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Can videogame graphics surpass real life (or at least live action movies)?

Will videogames push the boundaries of reality?

  • Yes

    Votes: 62 21.2%

  • No

    Votes: 206 70.3%

  • With VR, yes.

    Votes: 25 8.5%
  • Total voters
    293
Sean Mirrsen

Sean Mirrsen

Banned
May 9, 2018
1,159
Surpass, yes. Match, no.

There's plenty of things that CG can do that you can never see in real life, so it 'surpasses' real life by default. The difficulty is matching real life, making it indistinguishable, because human brains are pretty good at telling specific parts of reality apart from fiction.
 
teague

teague

Member
Dec 17, 2018
1,509
I don't know what "better" than real life means in this question. There are already scenes in some games that are "better" than real life scenes in some way, like this:
large.jpg


Is a nicer picture than this:

20140701_140334.jpg


But at some point, a simulation of reality just can't actually be more "accurate" than reality because that makes no sense. (What are you doing, simulating photons that aren't there?) At some point, the amount of visual information that can get processed by your eyes is capped (and also the amount "out there in the world" is already way higher than what that limit is). Once you hit the cap it probably makes no difference.

But again, if this is supposed to mean artistically better, than yeah, sure.
 
Chackan

Chackan

Member
Oct 31, 2017
5,097
Look more "real"? Of course not, that makes no sense.

Look better? Yes, sure. You can have a pretty photorealistic game but model it to cut through all the bad and build the perfect gorgeous scenario of your dreams.
 
Alex2DX

Alex2DX

Member
Nov 6, 2017
1,164
24 people voted yes? lol....I would think eventually it could get very close. But as others have said, what is surpassing real life?
 
Hexa

Hexa

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,728
Technically in terms of having more detail and such. Absolutely not. In terms of art style and being more enjoyable to look at, it's already been better for quite a while.
 
Shoichi

Shoichi

Member
Jan 10, 2018
10,442
Games can never reach real life levels of graphics. The details and non-perfection is hard to be reached. It can get really close though.
I remember when I thought PS2 games looked realistic (Grand Turismo) and thought it would be hard to get much better. Games will always look inferior to same year live action movie cg
 
Guy.brush

Guy.brush

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,357
That video comparison is comparing the rendered graphics to the video feed of a video camera, probably HD at a max, lots of image enhancement-noise operations after the CCD captures the image and codec compression mushing up the final image. The limited exposure range is of course a limiting factor.
So I would say video games definitely can look better than an HD camera with limited exposure range, but better than the human eye? No, also how would we ever know? :P
 
teague

teague

Member
Dec 17, 2018
1,509
sweetmini said:
When you are not bound by physical laws for optics or other measuring devices, you can get closer to the reality of matter than was life can give us through senses.
Does not apply to an f1 race though xD
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This makes literally no sense. How are you experiencing the game if not through light rays entering your eyes? And those light rays aren't bound by the "laws of optics"? Even if you stuck wires into the visual cortex directly, this would likely have lower resolution than going through the eyes because there isn't a man-made material that's better than nerves for doing nerve stuff. Or are you assuming that a video game could be "better" but we can't experience it?

And what hardware exactly is the game running on that doesn't run on particles or waves that exist in the real world and obey the laws of physics?
 
banter

banter

Member
Jan 12, 2018
4,127
Unless you make something that allows our brains to perceive things that we normally can not, the answer is no.
 
Bit_Reactor

Bit_Reactor

Banned
Apr 9, 2019
4,413
I'd be happy if it did so I could stop seeing people gripe about graphics and let some stylized games get back in the arena. Really sick of the "Stylized art is for kids" or "It's too anime" arguments.
 
Alienous

Alienous

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,597
There was a concept like this for a Gran Turismo game, I think - the idea being to pursue the perfect environmental conditions and have it be perpetual. So having the sun in the perfect position, or the perfect amount of moisture on grass.

So can the graphics surpass real life? No - not technically. But could it be a more beautiful, interactive snapshot of the real world than you would find in nature? Yeah, I think so.
 
CaptainKashup

CaptainKashup

Banned
May 10, 2018
8,313
It's a matter of preference.
Art can be seen as better, more attracting, then real-life.
And videogames are a form of art, so yeah.
There's some games that I find better looking then what I see IRL. Just a matter of opinion.
 
Alex2DX

Alex2DX

Member
Nov 6, 2017
1,164
Hexa said:
Technically in terms of having more detail and such. Absolutely not. In terms of art style and being more enjoyable to look at, it's already been better for quite a while.
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Click to shrink...

Its a matter of opinion I know. But to me as amazing and as beautiful as some games are, you cant match being out in real life looking into a a sunlit valley or something. I feel like you cant get the same feeling of the breathtaking scale of things.....who knows maybe VR will get there in the future. Just my two cents of course.
 
MP!

MP!

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,198
Las Vegas
I think it will look better than filmed life... but I dont think it's going to hit the point of looking at the world with your eye balls
 
sweetmini

sweetmini

Member
Jun 12, 2019
3,921
teague said:
This makes literally no sense. How are you experiencing the game if not through light rays entering your eyes? And those light rays aren't bound by the "laws of optics"? Even if you stuck wires into the visual cortex directly, this would likely have lower resolution than going through the eyes because there isn't a man-made material that's better than nerves for doing nerve stuff. Or are you assuming that a video game could be "better" but we can't experience it?

And what hardware exactly is the game running on that doesn't run on particles or waves that exist in the real world and obey the laws of physics?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I know it makes "no sense", but it's the beauty of it, i believe artists can bring us an feel of the reality we cannot touch because we are too macroscopic and limited in what we "can" see. A projection of reality into the realm of our domain of perception. Like an instrument, but simulating what even the instruments cannot show us

There's no need for specific hardware, just manipulation of what exists.
 
teague

teague

Member
Dec 17, 2018
1,509
sweetmini said:
I know it makes "no sense", but it's the beauty of it, i believe artists can bring us an feel of the reality we cannot touch because we are too macroscopic and limited in what we "can" see. A projection of reality into the realm of our domain of perception. Like an instrument, but simulating what even the instruments cannot show us

There's no need for specific hardware, just manipulation of what exists.
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Click to shrink...

I still think I'm confused as to what you're saying. I think I'm sympathetic to the idea that art can get us a more "pure" or "sublime" experience of reality than just living our daily lives, but the fact is that the fidelity of that won't be greater than what we can, as humans, strictly experience. So I'm not trying to be a jerk, just trying to figure out what your point is.

OP and many posters are equivocating between two meanings of better: artistically better, like you're saying (mystical/direct artistic experience, aesthetically superior) and better in terms of fidelity, which is a contradiction. Something simulated cannot, strictly speaking, be more accurate than the thing it's simulating.
 
blacklotus

blacklotus

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
2,023
When the graphics become better than real life will the real life become graphics and graphics the new real life?
 
DarthBuzzard

DarthBuzzard

Banned
Jul 17, 2018
5,122
Sort of. You can produce much richer colors than what you're used to seeing in real life, combined with a truly photoealistic pathtraced scene with a retinal resolution VR headset.

If we had that, it would look like hyper-reality, meaning yes, it would look better or at least richer than real life.
 
DarthBuzzard

DarthBuzzard

Banned
Jul 17, 2018
5,122
themuzzotheory said:
This, and the fact that images on a 2D plane are of course easier to process for the brain, can be slowed down, zoomed in, etc. allowing to enjoy events in a different way than reality. But actual perfect photorealism is probably a long way to go for games, since even movies never really escape the uncanny valley with "not real time" rendering.
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Real-time renderings for humans in VR are starting to get close to surpassing large CGI farms. Real-time is speeding ahead with much faster progress than what's going on in Hollywood and elsewhere.

Case in point:


Supposedly they're making some traction to getting that working on mobile hardware and in actual scenes. The beauty of optimization.

Sean Mirrsen said:
Surpass, yes. Match, no.

There's plenty of things that CG can do that you can never see in real life, so it 'surpasses' real life by default. The difficulty is matching real life, making it indistinguishable, because human brains are pretty good at telling specific parts of reality apart from fiction.
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Click to shrink...
See my above post. We're getting close.
 
DarthBuzzard

DarthBuzzard

Banned
Jul 17, 2018
5,122
teague said:
I don't know what "better" than real life means in this question. There are already scenes in some games that are "better" than real life scenes in some way, like this:
large.jpg


Is a nicer picture than this:

20140701_140334.jpg


But at some point, a simulation of reality just can't actually be more "accurate" than reality because that makes no sense. (What are you doing, simulating photons that aren't there?) At some point, the amount of visual information that can get processed by your eyes is capped (and also the amount "out there in the world" is already way higher than what that limit is). Once you hit the cap it probably makes no difference.

But again, if this is supposed to mean artistically better, than yeah, sure.
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How dare you. That shopping cart is sublime.
 
teague

teague

Member
Dec 17, 2018
1,509
wandering said:
*angry Baudrillard noises*
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I honestly thought of mentioning Baudrillard lol, but that's like, sort of a metaphor

EDIT: Honestly if anything, this thread is proof that Baudrillard was right since people are earnestly asking if something fake (a video game) can be more real than real. We're already in the full postmodern stage bby
 
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