everythings is so blurry and foggy/grainy that i avoid new games altogether
i miss the days of sharp textures and being able to see everything clear on the screen, even stuff in the distance
DoctorKomodo
It’s not really that hard to make a vista shot like yours good, since most of the image is off in the distance you don’t need much detail to sell it. Case in point, look at the ground close to the camera, it looks like ass.
Making games with a high level of detail is the difficult (computationally expensive) part, especially if features still have to look good up close. That and realistic lighting have really been the focus in recent years. Realistic lighting is massively complex and difficult to pull off but can look amazing when done right.
THE_DARWIZZLER
i mean when you start at 8 bit graphics and get this close the returns are diminishing. besides i feel like recent years have been more defined by advancements in postprocessing for optimisation and lighting improvements.
Blacksad9999
Well, the higher and higher graphical fidelity gets, the more you’re going to get diminishing returns. Once they reach full on photorealism, then what?
That’s why art direction is more important than raw graphical fidelity, imo.
jamyjet
I’d recommend playing hellblade 2 or plague tale requiem if you truly believe that.
hagg3n
Since then the quality improved marginally but quantity skyrocketed. Compare any scene of Horizon Zero Dawn with the new one. It’s similarly pretty but the new one has WAY more stuff in it. More plants, more debris, more rocks, more things moving and reacting physically, etc.
IntricateOnionStatue
Definitely wrong. This looks good, but definitely looks dated. Mostly due to the lighting. Play Alan Wake 2 maxed out if you haven’t already and you’ll quickly see how wrong this post is.
DisastrousConcept143
Gameplay>Content>audio design>graphics.
Archit-Arya
Rdr2 would like to differ.
Noname_FTW
80/20 rule. Getting to 80% is realitvly easy. The rest of the of 20% gets harder and harder with each %.
Funtycuck
AW2 and Cyberpunk with path tracing look significantly better BF1 or 2.
Hrmerder
We hit some strides and peaks in 2015, but it’s about to really take off more. Graphical fidelity is going to get wild. Want to see a game that will really blow your mind? There are two instances. #1 is Ghostwire: Tokyo. That game has places where I just stopped playing just to go.. Holy shit.. this looks too damn real. #2 is Cyberpunk 2077 (yes I know it’s been thrown around a lot), BUT with reshade mod and custom ini file (for reshade). It can look INSANELY realistic. But that’s with mods and what not. It’s going to get basically as real as possible (or worth it) in the next few years and really it’s just going to be what art direction instead of fidelity. UE makes realistic and highly randomized ‘looking’ worlds possible to develop rather quickly. I believe probably 24gb is all we will need for games for here on out at max (except VR, which would probably be 48gb). Might sound silly but I mean… We have these extreme visuals today, they are just unattainable for most people’s graphics cards and too expensive to put in a console system but once markets balance out and this newer tech get’s cheaper (which won’t be long) we will see a different renaissance in gaming as far as visual fidelity. It’ll be not about how real it looks or how smooth because we will have achieved that, but much more about art directions.
Wellhellob
Actually true.
In_Spectrum
Backed lighting peaked in AC Unity.
Conserp
Ray tracing was the only noticeable qualitative improvement I can remember since tesselation and SSAO.
JASHIKO_
Since consoles got popular they seem to cap most things at what consoles can handle, then PC gets the scraps with a few minor improvements.
Games developed just for PC aren’t very common anymore. It’s all about the highest possible return in sales. My biggest issue is how poorly the optimise things these days. Stuff that modders seem to figure out and save us with.
Ache-papa
I might sound terrible but games should be funny looking. Now a days games look too realistic.
PixelCortex
Not wrong, but not totally right either. Compare a shot of Cyberpunk with ray/path-tracing enabled, to anything released in 2015. We don’t see huge leaps in graphics for ever console generation like we used to, but there are still some big improvements. We’ve pretty much maxed out on texture resolution and mesh fidelity, the big improvements over the last few years have been in lighting.
StandTallBruda
Miss when physics were the big thing.
dinologist29
This the reason why my 1070 is still rocking to this day
Howfuckingsad
You are kind of wrong.
Graphics has improved a TON even after that. But the progress definitely is becoming less and less visible while also being less and less necessary.
Sure everyone loves cool stuff but those cool things take up a lot of storage space and they don’t provide much in return. The lighting has improved tons and unreal is always coming out with cooler and cooler tech.
ArmeniusLOD
That shot is from a game that uses photogrammetry, which is a method of taking real photographs and mapping them to rendered 3D space. It is actually quite common in games nowadays, but it became really popular in the mid-10s. The first game I can recall using it was The Vanishing of Ethan Carter in 2014. It often looks really good from a distance like this, but falls apart when you look at it up close.
Kougeru-Sama
You’re beyond wrong lmao. Just texture alone have massively improved. But Ray-tracing is the largest improvement in a very long time. It’s harder to notice in motion but go play Cyberpunk
ShutterBun
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 has *the entire Earth* mapped in 3D (with room for improvement).
I mean on one hand. Gamers reject anything that reduces FPS more than the year before so even though I disagree that’s the case, it would not be surprising
MrWarfaith
Let’s see how this take holds up until gta6 releases…
ThirdLast
Before unreal 5 , ninite or dlsrtx3D canyon.
indyK1ng
Part of the problem is that the games that tend to lean into graphical fidelity also tend to be multi-platform. Since PC ports aren’t always a high priority they tend to be limited by the consoles they are being produced for. Since PS4 and Xbox One are both supported and getting lots of games we haven’t fully moved on her.
Devanomiun
Can tell OP has a potato PC. Games have improved a lot since 2015 and keep doing so.
Demented-Turtle
I think more like the past 5 years graphics have pretty much plateaued. There may be some marginal improvements in on area of graphical fidelity, like path tracing, but overall they are hard to notice without knowing specifically what to look for or being in the correct in-game location to show it off.
Meanwhile, performance has absolutely TANKED, even with ray tracing turned off lol
frozenkingnk
My brother have you tried alan wake 2 Full RT?
Kotschcus_Domesticus
For the peak in graphics is Witcher 3 and AC Valhala. And from the current games Destinys Final Shape has really good vistas. Art direction and gameplay >>>>> realism. Also where is the desctruction from Crysis. Like countles statit open worlds. Cyberpunk has some neat level of destruction too but still very few games use destruction physics.
naswinger
faces still look bad though
TurnsOutImAScientist
The demos I’ve seen for Unreal engine 5 suggest another big leap is right around the corner.
The technique they used for the ground textures in these games (photogrammetry) is still phenomenal and very well implemented.
However if you look in the distance the detail falls off and the grounds starts to look like rubber. This is a performance optimization, a limitation that a modern Unreal Engine 5 game wouldn’t have, you can still get pretty good detail at that distance.
The older lighting system is good enough for this scene, but in other types of environments ray tracing and more modern lighting is quite noticeable.
Take the game Bodycam for instance. That couldn’t be done in 2015.
36 Comments
i cant explain how much i hate modern graphics..
everythings is so blurry and foggy/grainy that i avoid new games altogether
i miss the days of sharp textures and being able to see everything clear on the screen, even stuff in the distance
It’s not really that hard to make a vista shot like yours good, since most of the image is off in the distance you don’t need much detail to sell it. Case in point, look at the ground close to the camera, it looks like ass.
Making games with a high level of detail is the difficult (computationally expensive) part, especially if features still have to look good up close. That and realistic lighting have really been the focus in recent years. Realistic lighting is massively complex and difficult to pull off but can look amazing when done right.
i mean when you start at 8 bit graphics and get this close the returns are diminishing. besides i feel like recent years have been more defined by advancements in postprocessing for optimisation and lighting improvements.
Well, the higher and higher graphical fidelity gets, the more you’re going to get diminishing returns. Once they reach full on photorealism, then what?
That’s why art direction is more important than raw graphical fidelity, imo.
I’d recommend playing hellblade 2 or plague tale requiem if you truly believe that.
Since then the quality improved marginally but quantity skyrocketed. Compare any scene of Horizon Zero Dawn with the new one. It’s similarly pretty but the new one has WAY more stuff in it. More plants, more debris, more rocks, more things moving and reacting physically, etc.
Definitely wrong. This looks good, but definitely looks dated. Mostly due to the lighting. Play Alan Wake 2 maxed out if you haven’t already and you’ll quickly see how wrong this post is.
Gameplay>Content>audio design>graphics.
Rdr2 would like to differ.
80/20 rule. Getting to 80% is realitvly easy. The rest of the of 20% gets harder and harder with each %.
AW2 and Cyberpunk with path tracing look significantly better BF1 or 2.
We hit some strides and peaks in 2015, but it’s about to really take off more. Graphical fidelity is going to get wild. Want to see a game that will really blow your mind? There are two instances. #1 is Ghostwire: Tokyo. That game has places where I just stopped playing just to go.. Holy shit.. this looks too damn real. #2 is Cyberpunk 2077 (yes I know it’s been thrown around a lot), BUT with reshade mod and custom ini file (for reshade). It can look INSANELY realistic. But that’s with mods and what not. It’s going to get basically as real as possible (or worth it) in the next few years and really it’s just going to be what art direction instead of fidelity. UE makes realistic and highly randomized ‘looking’ worlds possible to develop rather quickly. I believe probably 24gb is all we will need for games for here on out at max (except VR, which would probably be 48gb). Might sound silly but I mean… We have these extreme visuals today, they are just unattainable for most people’s graphics cards and too expensive to put in a console system but once markets balance out and this newer tech get’s cheaper (which won’t be long) we will see a different renaissance in gaming as far as visual fidelity. It’ll be not about how real it looks or how smooth because we will have achieved that, but much more about art directions.
Actually true.
Backed lighting peaked in AC Unity.
Ray tracing was the only noticeable qualitative improvement I can remember since tesselation and SSAO.
Since consoles got popular they seem to cap most things at what consoles can handle, then PC gets the scraps with a few minor improvements.
Games developed just for PC aren’t very common anymore. It’s all about the highest possible return in sales. My biggest issue is how poorly the optimise things these days. Stuff that modders seem to figure out and save us with.
I might sound terrible but games should be funny looking. Now a days games look too realistic.
Not wrong, but not totally right either. Compare a shot of Cyberpunk with ray/path-tracing enabled, to anything released in 2015. We don’t see huge leaps in graphics for ever console generation like we used to, but there are still some big improvements.
We’ve pretty much maxed out on texture resolution and mesh fidelity, the big improvements over the last few years have been in lighting.
Miss when physics were the big thing.
This the reason why my 1070 is still rocking to this day
You are kind of wrong.
Graphics has improved a TON even after that. But the progress definitely is becoming less and less visible while also being less and less necessary.
Sure everyone loves cool stuff but those cool things take up a lot of storage space and they don’t provide much in return. The lighting has improved tons and unreal is always coming out with cooler and cooler tech.
That shot is from a game that uses photogrammetry, which is a method of taking real photographs and mapping them to rendered 3D space. It is actually quite common in games nowadays, but it became really popular in the mid-10s. The first game I can recall using it was The Vanishing of Ethan Carter in 2014. It often looks really good from a distance like this, but falls apart when you look at it up close.
You’re beyond wrong lmao. Just texture alone have massively improved. But Ray-tracing is the largest improvement in a very long time. It’s harder to notice in motion but go play Cyberpunk
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 has *the entire Earth* mapped in 3D (with room for improvement).
https://preview.redd.it/nuavibyjgabd1.jpeg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a66df09080f8ad4854bdc0133efb479d2f6b57d2
its still improving imo
I mean on one hand. Gamers reject anything that reduces FPS more than the year before so even though I disagree that’s the case, it would not be surprising
Let’s see how this take holds up until gta6 releases…
Before unreal 5 , ninite or dlsrtx3D canyon.
Part of the problem is that the games that tend to lean into graphical fidelity also tend to be multi-platform. Since PC ports aren’t always a high priority they tend to be limited by the consoles they are being produced for. Since PS4 and Xbox One are both supported and getting lots of games we haven’t fully moved on her.
Can tell OP has a potato PC. Games have improved a lot since 2015 and keep doing so.
I think more like the past 5 years graphics have pretty much plateaued. There may be some marginal improvements in on area of graphical fidelity, like path tracing, but overall they are hard to notice without knowing specifically what to look for or being in the correct in-game location to show it off.
Meanwhile, performance has absolutely TANKED, even with ray tracing turned off lol
My brother have you tried alan wake 2 Full RT?
For the peak in graphics is Witcher 3 and AC Valhala. And from the current games Destinys Final Shape has really good vistas. Art direction and gameplay >>>>> realism. Also where is the desctruction from Crysis. Like countles statit open worlds. Cyberpunk has some neat level of destruction too but still very few games use destruction physics.
faces still look bad though
The demos I’ve seen for Unreal engine 5 suggest another big leap is right around the corner.
for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv5CiqSNf4k
The technique they used for the ground textures in these games (photogrammetry) is still phenomenal and very well implemented.
However if you look in the distance the detail falls off and the grounds starts to look like rubber. This is a performance optimization, a limitation that a modern Unreal Engine 5 game wouldn’t have, you can still get pretty good detail at that distance.
The older lighting system is good enough for this scene, but in other types of environments ray tracing and more modern lighting is quite noticeable.
Take the game Bodycam for instance. That couldn’t be done in 2015.