What has the most empirically advanced graphics?

[p1t1o]

Inspired by another thread which got me thinking - what game (other software doesnt count, as there are probably physics simulations that are designed to run on petaflop arrays that would not only produce beautiful images but would kill the numbers put out by any top-of-the-line home based system) has the most advanced graphics?

Im not talking about what you think is subjectively the most "attractive" or pretty game, but which ones crunch the most numbers, in the cleverest manner, to produce what can be shown to be, the most "advanced graphics".

Anybody have any ideas? 

I remember "Crysis" was advertised as having highly advanced graphics as its engine supported graphical techniques that were not yet available on current graphics cards.

Any anecdote of interest is also welcome, as I suppose hard numbers might be difficult to come by.

 

Side-topic: its my opinion that graphical complexity in games has plateaued somewhat, now limited more by artistic creativity and available man-hours than software or hardware, hence the rise of "procedural" techniques.

 

(Mods: I put this in "Science" as it is related to software and hardware capabilities more than it relates to aesthetics, but feel free to move it around at will)

[FreeThinker]

https://www.quora.com/What-game-engine-has-the-best-graphics-of-them-all

[YNM]

I think there are a few facets of "graphics" :

- Good texture (including reflection, shadow, etc)

- Good poly (you won't see a spike unless it's just is)

- Good continuity (halfway about, ie optimized).

 

As I only run a potato, I think I'm not really qualified to answer this.

Just to poke though, while Adobe Photoshop would do the most amazing things with reflections and everything, you can make the model of an entire bridge down to the last nut and bolts in AutoCAD.

[cypher_00]

Not a game but i think the Unreal engine is still in top of graphics quality..

Especially when ray tracing is going to be used in new games..

Just look at this:

 

Remember that this is rendered in real time.. It's getting very close to the pre-rendered quality we are used to from movie CGI...

Edited April 6, 2018 by cypher_00

[wumpus]

22 minutes ago, cypher_00 said:

Not a game but i think the Unreal engine is still in top of graphics quality..

Especially when ray tracing is going to be used in new games..

Just look at this:

 

Remember that this is rendered in real time.. It's getting very close to the pre-rendered quality we are used to from movie CGI...

"Rendered in real time" on multiple $5000 Titan Vs.  Don't expect it on your desktop anytime soon.

[p1t1o]

49 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

https://www.quora.com/What-game-engine-has-the-best-graphics-of-them-all

Ha! It practically confirms that graphics quality IS more dependent on the art assets than the engine itself! Activating smug-mode.

So I suppose the question becomes: what game has the best assets?

Personally I think the aircraft in DCS are some of the finest objects in gaming at the moment.

Edited April 6, 2018 by p1t1o

[YNM]

6 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

So I suppose the question becomes: what game has the best assets?

... Everything ? XD

Well, I enjoy ETS2 (w/ ProMods) and ATS, I think those are the only two games where I get some good graphics. Other stuff goes mostly to simulation gameplay; Cities: Skylines can get you stunning graphics (esp. with mods), but that'd just annihilate my potato.

 

10 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Personally I think the aircraft in DCS are some of the finest objects in gaming at the moment.

Literally the same stuff with FSX. Especially the modded ones. Dovetail is just casing it under something else, it isn't Train Sim World vs Train Simulator.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

https://www.quora.com/What-game-engine-has-the-best-graphics-of-them-all

Error 504.

[FreeThinker]

2 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Error 504.

https://www.lifewire.com/504-gateway-timeout-error-explained-2622941

[PB666]

15 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Ha! It practically confirms that graphics quality IS more dependent on the art assets than the engine itself! Activating smug-mode.

So I suppose the question becomes: what game has the best assets?

Personally I think the aircraft in DCS are some of the finest objects in gaming at the moment.

Well even an apple IIe could, with the right converted make really great graphics, provided the right program .  it might take it 100 years to do it, your frame rates would be measured in the 1/X timescale and the whole thing would be dependent on you flipping in and out 620 kb 5.25" floppy disk.

With graphics is about the resolution of your monitor, the resolution of your video card and frames per second. The performance is the rate at which it can process δi/δt.

6 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

https://www.lifewire.com/504-gateway-timeout-error-explained-2622941

Yes and so I fixed the problem by warning others that there is a problem with the website.

[YNM]

44 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Well even an apple IIe could,

Yeah, ten thousand of the monitors synchronized.

 

Common resolution right now is HD in ~300 ppi. Might even be more given smartphones...

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

Well even an apple IIe could, with the right converted make really great graphics, provided the right program .  it might take it 100 years to do it, your frame rates would be measured in the 1/X timescale and the whole thing would be dependent on you flipping in and out 620 kb 5.25" floppy disk.

With graphics is about the resolution of your monitor, the resolution of your video card and frames per second. The performance is the rate at which it can process δi/δt.

Yes and so I fixed the problem by warning others that there is a problem with the website.

There are a few problems with this approach (plus I don't think you can get more than 115k on the side of a 5.25" Apple ][ floppy):

Ouput to NTSC has hard limits (and the Woz used them to make color happen).  Using any type of monitor from 1983-1987 won't make you happy (unless you score some type of SVGA beast, kludge up some scary interface, and decrease the speed until the electron beam is in danger of burning the screen).  No idea if modern LCD monitors can accept a signal that takes minutes or hours to produce, but they *should* (but probably don't).

You could easily (well somewhat easily) print to dot matrix at full 92dpi or whatever they produced (and get a 800-1200ish resolution, 4 bit monochome possibly increased or with color added by altering the ribbon (and I'd expect you would have to clean and dye your own ribbons.  I don't think color was available).  I'm pretty sure this was done a few times and the method mentioned in magazines (without any crazy ribbon replacement ideas).

A better suggestion would be to rig up a flashlight (ideally three lasers if doing this after blue lasers were available) and slowly track it across a screen (like a CRT monitor, only with light instead of an electronic beam: use some sort of clockwork mechanism to move the light).  Then have a camera [and it will probably need film if you do it now (or any time blue lasers were available) good luck finding any or developing it] with the lens open and capture the whole thing as a single image.

I don't think simple ray tracers required that much memory, but the amount of data that you would have to calculate on a 6502 would be painful, and I'm sure there are tricks to store some of the more common calculations (where the Apple wouldn't have room).  Mostly people thought of wire frame 3d when they thought of 3d at all, and you could draw that [at high resolution] with a dot matrix printer.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, PB666 said:

Well even an apple IIe could, with the right converted make really great graphics, provided the right program .  it might take it 100 years to do it, your frame rates would be measured in the 1/X timescale and the whole thing would be dependent on you flipping in and out 620 kb 5.25" floppy disk.

With graphics is about the resolution of your monitor, the resolution of your video card and frames per second. The performance is the rate at which it can process δi/δt.

You will get problems with old systems because of lack of memory, old systems also lacked virtual memory, this was fully implemented in the 80386 generation of processors, yes mainframe level computers had had it far earlier time but they was also closer to 386 than the apple 2 cpu. 

Not sure you could program around this. 
Its an reason why both the xbox and playstation went from 512 MB to 8 GB for this generations.
The game developers wanted more memory primarily. PS4 single core performance is not much higer than PS3, might even be lower. 

Artistic matter a lot too, Elder scroll Skyrim was released on the same engine as Oblivion, run on the same console generation, Yes engine had been seriously upgraded, Fallout 3 / NW predated Skyrim on this. 
Still most of the improved quality of skyrim is how textures blend and this is probably mostly Photoshop merges 

[radonek]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I remember "Crysis" was advertised as having highly advanced graphics as its engine supported graphical techniques that were not yet available on current graphics cards.

Biggest thing about Crysis & co. was ability to render big terrain. Tech4 (engine behind Doom 3)  could only do small scenes, but with light effects way above anything I have ever seen. Which one is better? Engine powering Arma games have several incredibly advanced features that are simply lost on average Joe - is  sea waves simulation "better graphics"? It certainly add more  realistic feeling then another milion rendered polygons. 

43 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Artistic matter a lot too, Elder scroll Skyrim was released on the same engine as Oblivion…

Yes, Skyrim  have better graphics, but Oblivion looks better in my book. But if you wan to see some realy good TES, get Morrowind. "Graphics" is laughable, but art is astounding…

Whatever engine you fancy may be blown out of water tomorrow, while looks of Dwarf Fortress will never get old.

[Nibb31]

I never understood the appeal of Bethesda games regarding graphics. Skyrim and Fallout 4 both suck unless you mod them like crazy.

I thing GTA V, despite getting a bit old now, it's still among the most beautiful games graphics wise,and remember it was originally designed to run on the old Xbox360. I can't wait to see Red Dead Redemption 2.

[DAL59]

Space Engine

 

[cypher_00]

8 hours ago, wumpus said:

"Rendered in real time" on multiple $5000 Titan Vs.  Don't expect it on your desktop anytime soon.

That's not true you will need a next gen graphics card but nowhere near $5000

You can get a titan card for 208 euro https://www.bol.com/nl/p/msi-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-gaming-x-4g/9200000068599354/?Referrer=ADVNLGOO002013-G-49170245275-S-382273938198-9200000068599354&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZzWBRD2ARIsAIPenY02Sz152JbZY73BQVVZvlWheIkyw1Qknq81dtniH3r928mOsKUDm6saAo-REALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.d

Two of those in SLI should do it if they would support the new tech.

I expect the next gen cards to be able to handle it for a bit more then 500 euro...

Also look at this for some ray tracing science:

https://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/xroads-RT/RTarticle.html

You don't sell a new feature like that if you have to spend $5000 to be able to use it...

Edited April 6, 2018 by cypher_00

[wumpus]

3 hours ago, cypher_00 said:

That's not true you will need a next gen graphics card but nowhere near $5000...You don't sell a new feature like that if you have to spend $5000 to be able to use it...

That's what they used for the demo.  Granted, the top of the line card is built for machine learning (which shouldn't add a lot of circuitry) and high performance numerical computing (which does), and is basically the same as the $15,000 Tesla V100 with some key features disabled (ECC being the most obvious) and it isn't all that much more impressive at graphics than the "consumer" 1080ti (which is currently selling at 50% over MSRP thanks to miners).  It is a great card for all its functions except graphics (while it is the best at graphics, the price is extreme [and will probably be exceeded by the 1180 at far lower cost]).

To be honest, I think that raytracing is an especially great fit for Unity-level developers: it gets great results without having to special case everything and shouldn't require all the "visual mods" that KSP has (maybe it still would.  How do you raytrace a gas giant?).  From what I've heard, AAAA-level games would still require hand crafting and outperform the ray-tracer, but require AAAA budgets (Industrial Light an Magic and WETA similarly use other methods).

[PB666]

15 hours ago, magnemoe said:

You will get problems with old systems because of lack of memory, old systems also lacked virtual memory, this was fully implemented in the 80386 generation of processors, yes mainframe level computers had had it far earlier time but they was also closer to 386 than the apple 2 cpu. 

Not sure you could program around this. 
Its an reason why both the xbox and playstation went from 512 MB to 8 GB for this generations.
The game developers wanted more memory primarily. PS4 single core performance is not much higer than PS3, might even be lower. 

Artistic matter a lot too, Elder scroll Skyrim was released on the same engine as Oblivion, run on the same console generation, Yes engine had been seriously upgraded, Fallout 3 / NW predated Skyrim on this. 
Still most of the improved quality of skyrim is how textures blend and this is probably mostly Photoshop merges 

I was told you couldnt print color graphics with IIe, but it was so damn simple to program, i wrote a program that could rewrite itself and adapt to the color switch. But yeah the memory is limiting. You would need a converter from rs232 to usb and a usb mem drive interface. Those were the days when you could code directly into bytes. 

For still frames its only a matter of splitting a color into 3 intensities for each making sure it gets on the right position in the right raster. Of course there in nonreason to use a museum piece to do this when you could buy a cheap laptop that does the same for 150$

For most computers you have 256 x 256 x 256 x 1920 x 1048. That is the limit of complexity that you can put on the screen at once. The human eye focused on a single point can resolve about 20. frames per second. Moving it goes up to 80 frames per second. a byte is 8 bits = 256 conbinations, there are colors that are 65536 (a word) so the color can entirely fit into one 64 bit long integer. Thats basically 17 MB/frame at highest possible resolution. You typical 500 gb ssd can store a few thousand of these. To have a movie you compress sinilar information and use the computers graphics card or math coprocessor to unpack and send to the display device. 

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, PB666 said:

I was told you couldnt print color graphics with IIe, but it was so damn simple to program, i wrote a program that could rewrite itself and adapt to the color switch. But yeah the memory is limiting. You would need a converter from rs232 to usb and a usb mem drive interface. Those were the days when you could code directly into bytes. 

For still frames its only a matter of splitting a color into 3 intensities for each making sure it gets on the right position in the right raster. Of course there in nonreason to use a museum piece to do this when you could buy a cheap laptop that does the same for 150$

For most computers you have 256 x 256 x 256 x 1920 x 1048. That is the limit of complexity that you can put on the screen at once. The human eye focused on a single point can resolve about 20. frames per second. Moving it goes up to 80 frames per second. a byte is 8 bits = 256 conbinations, there are colors that are 65536 (a word) so the color can entirely fit into one 64 bit long integer. Thats basically 17 MB/frame at highest possible resolution. You typical 500 gb ssd can store a few thousand of these. To have a movie you compress sinilar information and use the computers graphics card or math coprocessor to unpack and send to the display device. 

USB is storage not main memory. that would be limited to 64KB, you could not hold an full color hd image even less do something with it.