Can't wait till this sort of thing is possible in games. 10 years maybe?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pmm9UKqc5I&eurl=

Yawn.

I mean it's nice and all but... meh. Anyone remember the lens flare fad back in the dayz of first 3D accelerator cards?

I'd love to see game designers spend dough on ACTUAL GAME DESIGN instead of useless blingbling that'll be forgotton in 2 months after the much-hyped release.

But then again that's just me and I suck.

And have sleep deprivation.

Hungry too.

Mommy...

I remember this Scanline was some movie CGI effects firm?

Quote from spankmeyer :

Yawn.

I mean it's nice and all but... meh. Anyone remember the lens flare fad back in the dayz of first 3D accelerator cards?

I'd love to see game designers spend dough on ACTUAL GAME DESIGN instead of useless blingbling that'll be forgotton in 2 months after the much-hyped release.

But then again that's just me and I suck.

And have sleep deprivation.

Hungry too.

Mommy...

I don't think this CGI water is for games, I think it's for movies

yea.
i bet in 10 years we can see "dead" ppl in brandnew movies as the the software can make look EVERYTHING so real that u cant say whats real and what not.

That was pretty good, a few things looked a bit off through, when the water was running through the buildings it looked a little like the water effects in thunderbirds/stingray, ie small objects splashing into water then made to look big.

spankmeyer: check out introvision software, crap graphics but great and orginal game play ;P.

Quote from spankmeyer :

Yawn.

I mean it's nice and all but... meh. Anyone remember the lens flare fad back in the dayz of first 3D accelerator cards?

I'd love to see game designers spend dough on ACTUAL GAME DESIGN instead of useless blingbling that'll be forgotton in 2 months after the much-hyped release.

But then again that's just me and I suck.

And have sleep deprivation.

Hungry too.

Mommy...

Comparing this to lens flare, pfff. illepall
Now, go get some sleep.

I'd love to see a surfing game utilising such a tech as this. Scawen!!?!!!?!?!!

Seriously, I don't think this kind of thing will be being used in games anytime soon. For cutting edge water effects in a game enviroment, check out Bio-shock when it comes out.

PS. For someone who used to play Gorf, this is mightily impressive.

Quote from [RCG]Boosted :

yea.
i bet in 10 years we can see "dead" ppl in brandnew movies as the the software can make look EVERYTHING so real that u cant say whats real and what not.

they could do that in 1994. Brandon Lee died during the making of The Crow. The producers shot the rest of the movie using a body double and stitched his head/face onto the other actors body.

... but the result was horrid.

Cool water tho. PDEs FTW \m/

It is already becoming increasingly difficult for the small indipendent teams to keep up with graphical advances. Mainstream software houses, who have the resources to produce the very stunning graphical effects, tend to stick to mainstream tried and tested gameplay formula's without innovating the gameplay too much.

If you are investing the wages of 100 people for 4 years to produce lots of snazzy graphical effects you need guaranteed return on your investment.

Graphics are already killing the computer games market. Look back to the 80's and, sure there was some rubbish games, but it was also an era of huge creativity and innovation in gameplay. Look at games now and we have sequels and clones with real innovation becoming rarer - although thankfully not extinct and we do get a suprise ocassionally (The Sims being the last truly innovative game I can think of).

If consumers come to expect graphics like this how will small teams like Scavier compete with them?

I already struggle to keep pace with graphic developments, my games, for all the effort I put in and the nice special effects that I can do, always feel just a few years behind.

When effects like this become the norm, i'll probably throw in the towel...

becky, you a coder?

Yes

Quote from Becky Rose :

When effects like this become the norm, i'll probably throw in the towel...

But Becky, if an independant developer was interwiewed 10 years ago, they might have viewed the advance to 3D as the end of their tether for the same reasons. Now very small groups of devs are happily producing 3D games like, erm Scavier. It's as much about the tools being available to impliment these advances. And marketing.

I think Microsofts XNA studio (the consumer version) will cause a renaissance in independant/bedroom games development.

Becky, don't be dissapointed. The water effects you see there, are not realtime. They won't be for quite some time, at least not on consumer devices. When they become, it won't be so difficult to add it to your code.

I wouldn't be so worried.

here's a 24MB of what is now the most advanced graphics, so as to have a reference point, of sorts. It is a trailer for "Gears of War"

Game trailers dont bother me much, again, they aren't realtime and you get all those extra wow details and often higher quality textures and ocassionally more detailed models used in the render, plus raytraced lighting.

However, the games are still a far cry from what I produce ! lol, my last [game] release, a little over a year old now, is as you can see from this screeny a long way behind.



The problem with improving that to make use of the latest techniques, i'd need some snazzy water effect - so lets say I download or buy a shader 2.0 water effect, now the problem is it looks nice but I cannot integrate it into my tidal/wind and current system. So instead to get nice water I will have to do it myself, but rather than be a few days work as the existing system was, it's going to be several long months of work.

That's the kind of thing that will end indipendant games development. I fear.

Gears of war, pff . Look at Crysis , now that looks awesome !
Look at pictures here !

Edit : but i must admit that Gears of War looks great too, but that look of crysis O_O

That looks like Farcry with slightly worse shader coding and slightly more particles (faster computers).

i hate to burst your bubbles... the gears of war trailer is realtime :/

Aaaand... i insist. Do not worry much about current graphics tech when your simulator is not about graphics. True, anyone would want LFS (for example) to look as good as it handles, but a tradeoff is always necessary.

There are realtime videos of crysis too, but iam too lazy to search for them :o . I've seen HD trailers both from Gears of War and Crysis (they were on a DVD from a pc mag) . Both games represent next gen technologies, so does the new Brother in Arms and MoH Airborne . They all have freaking awesome graphics, but i just love crysis the most
@Becky
Crysis is the "sequel" of far cry but Ubisoft has the rights for the name, so thats why it is not called far cry 2 , afaik.

Quote from farcar :

But Becky, if an independant developer was interwiewed 10 years ago, they might have viewed the advance to 3D as the end of their tether for the same reasons. Now very small groups of devs are happily producing 3D games like, erm Scavier. It's as much about the tools being available to impliment these advances. And marketing.

I think Microsofts XNA studio (the consumer version) will cause a renaissance in independant/bedroom games development.

Its really isn't as much about getting the tools anymore. The high quality the grapics are the more amount of time/resources are need to actually create 3d models, and implement higher quality effects, intil you get to the point where a bedroom developed game will take years to develop, and will fall behind. If the big companies like epic and id are taking 3-4 years to develop cutting edge games (well just the engines really...) indy develops will keep falling more and more behind. At the moment some indy companies are surviving because they have great and unique game play ideas that don't need cutting edge graphics, but these are few and far between.

Steam is already doing what this xna studio is hoping to do, basicly giving a cheap and effective means to distrabute games, cutting out publishers. When darwinia was released on steam it sold more in the first two weeks then it had in the previous 6 months.

As for crysis, yawn basicly. It will be exactly the same as far cry only slightly prettier if your system can handle it. At least gears of war is trying to add something to the whole shooter genre (mainly using cover alot more actively, rather then running and gunning). But saying that I'll be getting ut2007 proberly since it looks good, and UT games always have fun gameplay imho.

hmmm, I think Ubisoft took the water shader too...

wow - but can they take that from a render farm to realtime on the average pc?

Innovation in game design is always exciting, whether it's advancing graphics, physics, a good concept, a good plot... LFS innovates strongly in the physics department, it does car physics better than anything coming out of the more mainstream development houses. It's a successful game. There are many areas, not just graphical, where you can capture the attention of people and get them interested in your game. If graphics are your weakness, then by all means concentrate on your strengths.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Game trailers dont bother me much, again, they aren't realtime and you get all those extra wow details and often higher quality textures and ocassionally more detailed models used in the render, plus raytraced lighting.

However, the games are still a far cry from what I produce ! lol, my last [game] release, a little over a year old now, is as you can see from this screeny a long way behind.

http://sailing.bansheestudios. ... ery/BornFreeGoosewing.jpg

The problem with improving that to make use of the latest techniques, i'd need some snazzy water effect - so lets say I download or buy a shader 2.0 water effect, now the problem is it looks nice but I cannot integrate it into my tidal/wind and current system. So instead to get nice water I will have to do it myself, but rather than be a few days work as the existing system was, it's going to be several long months of work.

That's the kind of thing that will end indipendant games development. I fear.

I'm afraid you are very right here, single person can't make products in reasonable time, for example game modding requires now so much more than when it was not supported, even it was harder back then it was still possible in reasonable time.

Now one man needs at least year to produce one mod, so practically you have to form a team from group of ppl that shares same interest and do have various of skills, problem being that it kills some ideas that are not big hit, it is impossible to find enough talented ppl that do share interest and do have time to work with some mod that is not going to be in top5, but which has nothing wrong, for car sims for example there is many cars that are not enough cool or something, no matter how well done mod will be.

Modding and independent game development are very closely facing same challenges, except in game development there is also money that is causing even harder situation, there just is not enough money from sales to be shared among all devs if title is not going for mass markets.

I find it pity really how shallow modern day people are, it is all about bling and shine, then I hear questions that 'why new games lack of something that old games had?' well I wonder why...

Becky, I guess you know Ilan Papini's work?
It has to be one of longest projects that I do know of, I think it was 1998 or something when I first got demo of it, slowly he has made it to more complete but still there is lot to be done. I don't know how good it will eventually be, but I'm getting idea of it never being complete as in gfx department there is so huge leaps happening all time so his time goes to updating engine to stay on somewhere at chart.
Great work he has done, even so great that I bought finally a license, mainly because of this version 7 that is coming.