Current titles matching the quality of animated films from eight years ago, says Star Wars 1313 dev
Graphics in games will be indistinguishable from reality in ten years time, claims Industrial Light and Magic’s Kim Libreri.
Speaking to CVG, the Star Wars 1313 visual effects supervisor said that given how technology had progressed in the industry, games were increasingly getting closer to matching the quality of animated and live-action TV shows.
He said that whilst games were only currently matching the quality of animated films from eight years ago, it wouldn’t be long before the industry made a big jump in graphical quality more akin to film.
“It’s an interesting time because with modern computer graphics hardware, the way its going, it’s going to be pretty hard to tell the difference between something that is interactive and rendered in real-time, and something that was done for an animated TV show, or even live action,” said Libreri.
“Ten years from now, I’m pretty sure if you extrapolate where we’ve gone with the console generations and the changes in video and ATI hardware, we’re getting to the point right now where we’re matching the quality of an animated movie from seven or eight years ago.
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“Another ten years from now, it’s going to be indistinguishable from reality.”
Revealed at E3, the impressive Star Wars 1313 was regarded by many as the highlight of the show thanks to its stunning graphics and facial animation, as well as offering a new and more cinematic direction for the long-standing franchise.
Game graphics will never mimic reality. Look at CGI, only archviz is SOMETIMES photorealistic, and even then there are flaws. These things take days per frame to render, I doubt we can render these in 16 milliseconds in 10 years.
And then there's nature, nobody has rendered that properly yet and they won't.
Games will match current film quality, yes... but film CG is still easily distinguished from reality... 10 years from now, current film CG is going to look painfully dated, and we'll --as usual-- wonder how it ever fooled us.
@Nope
You honestly have no idea what Moore's law is do you? If you ever looked at computer processing power you would notice it is about 2^y = c.
-y = years
-c = processing power
It's the observation that transistors/area roughly doubles per two years... Yes, this is what is going to allow us to perform film quality CGI in real-time within 10 years, as stated in the article, and acknowledged in the comments. This wasn't disputed.
Now, do you know what the uncanny valley is? Do you realise that current film CGI does not mimic reality, and therefore the premise is false?
There is tech out that is already doing insane CG rendering. There is tech and software that is capable of doing tons of computations in mere seconds.
I say less than 10 years. With the advancements of SSD technology and processing power we are going to see a change in hardware. RAM will get replaced with SSD tech. 1 less hardware component to use cuts processing time in half.
Imagine what an SSD with a processor built into it could do. Then run that in raid setup. Talking blinding fast here. There is a lot of hardware that is going to be miniaturized in the next 4 years.
The only thing that will hold back the "reality" of video games is how the software advances with the tech available.
@Wolfos
Man, you really have no clue. It's not even a matter of prediction, it's just a matter of history. Just take a look back and analyze things a little bit.
But of course, you'll also need a bit of knowledge on the field, and unless you prove me wrong, I'm sure Mr. Libreri, as the guy who most likely made your jaw drop to the floor a few times in the past even when your probably don't even know it, and as the guy who was the first to bring to the screen a few things never seen before he did it, knows one or two things more than you about this matter.
10 years ha have you not seen what they can do with UE3 engine & UE4 will be here long before 10 years is away. Samaritan Demo made in 2011 is basically realistic enough. Nvidia can now play it on 1 GTX680 so next gen from both AMD & NVIDIA whould be able to play it from a mainstream card. It might be 10 years away for handholds, consoles & browser based but PC it should be alot sooner.
Who gives a tuppenny toss what the graphics will be like?
We need as much effort if not more to bolster the sad cliches trotted out time after time in the gameplay side of things.
Where's the fun that existed ten years ago...stuff ten years from now!
This article is for those who prefer style over substance.
Photoreal graphics combined with new virtual reality headsets like Oculus Rift = game changer.
www.oculusvr.com/kickstarter
We're super excited to see this happen!
I'm pretty certain I recall such predictions being made 10 years ago, too...
As a unit of time it's dubbedthe "Herme" after the great futurologist Herman Kahn. It's where everyone will have their own helicopter in ten years time. It never happens as it's just far enough in the future to think it's going to happen, and far enough back to forget.
Of course, someone has to draw all this stuff and it gets increasingly expensive to the point where it's not economically viable until the tools are available to make it possible. And then we're into the next Herme.
I think there is a false equivalency going on here. While we might agree (or not) that we might acheive photo realism within the next 10 years, that's not the same as "mimicking reality." To do the latter, one neads to include more complex physics engines (which might be doable), character models, weather patterns, and (more importantly) AI. It is this last item which, given the absence of a reliably successful Turing Test, seems the least likely to be achieved in the next 10 years.
