Current Events > Have we kind of reached the zenith of good graphics?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm sure there will always be new technologies coming out, but the insane leaps we used to get between generations have disappeared right?

Look at the best looking games you can buy right now, regardless of year and putting aside technical specs like pixels or path tracing or whatever. You'd probably get a list like cyberpunk, RDR2, ghost of tsushima, horizon forbidden west, god of war etc...some of those games are like 5-7 years old now.

Arkham Knight came out in 2015. Still one of the best looking games ever made.

Feels like the limitation is budget and developer, not technology. Maybe the main difference now is that smaller studios can make their games look closer to AAA than before.

pinky0926 posted...

Feels like the limitation is budget and developer, not technology

IMO we've reached the peak of textures and are now focussing on lighting

This was from 20 years ago:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/82b978a4.jpg

And this was state-of-the-art 5 years before that:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7ce86fe4.jpg

iirc, someone from Kojima's studio (might have been Kojima) said something about how the leap between PS4 and PS5 isn't that notable, graphically speaking, and how the more important stuff now is speed and performance.

i dunno man. everytime i think we reached peaked graphics, there's always a game that surprises me... lol

PS1 - PS2 remains the biggest leap

Its on mobile devices now. Handheld PCs and phones have a long way to go. Even laptops to a degree (get rid of the GPU and have intel integrated graphics be capable of excellent graphics etc), so a thin and light ultrabook could game instead of a chunky gaming laptop

Personally I feel like we have hit diminishing returns. Unreal engine 5 shows that we still can get that much little bit more realistic when it comes to realism type graphics, but the gains is no longer those huge gaps we have seen from the 16 bit 2D era to early 3D games, when early 3D games started looking vastly better on the PS2/gamecube/xbox/PCs of the time (dreamcast felt more like a in-between. Still really good looking for it's time though), and when we started getting fancier water and fancier hairs at the start of the 360 and PS3 era. (That xbox 360 king kong and staring at perfect dark zero water, lol).

Again this is just me personally, but I feel what we have with games like the last of us 2 is already good enough on the realistic front. The drop in performance with something like ray-tracing just isn't worth it a lot of times. *And unreal engine 5 since its new still comes with a lot of miscellaneous performance related issues that needs to be ironed out. Even this has me thinking "was using this engine compared to UE4 really worth it?*

Instead of pushing for better graphics than what we already have I prefer if devs instead push for things like higher enemy numbers, better AI for said higher enemy numbers, more creative art styles using the current technology we have (one of my dream game art styles is basically comix zone but in the modern day. Stuff like hi-fi rush and zenless zone zero to me is gorgous and I would love for this kind of style to be applied to a comic book game where you jump in and out individual pages.

As someone that bought a PS5 day 1 I was more into the performance increases the new console generation brought along. The extremely fast/practically instant loading, 60fps becoming a standard option again (something that hasn't been the standard/majority on consoles since the SNES and genesis days), and things in general running so much smoother. Better graphics/better resolution was more of a "neat if its there" thing since the red dead redemption 2s on the last gen hardware has and still does look amazing.

Diminishing returns man.

Like when you remember that we actually have a sizeable amount of gamers that is still relatively fine (whether by choice or money reasons. I do think that most of these gamers is just by choice and that they could afford new video game devices if they genuinely wanted to) gaming on the 2013 PS4 and xbox one it does kind of hammer home that being wow'd by the latest most realistic graphics isn't as impressive as it was with gaming generations in the past, or that the best looking games isn't that much ahead of the previous gen stuff that makes one want to say "maaaaan I got to have the new consoles and/or GPUs right the hell now".

Basically, yeah. The improvements are barely noticeable now, example PS5 pro. The presentation was literally 'look at the huge improvements here' with side by side pictures and they looked exactly the same to most people. There's a lot of technical jargon which reminds me of tennis racket marketing where they have paragraphs explaining this cutting edge new racket technology but for all practical purposes it feels and plays the exact same as the racket you bought 10 years ago. Some people say they notice the minute differences these enhancements bring. I don't really know. I'd bet some of it is psychosomatic.

I think future improvements will be less about overall graphic quality, and more about framerates and not relying on framegen / upscaling.

SketchDog posted...

Some people say they notice the minute differences these enhancements bring. I don't really know. I'd bet some of it is psychosomatic.

It greatly depends on the game.

I won't even hesitate to tell someone like my brother when he ask me about the PS5 pro that for most games, yeah, there is nothing different.

There is those games like stellar blade and RE4 remake where the performance increases is pretty sizeable. Resolution gets a little bump but its not drastic over what the base systems could already do.

Something like FF7 rebirth, ass creed shadows and monster hunter wilds is pretty drastic from what the PS5 pro could do compared to a base PS5 n' series x and looking at pictures on the internet or videos off youtube is not doing justice how big the difference is here.

*Then there is the fuck-ups like silent hill 2 remake, or fumbles like doom the dark ages.*

Still though, that is 700 dollars plus another 80 if you want to still use physical games for performance gains and for better resolution on 65 inch on up TVs. This is why its not worth it to most gamers. Your not buying a PS5 pro for better graphics. Games already look great on the standard PS5 and series X as-is.