Quote from Boris Lozac :

stuff ...
Having great graphics is awesome, sure, but that's not what games are remembered for, atleast that's not i remember the games for..

But those qualities you state are not diametrically opposed either.

Which would you choose *given the opportunity*

A fantastic game with great gameplay and all the hacking and slashing you could dream of with a story that makes [insert famous author here] look amateur,

OR

The exact same game with amazing eye candy, devoid of sub-par textures and art which constantly rattle at your suspension of disbelief?

Bottom line is, given the exact same gameplay experience, it would be stockholm syndrome to state that you enjoy the low poly count low resolution stick man version of the same game MORE than the work of art in motion.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

OR

The exact same game with amazing eye candy, devoid of sub-par textures and art which constantly rattle at your suspension of disbelief?

Play God of War 3 on some big screen, then come back and tell me it's not the exact same thing you just described

As i said, sure it's great to have great graphics, but it's not what i remember from the game.. When i try to remember GOW 1 and 2, they look the same as 3 in my head.. Is LFS rubbish, cause it has dated graphics? sure it is, that's why we're still on this forum and still play it..
That urge for awesome graphics is what killed PC gaming for me.. hardware manufacturers see that there are million sheeps willing to buy their cards and cpu's, and developers can't focus on the gameplay and story, but must focus all their time and efforts mainly in graphics department, so they don't dissapoint their PC fanbase.. And then they optimise it with their legs, so 80% of market struggles to even run the game, and then you have those 20% of geeks that will run it at high settings and droll for 10 minutes, run some benchmarks, post the results on the forum, and seek some other game to torrent..
Not to mention all the troubles of actually getting the freakin game to work in the first place....so that's current PC gaming for ya..

LOL!
Interestingly, most graphic artists don't double as writers and other fields of development. So I don't think that resources have to be "diverted" from other (equally, if not more important as you stated) game design areas.

I chuckled at the rest of that post though. Blizzard definitely agrees with you on gameplay, and I think WoW is a fun game and looks decent - but it would be even more fun for me if it wasn't designed to run on an abacus graphics wise. On the other end, Age of Conan looks fantasic and plays like a piece of crap - therefore I don't play it because no amount of uh, eye candy can make up for the gameplay experience being poor.

So I don't disagree with you on that point at all, but the fact remains that the potential for a great experience on a PC is higher because of more inherent processing ability, flexibility, control scheme options and so forth.

As far as bigscreens go, before I went 3D I ran full HD on my television for kicks. I thought it was cool, but no PC game UI lends itself well to those circumstances. That, and despite being full HD, I just could not see things as well or as detailed compared to the PC monitor. I stuck with it a bit just for kicks but it just wasn't as comfortable and was in fact a very noticeable downgrade.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

You are clearly avoiding other, much important questions and arguments.

the discussion was about your preposterous claim that console games look as good as pc games not the thousands of things youre desperately trying to sidetrack me with

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Holy cow, did that actually work? I didn't know they tried that way back then - what happened between that and 3D Vision?

i didnt actually try back then but its just the same technology as you get today and surprisingly the glasses were actually quite cheap back then
problem was with crts not being sample an hold displays like lcds (the phosphor lights up for a short flash and then goes dark again for most of the refresh period) you had to have a monitor that was somewhere between impossible to afford and simply not avaible which had to be able to do at least 120hz or (highly) preferably 150hz at your desired resolution

this was a time when a good 15" crt did cost you an arm and a leg and was able to do 85hz at 1024

Quote :

Playing a game in 2D now feels like sex with a condom installed.

that good? clearly youre getting a lot more out of your gaming experience than me
would you be willing to share your secret?

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

As far as bigscreens go, before I went 3D I ran full HD on my television for kicks. I thought it was cool, but no PC game UI lends itself well to those circumstances. That, and despite being full HD, I just could not see things as well or as detailed compared to the PC monitor. I stuck with it a bit just for kicks but it just wasn't as comfortable and was in fact a very noticeable downgrade.

hm maybe its just the television effect (lets be honst most tvs are godawful compared to a good monitor)
when i played a few games on a friends projector with a ~2m wide screen it was just awesome... at least for the short time i spent with it if you spent some more time with it i wouldnt be surprised if input lag and all the other things a home cinema projector isnt optimised for star to get on your nerves

and this has nothing to do with anything but after trying a few rc sims on the projector i must say its the only way to train with those
its absolutely amazing when the plane or heli is exactly the right size

Quote from Shotglass :

the discussion was about your preposterous claim that console games look as good as pc games not the thousands of things youre desperately trying to sidetrack me with

lol I do have the habbit to over-discuss things sometimes, but i think all those subjects are connected generally... so out of boredom from work, i slipped some other subjects too, but not intentionally..

can i just point out the irony here that you critizise pc games for being all about graphics and advocate that games should put more emphasis on story just a few months after you fell besottedly in love with avatar which is the movie equivalent of crysis?

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

what happened between that and 3D Vision?

oh right forgot about that bit
well the answer is... nothing really
elsa came out with the first shutter glasses sometime around 99 and no one bought them as no one had the kind of monitor you needed for it and the whole shutter technology isnt all that brilliant to begin with
then came a few rare games and some freeware drivers that enabled anaglyph stereo 3d which was fun for 10 minutes until you got bored with playing games in what might as well be black and white
sometime in 2006 nvidia tried again with a 3d driver that enables anaglyph (i think shutters but im not sure) and dual output 3d for setups like those 2 projectors but ecided not to bother with it any longer sometime soon after
and then in the last few months someone discovered the shutter glasses again decided theyd be brilliant for lcd monitors that suffer from ghosting at the usual 60hz so 120hz would work even better and managed to make a big deal out of it

call me a glas half empty guy but i dont really see a bunch of jocks gathering around a tv with a can of beer (well water really) to watch the superbowl looking like this
http://www.ied.edu.hk/has/vrdemo/3ds-img/shutterglass.jpg

btw since you have a nvidia 3d setup
does the current iteration of nvidia 3d still support dual output 3d for projectors?

Quote from Shotglass :

can i just point out the irony here

You can, but it's not true You watch the movies, you're not playing them. And when did i ever said that Avatar is anything more then pure eye-candy, it's exact intended purposse, and it sucedeed in that tremendously. It's one big real-life getaway... and if you apreciate it for that, then it can't possibly dissapoint anyone... but you're different, you are way too jugdemental... and have awefull prejudices.. you played console games for 10 minutes total, but you already know that they all suck etc.. there's no point in that kind of discussion..

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Not to mention all the troubles of actually getting the freakin game to work in the first place....so that's current PC gaming for ya..

Ok, let's take Grand Theft Auto IV for instance. Many people "struggled" to get it to work on their PCs. When the game was first released and I got it, I installed it (took about 12 minutes to install) and then tried opening it through. Skipped login on Social Club, the game opened. I already had a GFWL account to which I logged in, put my serial and chose "Start game". The game worked just fine and it was pretty fast on my old PC which I had by the time the game was released (Pentium D 2.8GHz 2GB RAM DDR2 667MHz 8600GT 256MB). It didn't run on high, but I could choose medium or low for textures and higher settings for everything else. It would run just fine with low graphics too, but the motion blur and other blurring effects made everything look awesome for me. My friends (who had better computers than mine) were also impressed.

This is the game most people complained about, said it was awfully difficult to install and so on, but I had just no problems with it from release day (1.0.0.0). The updates just made it better (apart from 1.0.3.0, which screwed everything up if I'm not mistaken, disappearing with plenty of objects in the game).

Quote from Shotglass :

btw since you have a nvidia 3d setup
does the current iteration of nvidia 3d still support dual output 3d for projectors?

I don't have a projector yet (seems cool, but 800x600 or 1024x768 blown up to Texas size!? How great can that really be?) but I'm 80% certain the answer is no. You need a "supported" projector to use it with 3D vision; of which there are currently only a handful. I'm not sure what the official reasoning is for that. (I know exactly what the real reason is, and per usual it's different than the official one)

Turn pm mode on,and lets actually talk about the game!

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

seems cool, but 800x600 or 1024x768 blown up to Texas size!? How great can that really be?

you can get a fullhd projector for about as much as youd have to pay for a good 30" monitor so theyre really not that expensive
if you can live with dlp and 720 you can even get one in the price range of a decent 24" monitor
imho the added immersion and movie enjoyment is easily worth it
plus pretty much everyone who has seen the projector a friend of mine bought a while ago ended up buying one soon after

Quote :

but I'm 80% certain the answer is no. You need a "supported" projector to use it with 3D vision; of which there are currently only a handful. I'm not sure what the official reasoning is for that. (I know exactly what the real reason is, and per usual it's different than the official one)

i dont mean any special modes like 120hz channel interleaving i mean a mode where you can connect 2 projectors to both dvi outputs of your graphics card and have the left and right channel sperately on dvi1 and dvi2
the old nvidia 3d driver did support this
http://www.really.ru/images/nvidia_stereodriver_9131.jpg
i believe its the "Dual VGA Output" option
do the current drivers still have that menu and those options?

Quote from Boris Lozac :

You watch the movies, you're not playing them.

in other words a games consists of 3 elements
gameplay writing and art direction
whereas a movie consists of only two
writing and art direction

it therefore follows that the writing/story is even more important in a movie

Quote :

And when did i ever said that Avatar is anything more then pure eye-candy

well lets see
here
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1340280#post1340280
especially here
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1346725#post1346725
and here
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1349080#post1349080

Quote :

it's exact intended purposse, and it sucedeed in that tremendously.

ill agree that it succeeded in being an overly long effect reel

Quote :

It's one big real-life getaway...

so is every other movie ever made

Quote from Shotglass :

it therefore follows that the writing/story is even more important in a movie

Offcourse, but not for the movies like Avatar, story is just there to complete the picture.. and it works perfectly fine for that kind of movie, which purposse is not to make you smarter, i feel like i'm repeating myself 15 times. Sure i wouldn't mind a better story, but that's not what that movie point was.

Quote from Shotglass :

well lets see
here
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1340280#post1340280
especially here
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1346725#post1346725
and here
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1349080#post1349080

Sheesh, you're really trying too hard Where in any of those quotes i said anything about the awesomeness and deepness of the story. I just said that that kind of story compliments the movie just fine.. and again, i wouldn't mind if it was better..

Quote from Shotglass :

so is every other movie ever made

Umm, ok, let me rephrase that, what i meant by 'real-life' getaway, is that it made you feel like that 'species' actually exists, and it kinda makes you feel like you dreamt the whole movie.. thanks to the awesome CGI that made the Naavis feel and act like they were real.. that's what i meant.

Quote from Shotglass :

imho the added immersion and movie enjoyment is easily worth it
plus pretty much everyone who has seen the projector a friend of mine bought a while ago ended up buying one soon after

I presume I'd have to build a pitch black room for this to be useful?

Quote :

i dont mean any special modes like 120hz channel interleaving i mean a mode where you can connect 2 projectors to both dvi outputs of your graphics card and have the left and right channel sperately on dvi1 and dvi2
the old nvidia 3d driver did support this
http://www.really.ru/images/nvidia_stereodriver_9131.jpg
i believe its the "Dual VGA Output" option
do the current drivers still have that menu and those options?

No they sure don't. In fact nVidia recently revoked support that used to be there for unlisted 3D capable projectors. Angry users have been fooling the drivers (hacking the EDID iirc) to work with recent releases. Optoma for example had a previously working projector, but since they won't pay nVidia (er, I mean "partner with nVidia", and I know exactly what kind of partnering that is) all of a sudden projectors not on their approved EDID list fail to operate properly without user intervention.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

I presume I'd have to build a pitch black room for this to be useful?

well you have to close the shutters and turn the lights off obviously
white walls and ceilings will cause the black levels to suffer slightly in bright scenes but at the same time you get the added benefit of an ambilight on steroids

a friend showed me a scene from some dance movie recently which is a sequence filmed with stroboscope lighting
the effect of it was that the whole room started flashing along with the action on screen... it worked so well it was almost painful
you could probably kill quite a few epilleptics with that

Quote :

No they sure don't. In fact nVidia recently revoked support that used to be there for unlisted 3D capable projectors. Angry users have been fooling the drivers (hacking the EDID iirc) to work with recent releases. Optoma for example had a previously working projector, but since they won't pay nVidia (er, I mean "partner with nVidia", and I know exactly what kind of partnering that is) all of a sudden projectors not on their approved EDID list fail to operate properly without user intervention.

ah dont you just love it when they lock down features that worked just fine a few years ago?

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Offcourse, but not for the movies like Avatar

any movie

Quote :

story is just there to complete the picture..

no the story is there to make it more than a demo reel

Quote :

but that's not what that movie point was.

the movie had no point

Quote :

Sheesh, you're really trying too hard Where in any of those quotes i said anything about the awesomeness and deepness of the story.

you basically called the movie life altering
that implies a little more than 3 hours of very pretty 3d rendering

Quote :

thanks to the awesome CGI that made the Naavis feel and act like they were real..

uhm... no
the art direction made sure that it always felt like a comic book world with its oversatured yet strangely washed out colouring

Quote from Shotglass :

you basically called the movie life altering
that implies a little more than 3 hours of very pretty 3d rendering

:doh: ok, whatever you say..

Quote from Shotglass :

uhm... no
the art direction made sure that it always felt like a comic book world with its oversatured yet strangely washed out colouring

I know, you would do it much better offcourse, maybe you did, but you left the work at grandma's house, bummer i know..

Quote from Boris Lozac :

I know, you would do it much better offcourse, maybe you did, but you left the work at grandma's house, bummer i know..

uhm you do realise that the art direction in avatar was most probably intentionally cartoony?

I don't connect blue color and colorfull scenery to cartoons.. there's definately similiar scenery on earth too, they just exagerated a bit, and it looks great to the eyes..

Quote from Boris Lozac :

they just exagerated a bit

or in other words its cartoony

Quote from Shotglass :

or in other words its cartoony

They should've made it all grey then, eh?

no they should not have run it all through the brown filter you get on most games
what is it that you have so much trouble understanding that avatar was intentionally given a cartoony colourful look and thus didnt look like it was real because it was never meant to look like its real?
you can be incredibly thick sometimes you know that?

Quote from Shotglass :

you can be incredibly thick sometimes you know that?

Coming from you? lol

I think i used terms 'dreamy', so, yea, i know it's intentionaly made to look sureal, and to me it looks great.. We watch grey movies all the time, what's wrong with some oversaturated colors now and then..

nothing but you should stop pretending that it looks real when clearly it doesnt
cgi is quite deeply entrenched in the uncanny valley right now

Quote from Shotglass :

you can be incredibly thick sometimes you know that?

What do you mean by "sometimes"

Quote from Shotglass :

...a friend showed me a scene from some dance movie recently which is a sequence filmed with stroboscope lighting
the effect of it was that the whole room started flashing along with the action on screen... it worked so well it was almost painfulyou could probably kill quite a few epilleptics with that

Sure, for a movie, but surely the projector suffers even worse from what you term "tv syndrome". The bleed must be insane... how would it look with gaming? Perhaps the ridiculous size combined with 3D would just overshadow and shortcomings though. Had a pop over to the nVidia forum, a lot of folks there seem to enjoy the projector way of doing things.

Quote :

ah dont you just love it when they lock down features that worked just fine a few years ago?

Like nView? Allowing video to be sent to a different screen than your main? (right, that was removed for "DRM" reasons...)

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Coming from you? lol

NO U!

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

NO U!