Are we hitting diminishing returns with graphics?

[Stooge]

Halo 5 also went double the framerate, that's a jump too which you aren't taking into account but should.
Had Halo 5 stayed 30FPS, you'd have undoubtedly seen a larger gap in line with previous jumps.

Click to shrink...

Sure, there are obvious improvements in visuals and performance, I don't think anyone is arguing that there aren't going to be massive improvements as hardware gets better. But the leaps are still just not as pronounced as they were.

Ray Tracing for instance is the future and I am here for it... but we are talking about real time reflective surfaces and lighting/shadowing instead of "faked" reflections/shadows we have now. It's going to absolutely be a huge improvement in overall IQ. But it's a more subtle shift than back when polygon counting of models was the rage.

 

[Last Jon Standing]

No and we never were.

 

[McScroggz]

I think without a doubt. Going forward I think the most impressive things visually will be a combination of a lot of complexity and detail in environments alongside eye catching effects. But going from 1080/1440 and up scaling the resolution to even just native 4K isn't something most people will appreciate in any meaningful way and I think, anecdotally, what wow moment they do have gradually becomes the norm.

I think there are people who will zoom in on environmental textures in games now and say, "wow look at how detailed that is, this is amazing!" But the average person is going to simply see the game as you would normally playing it and that detail gets lost I'm afraid.

It's one of the reasons why chasing 4K seems like the wrong decision for developers. Hopefully Sony is right in trying to simplify the process of development and that will lead to games being more detailed while being relatively similar graphically and they can be made quicker and without as many tricks.

Like, if you show a digital foundry breakdown without the commentary or graphics to show which version is which and where the issues are I'd wager the majority of gamers wouldn't notice a significant difference and that's side by side comparison.

 

[minimalism]

I've long since stopped caring about graphics so yes, for me improvements are largely irrelevant. Just like HDR, I don't get why people go all gooey over RT. I've seen both and it's nothing special.

 

[Trigonometrize]

What's interesting about gen 8 is that I feel like it's the first gen I can remember that didn't really live up to and go beyond where expectations were set at the beginning of the gen. Games like Final Fantasy VII and The Last of Us 2 look great, but they're frankly about in line with what I remember being promised with tech demos in ~2013, whereas most gens would be shocking me with how far things have come since. Like God of War Ascension for instance looked way better than early gen games and tech demos of ~2007.

I don't really even need to look to gen 9 to feel like we're hitting diminishing returns.

 

[lupinko]

Have you seen ray tracing?

Click to shrink...

No, but I've seen Titanfall.

 

[DoradoWinston]

Having diminishing returns is not synonymous with reaching peak. I feel like a large percentage of respondents to this thread don't seem to get this.

Click to shrink...

and yet we arent really seeing that, this is just another thread that doesnt really get that the next gen consoles wont push their full potential until devs have experience with them.
Thats even not including things like high frame rates and Raytracing which Xbox Series X has already announced titles that support 120fps and Raytracing.

 

[Eppcetera]

The games at the beginning of this gen have aged way more gracefully than games at the beginning of any other 3D generation. I don't see how that's not a very big indication that we've made substantial leaps. Like, just looking at the first round of games from this generation that were the showcase titles for what this gen was capable of:
-Alien Isolation
-Ryse
-KZ Shadowfall
-COD: AW
-AC Unity
-Second Son
-Driveclub

These all look fantastic 6-7 years after the fact, compare that to how quickly games from last gen aged. Imagine what studios are gonna be able to do when we reach a point where the eyes of a character don't fade away the farther the character is from a camera and where we don't have to be as reliant on ECU to get the most out of realtime models. That's a long time away and wishful thinking though.

Also, photorealism=/=a lack of art direction.

Click to shrink...

Based on a quick Google search, every single one of those games you listed, except for Call of Duty, runs at 30 frames per second on a regular PS4. The developers chose more advanced graphics (as in, being closer to photo realism) over performance in all of those cases, and I wish they hadn't. That's what I mean when I say that I wish developers favoured performance over visuals.

As for the listed games still looking good, sure, they do. I take that as a sign of diminishing returns. I think that many PS3 and XBox 360 games still look great, too. I wasn't wowed by the graphics of something like Alien: Isolation when it came out since it doesn't look much better to me than previous-generation games like Uncharted 3 or Mass Effect 3 (both of which I think still look good).

 

[cnorwood]

I'm near constantly wowed by games on my base PS4 to this day. I'm willing to bet that The Last of Us part II will blow me away all over again.

Next-gen is hardly a requirement for incredible graphics and animation.

Click to shrink...

Same here but I said the same thing last gen with games like TLOU. I'm sure graphics will be crazy 2 to 3 years into the next gen.

 

[DeuceGamer]

I believe we are seeing diminishing returns. The amount of effort it takes for the average gamer to notice the increase in graphical fidelity is considerably higher than it was 10-15 years ago. The jump in graphical fidelity continues to decrease each gen while the amount of effort required to see those jumps increase.

Let me be clear though that there is still lots of room for improvement, we just aren't going to see the same type of increases in graphical fidelity for the same effort and budget.

 

[The Iron Banana]

You will always see diminishing returns because if you base your judgement off of how close to real life the graphics are the closer they get the smaller the gap will be. We've been seeing diminishing returns in graphics since we jumped to the 32 bit generation.

 

[Giant Panda]

Anyone who thinks we didn't hit diminishing returns simply doesn't understand what diminishing returns are. Mostly, it's people wrongly thinking diminishing returns means graphics aren't improving anymore.

 

[Jbone115]

"Diminishing returns" just means that it takes more and more resources/effort to get the same magnitude of generational graphic leap - we've had diminishing returns for many generations. That doesn't mean we've come anywhere close to peaking, however.

 

[Shoichi]

I hit that point with the PS3/X360 to PS4/XB1 transition. Things just felt like less large improvements.
I still like my best visuals available though (PC gamer), but outside of RT, graphics have meant a lot less to me. I could live with the look of the better looking games of this gen for many years if they all ran at 60fps+

 

[Deleted member 64666]

I think we can have this discussion in 2 years, once we see what the PS5/XSX have brought to the world of gaming.

I do think we might be shocked in what will be achieved in a year from now...

 

[We_care_a_lot]

not even close.

 

[Nappuccino]

I had thought so, but videos of the new Flight Sim are telling me otherwise.

 

[random88]

In terms of resolution yes, but there are other stuff like light, reflections, and overall details that can get much better in the future.

 

[E.T.]

"RT was a mistake"
- Kojima circa 1992

 

[Majukun]

we have hit them for a while

 

[tazmin]

 

[Moebius]

Have you seen hair in video games? We have a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG way to go.

 

[msdstc]

I don't think so at all. I will say I think one reason things may have slowed a bit is the focus on higher resolutions. Generations used to leap in sd, that jump to 1080p was massive and the one to 4k was even bigger. Now there seems to be a focus on framerates at 4k. Eventually it'll go 8k, but I'm not sure it'll ever go a ton past that given the actual perceptible differences at that size. Either way a lot of that horsepower has been focused on maxing resolution, and it looks great, but its not a 2d to 3d kinda leap.

 

[Parthenios]

I can't really picture a difference between PS4/XBOne stuff and PS3/360 stuff in my mind's eye. I'm sure if you put footage or screenshots next to each other it'd be obvious, but that difference doesn't stick in my brain like say the difference between NES and SNES or PS1 and PS2.

When I was a teen, I was always excited for what advances in computing power would mean for physics engines and A.I. and I generally didn't care about what graphics would look like. I distinctly recall chopping a sign to pieces in Ocarina of Time and being excited for a future when every brick in each building would be rendered and you could realistically interact with everything. I don't think I was every excited to count the hairs in Link's sideburns or whatever.