

Well, it would depend on the game as to whether it would work. For example, in a uber-realistic Tom Clancy game, realistic visuals are nessecary (for the realism) however imagine a game like WoW with photorealsim D:
And yes, the people in Oblivion look horrible without mods.

 

[CptStern]

there's mods to make oblivion chracters look less like the walking dead?

and if cut scenes are where this tech will be used wouldnt it make the rest of the game bland by comparison?

 

[<RJMC>]

why the oblivion characters looks like walking deads?

 

[Fishlore]

Give me 8 bit games any day of the week. It's no coincidence that the more photo real games look, the less I play.

 

[CrazyHarij]

when will they start making games fun and worthwile again

 

[Stigmata]

Once the mainstream stops putting so much emphasis on realistic visuals and serialized games.

 

[StardogChampion]

You can't exactly make Oblivion the "bar" here. It's not even that nice looking. The horse riding isn't even as good as that little shareware game Mount & Blade.

I've been playing FFXII on the PS2 which is 6/7 year old hardware and the animations and designs are beautiful. I can't wait until the team that made FFXII release a game on decent hardware.

 

[CptStern]

You can't exactly make Oblivion the "bar" here. It's not even that nice looking. The horse riding isn't even as good as that little shareware game Mount & Blade.

I used oblivion as an example of how close to realistic faces are in modern games

 

[ailevation]

My theory is once games start looking like actual real life... that's when they plummet. Would you actually want to play a game that has the looks of what you see before you all around?

 

[J_Tweedy]

because you can do stuff you cant do in real life?

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

If this is true that in 2 years photo realistic games will come about, then just imagine HL3 (knowing Valve, it will take 3-6 years to develop).

 

[VictimOfScience]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6376479.stmComputer animated films, arguable the forefront of computer animation have much larger budgets with a good portion of that going towards the actual animation and eventhey havent come close to realism

And here I disagree (to a point). If you have ever seen Final Fantasy: Advent Children you will notice that some of the facial expressions, including eerily lifelike eyes, are absolutely stunning, along with the incredibly lifelike animations of charactes, hair, and clothing. While it is a LONG time (certainly not 2 years) before this level of quality is doable in a real-time game environment, it is getting very very close to real in the movies and some cutscenes. And yes, cutscenes that good make games look ridiculous at times.

when will they start making games fun and worthwile again

See most devs working on DS/Wii titles. :E

 

[CptStern]

And here I disagree (to a point). If you have ever seen Final Fantasy: Advent Children you will notice that some of the facial expressions, including eerily lifelike eyes, are absolutely stunning, along with the incredibly lifelike animations of charactes, hair, and clothing. While it is a LONG time (certainly not 2 years) before this level of quality is doable in a real-time game environment, it is getting very very close to real in the movies and some cutscenes. And yes, cutscenes that good make games look ridiculous at times.


See most devs working on DS/Wii titles. :E

I havent seen Final Fantasy: Advent Children but I have seen the spirits within ..and while I agree that's probably as close as we get it's still looks animated/stilted (it doesnt help that they took a stylistic approach to character design) and couldnt fool anybody into thinking it was real ..that's probably the easiest test that we've arrived at photorealism ..if you cant tell if it's real or not; I dont think we'll arrive at that level anytime soon ..perhaps in 10 years

 

[clarky003]

2 years away? whaa? I thought Crytek have the near photo realisim on faces down to a T, their facial expressions use muscle groups to shape the face mesh instead of morph targets according to a recent interview with the developers.

These developers the BBC interviewed must be out of the loop. Anyway I agree with the general idea of who cares, if the core game is shoddy whos going to give a damn about perfectly realistic looking and movings faces in games.

It does however open up possibilities for more emotionally driven interaction in games.

 

[Leviticus]

A photo-realistic CGI film? Live actors in front of a blue-screen would be far more practical if that were really the goal of animators today. It isn't. They want to create visually impressive piece of animation, not fool people into thinking they are watching a live action movie. Live action movies, on the other hand, want to fool people into thinking they aren't watching CGI, making them a much better example. Recent fantasy and sci-fi films more or less pull it off.

 

[theotherguy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6376479.stm

I disagree ...the more realistic it gets the more unrealistic it looks ...I mean Oblivion had stunning graphics but chracters looked like the walking dead ...it's the eyes, they never seem to get it right ..even HL2 which has very convincing npcs still suffers from that unrealistic realism. Computer animated films, arguable the forefront of computer animation have much larger budgets with a good portion of that going towards the actual animation and eventhey havent come close to realism ..video games that have to focus on many areas I cant see them all of the sudden throwing much more resources onto animation

they'd like to solve this problem with motion capture but that takes some of the creativity that the animator might have otherwise instilled into his work ..it just seems it's more of a cost/time saving feature more than anything else ..but we've yet to see anything so I'll reserve my full judgement till then

I for one would like to see realism but not so close that you'd have a hard time distinguishing between the two ..nothing spoils immersion like an npc who looks like he just walked out of an open grave

Well thats the definition of the uncanny valley man. Right now we are in the uncanny valley, very near a corpse. The more realistic we will make games the deeper we will go into the uncanny valley. But if we keep adding detail we will, with utmost certainty pass the uncanny valley. When we do that we will not be able to tell the difference between a photograph of a face and a computer generated face.

Here, I'll label the progression:
Block with Eyes>>Stick Figure>>Animated figure>>Stone statue>>CGI human>>Wax model>>corpse>>sick person>>healthy person

Currentley we are right behind the wax model on the very tip of the uncanny valley. People aren't necessarily repulsed by our figures yet, but they will be once gaming nears the latter half of the wax model phase and into the corpse phase. After that, we can only go up from there.

EDIT:
uncanny valley

 

[ktimekiller]

The clser they get to realism, i think the further away they get.

 

[Qhartb]

The best thing about having the power to do near-perfect photo-realism is having the power to do really cool non-photorealism.

 

[StardogChampion]

I think it's all about talent. If you get a great modellers coupled with the best animators something amazing could be achieved. I don't think Spirits Within even came close. For its time the character models weren't even nearly as good as they could have been.

See this for example. It craps on any 3D model I've seen in any movie and it was only made by 1 dude sitting at his computer.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=121&t=399499

I think characters that look like that in games will be possible in a few years.

 

[Asknoone]

Oblivion as the bar? lol

 

[<RJMC>]

See this for example. It craps on any 3D model I've seen in any movie and it was only made by 1 dude sitting at his computer.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=121&t=399499

holy motherfvker of god!

 

[clarky003]

I remember seeing that as a WIP , it's brilliant. In my opinion it's a benchmark against even some of the best human CG imagery.

That waxy quality is still evident though.

 

[Remus]

How about this

 

[CyberPitz]

Alan Wake had some pretty damn close photo realistic screenshots

 

[CptStern]

How about this

I'd like to see it animated before passing judgement; the issue is in animation not static imagery ..static images are easy to manipulate.

the issue is a bit like traditional animation; there is not one piece of animated work out there that could fool someone into beliving it's real ..but at that point why even bother because you could just use film ..so too with this technology ..unless it's implemented into general gameplay they might as well just use film if they're going to go with hyper-realism

ultimately animation will fail at capturing the human essence; there's over 50 muscles in the face alone with thousands of possible combinations ..animating a face to that level of complexity is not what this technology is aiming for ..at most it will have a few sensors to capture the overall gestures ..we're still a ways off from seeing an animated piece that will leave us guessing if it's real or not

 

[Cole]

Now we still need to get AI up there. I don't care if my games are photo realistic. I care if the AI i'm fighting can flank my ass properly.

What I think will happen after we can do photo-realistic graphics is photo realistic graphics on the fly. Think of it as Spore or Subversion.

Imagine a game full of huge cities(or bigger). Cities that are procedrually generated. The procedural generation gets down into houses, how the house can deform, the people inside of it, etc...

Even high-quality textures are procedurally generated. Think of a game with massive cities. Where no house looks the same, no house texture looks exactly the the same.

Now we just need some kick ass AI.

 

[Stigmata]

All I want from my games is good AI, a fun gameplay design, replayability, a good story, and a good art style. I couldn't really care less about photorealism. I want some artistic merit in my visuals.

 

[Hazar]

I actually believe we'll be very, very close in 2 years.

we'll see how crysis turns out though.

 

[TenaciousPLo]

Well, I'm not sure about 2 years, maybe 4-5 years for videogame graphics. BUT CGI animation is a lot closer to photorealism then actual videogame graphics. I urge EVERYONE to look at these two clips, and they both feature CGI animation better than Final Fantasy: Spirits within and probably Advent Children, though AC is better than SW in graphic/animation quality.

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/734/734817/vids_1.html Watch Starry Night TV Ad.

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/772/772076/vids_1.html Watch Intro Movie(HD)

Now there were some moments in those vids that could've been mistaken for photorealism..or the closest to it so far.

 

[Dan]

I think that the younger generation today is more attuned to recognizing CGI graphics. For example, my dad was completely taken by the 3d baby in Children of Men. He was also amazed by the gorilla in Mighty Joe Young and I bet he thought that they used live action to shoot King Kong.

 

[Raziaar]

and I bet he thought that they used live action to shoot King Kong.

You think your dad is an idiot?

 

[Tagaziel]

Games will never leave the uncanny valley in my opinion. Sure, they may be getting more realistic and realistic, but developers will never quite nail down the factor that makes human look, well, human.

It's different with stylized games, eg. Beyond Good & Evil or Deus Ex, where the artists themselves decide on what makes their human look human.

 

[Jintor]

I'd rather have more advances in Art Direction... let's see... good example like... Psychonauts? Or Grim Fandango.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

there's mods to make oblivion chracters look less like the walking dead?

Aye, try Ren's beauty mod, sorry I don't have a link but a search on google should reveal it.

 

[el Chi]

I agree with Stern that the eyes are one of the most important factors in convincing human NPCs and thus also one of the hardest to get right. I thought HL2 did it marvellously, certainly better than any previous game.
However I don't see that developers needn't vbe able to perfect this element of character creation and involvement.

 

[Reaktor4]

No chance. It's hard enough to make a render that is near realistic let alone a realtime game.

 

[Kschreck]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. It may not be 100% perfect but it may be very close. They did a Crysis demonstration for the engine and it already is coming really close to photo realism. Here is the video:


http://www6.incrysis.com/incrysis_dot_com_imagin3d_video2.zip


Even if photo realism isn't 100% achieved by 2 years I noticed that when the proper lighting and showdowing is cast upon the environment and characters as well as motion is applied it is much harder to notice that the characters and environment is fake. If you play a high end racing game or if you have seen the early PS3 tech demo with Alfred Molina (Spiderman) when they did the proper lighting and motion it looked very close to real. Personally I do think that it will be DX10 games (later ones) that will begin to look photo realistic.

We are so close with Crysis.

 

[Asknoone]

I'd like to see that pic en-larged. Alot of the quality would go woop.