Blurring the line between Video Games and Reality

cherryghost

With developers becoming ever more engrossed with their game being 'as close to the real thing as virtually possible', do you forsee something more 'real' in the gaming world?

Let me be more specific. 25 years has brought us a long way in gaming, from flat 2D gaming to high definition 3D graphics and motion controls. Since the dawn of mainstream 3D gaming, developers have pushed their games forward in terms of getting a game as close to realism as can get. Some games have acheived practically 95% simulation, particularly in the Racing genre.

So my questions are; do you think that COMPLETE immersion gaming will ever happen? If so, how long will it take? Will we ever reach that goal of 1:1 graphics with that of reality?

I asked myself this a few days ago when I was reading the GTA III 10th Year Anniversary article. 'Damn gamings come a long way in 10 years. Hell, gamings come a long way in 20 years'. Personally, trying to get something into the market that will radically change how we play our games will be seen as an 'ultimate risk' by manufacturers and developers. The risk of failure is on everyone's mind these days after the so-called failure of the Wii (I don't think it was a failure btw, I just think it was perhaps badly implemented and supported). As for 1:1 graphics with realism, I don't think it'll happen in the next 20 years anyway. Hardware will of course get more and more powerful but despite the massive progress in the last 25 years, I still think we're only halfway to achieving such a goal.

Thoughts?

RolandIRL

Funny, Tar.A posted this a few days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQR49JGySTM

Retr0gamer

I'd much rather they weren't realistic. I'm sick enough being mediocre in real life. I'd much rather do extraordinary things and visit extraordinary places than walk around in a boring facsimile of real life.

Icyseanfitz

i can see 1/1 realism within the next 20 years providing these and the next consoles dont actually have 10 year life spans, just look whats capable today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgLFt5wfP4

ShadowHearth

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

i can see 1/1 realism within the next 20 years providing these and the next consoles dont actually have 10 year life spans, just look whats capable today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgLFt5wfP4

oh... oh... oh.... you can talk NERDY to me all day long!!!!!

johnny_ultimate

I suppose you have the slightly depressing 'gameification' (perhaps the most horrific term ever uttered by technological theorists) of real-life. Things like riding the subway or even taking a piss have had gaming elements added to them by some game designers, and that's kind of worrying. As social media become ever more prevalent, it's likely that there'll be some sort of 'meta-game' involved in people's interactions with each other. How this will play out is going to be curious to watch, and I think as traditional gamers it's our job to violently reject it :P

Who knows how technology will play out? Attempts at more 'immersive' gaming - motion controlling, particularly - have had extremely mixed success (both in terms of hardware and software), and I don't think anyone would say we're closer to replicating reality because of it. I can see eventually we'll be able to physically and mentally participate in a game to some degree. But so far cartoon sport and dancing games have been the most successful. I imagine it will be some time until we can recreate more varied experiences compellingly.

TBH, the thing I'd like to see games trying more of is to move away from being mere 'entertainment' and try to do something more artistically compelling. Sure, they can pump resources into motion controls and virtual reality. But seeing games that have something to say about 'reality' would be a loftier ambition. Films have long been able to say something about reality in both abstract and literal ways. No reason games can't either. We just need more ambitious designers. That would be a far more exciting development IMO than being able to point a gun at virtual generic alien invaders (or generic Middle Eastern characters, as seems to be the silly trend these days) with 1:1 movement.

K.O.Kiki

I'll stick to stylistic, thanks.

Blowfish

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

i can see 1/1 realism within the next 20 years providing these and the next consoles dont actually have 10 year life spans, just look whats capable today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgLFt5wfP4

That for me hit the uncanny valley, which in of itself is one of the biggest challenges to creating 'realism'.

Similar to what Retrogamer and Johnny_Ultimate are getting at though, is that bar racing sims and some historical shooters, the vast majority of games don't actually want to aim for full realism.

Icyseanfitz

yeah graphics dont bother me too much anymore tbh, i much prefer a game to have massive scale with a ton of content (aka elder scrolls, rockstars games, xenoblade), ive put 180 hours into mount ad blade warband and thats one ugly game although i would love to one day have something similar to the matrix would that not be class,

CORaven

Economically, I do not see it viable to target realism. The amount of people to build and utilise a game engine has increased (so I believe) as the engine became more complex.

Lets say that in 10 years time, if a single 'Matrix style' engine was built which could replicate our own reality with how people walked, talked and interacted along with emulated physics and how vehicles worked, and it could be sold to several game developers to use for their games, building a game/plot that even lasted an hour could take years of man power to implement. The more realistic something is, the more choices available to the player, the more they have to account for unusual choices.
Imagine LoZ:Oot on the N64, if given the choice people may have put Navi in a bottle and chucked her into a volcano or down a chasm. Or in a military shooter, choosing to surrender or to throw your empty ammo mags at the enemy. The amount of time and money required to program such an experience through character reactions, how it efects the plot and world as a whole and additional character dialogue would be costly.

Games would have to marketed differently to recoup the costs and a re-evaluation would have to be done on the life span of such products.

Icyseanfitz

but surely as technology advances the tools and mechanics to use said technology will also evolve from what is the norm today, i mean look at some of the indy devs out there today, they are creating big games on budgets that are 1/1000th of the budgets of the main devs

CORaven

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

but surely as technology advances the tools and mechanics to use said technology will also evolve from what is the norm today, i mean look at some of the indy devs out there today, they are creating big games on budgets that are 1/1000th of the budgets of the main devs

Yes, but are you measuring resources based on money or time?
Also, can you compare their level of realism to big budget games?

Icyseanfitz

CORaven wrote: »

Yes, but are you measuring resources based on money or time?
Also, can you compare their level of realism to big budget games?

as technology advances the tools will advance, better tools would mean less time, as for how good an indie game can look, this looks pretty amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUOIRZKLiME

Krusader

1:1 graphics in tamriel would be epic

K.O.Kiki

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

as technology advances the tools will advance, better tools would mean less time, as for how good an indie game can look, this looks pretty amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUOIRZKLiME

That is a terrible example to show.

While I wish the Hawken guys all the best, their game is (for the advancement of the genre) EXTREMELY shallow.
All it is is shaders, big fast mecha and explosions.
In other words, a kind of technology porn. BUT nothing much added in terms of animation, user-to-AI interactivity, plot development etc.

ShooterSF

Uh what's wrong with gameification?

Icyseanfitz

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

That is a terrible example to show.

While I wish the Hawken guys all the best, their game is (for the advancement of the genre) EXTREMELY shallow.
All it is is shaders, big fast mecha and explosions.
In other words, a kind of technology porn. BUT nothing much added in terms of animation, user-to-AI interactivity, plot development etc.

i know next to nothing about the game but it is a great looking game for an indy dev, that was the point i was trying to make

valleyoftheunos

Blowfish wrote: »

That for me hit the uncanny valley, which in of itself is one of the biggest challenges to creating 'realism'.

Similar to what Retrogamer and Johnny_Ultimate are getting at though, is that bar racing sims and some historical shooters, the vast majority of games don't actually want to aim for full realism.

Was thinking the very same thing myself, her face looked strange and her mouth appeared to be almost floating. Was still fairly impressive though as wasn't far off.

me-skywalker

There are 2 sides to the coin, the games that want simulation/realism and the games that require escapism/fun.

Take the new FIFA game, I for one find it a beautifully crafted peice of football simulation and the action and look and feel is very 'real' but I find it absolutley infuriating and shocking devoid of the fun and arcade element which I thougth sports games were suppose to invoke in us. This can also translate to FPS games, racing games, golf games. Does anybody remember Everybody's Golf? Better than Tiger Woods!!

o1s1n

The only way to blur the lines between videogames and reality is through total immersion via something like head mounted & tracked V.R.

I wish to feck some company would have the balls to put something like this into production properly with a console.

Motion controls worked and sold millions of Wiis. Why isn't anyone going to the next level and making head gear? We're way passed the 90s low fps motion sickness headsets. Something fantastic could be done with current tech.

Icyseanfitz

o1s1n wrote: »

The only way to blur the lines between videogames and reality is through total immersion via something like head mounted & tracked V.R.

I wish to feck some company would have the balls to put something like this into production properly with a console.

Motion controls worked and sold millions of Wiis. Why isn't anyone going to the next level and making head gear? We're way passed the 90s low fps motion sickness headsets. Something fantastic could be done with current tech.

too much of a risk, the big three will just stick to the norm as they have too much riding on it, although nintendo can be fairly nuts, just look at that wii u controller

o1s1n

I don't think it's any riskier than the Wiimote or the WiiU controller.

They could make a 'standard' tv based console but with the added bonus of headtracking compatability.

I can't say I'm pushed with buying a next gen console any time soon. However if it came with something like that I'd be all over it.

Icyseanfitz

o1s1n wrote: »

I don't think it's any riskier than the Wiimote or the WiiU controller.

They could make a 'standard' tv based console but with the added bonus of headtracking compatability.

I can't say I'm pushed with buying a next gen console any time soon. However if it came with something like that I'd be all over it.

yeah same here, if they consoles started going to VR route id be extremely interested, however they will just end up going to power route which i already have my pc for,

im really hoping either sony or ms make something fresh and innovative this time around but im a realist and know that they wont and if they do it will be just to catch the casual crowd

CORaven

o1s1n wrote: »

They could make a 'standard' tv based console but with the added bonus of headtracking compatability.

Problem #1, how does your character/avatar turn 180 degrees?
Sorry to nitpick, but head tracking is fairly pants when using a standard tv.

MOH

CORaven wrote: »

Problem #1, how does your character/avatar turn 180 degrees?

Every game comes with a free owl.

The problem is that the more budget is allocated towards "realism", the less there is for gameplay elements, or plot development, or some other aspect of the game. Might be a bad example, but look at FarCry, looked beautiful and played well for half the game, then descended into indoor mutant rubbish.

On the other hand, you get a few games, with crappy gameplay but pushing the bar graphics-wise, and you're raising the bar for graphics across the industry. Once you've got the first crappy game out of the way, you've got the engine to produce something decent with. That's assuming both that people buy your crap gameplay/super graphics game (which they will, cos it's all about visual porn these days), and that studios decide to invest more in the gameplay second time around, as opposed to just going "Hey, we had no decent gameplay last time and that sold well, we can just do that again and have even higher profit margins" - which is less certain.

So - first we get the near realistic games with crappy gameplay, then we get the decent games.

FruitLover

o1s1n wrote: »

Something fantastic could be done with current tech.

http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&identifier=S_Personal_3DViewer&SR=hero:3d_viewer:ss:Targeted

All they need to do now is put in the kind of accelerometers that you have in your average smartphone and we're laughing.

James74

I'm thinking that Freddie might not be too far away with this vision...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FRb8CZ__I

profitius

I think I hear the next generation of consoles will be 10 times more powerful than the xbox360/PS3 etc because the current generation of consoles are old now. If so the games are going to be amazing. Realism will be taking to new levels and AI will greatly be increased too. Playing battlefield 6 with 500 per team would be interesting.

I'd say we could be 2 or 3 generations (about 15 years) of consoles away from Avatar type games. Other technology might even replace consoles by that stage.

Icyseanfitz

profitius wrote: »

I think I hear the next generation of consoles will be 10 times more powerful than the xbox360/PS3 etc because the current generation of consoles are old now. If so the games are going to be amazing. Realism will be taking to new levels and AI will greatly be increased too. Playing battlefield 6 with 500 per team would be interesting.

I'd say we could be 2 or 3 generations (about 15 years) of consoles away from Avatar type games. Other technology might even replace consoles by that stage.

if all we get with next generation of consoles is sequel after sequel il have no interest in them

profitius

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

if all we get with next generation of consoles is sequel after sequel il have no interest in them

There'll always be popular games and niche games. Sequels sell because people like the product.

Sisko

James74 wrote: »

I'm thinking that Freddie might not be too far away with this vision...

Freddie is right in that the military are already do exactly that - back pack visors and a remote machine running the military version of Arma 2.

Saw it on the Gadget show on TV last year and I've not been able to find it online since.

This however will not being the future of video gaming exactly, more a new type of virtual paint ball. Basically a merge between q-zar and VR. Augmented reality is the one to watch in the next few years alright.