Have gaming visuals reached a plateau? They’re definitely not making the revolutionary strides they once were — say, when normal mapping hit — but we’re still seeing some fantastic improvements, such as faster, higher-quality anti-aliasing techniques and more efficient shader revisions. These screenshots, posed in CryEngine 3, show that developers are still plugging away at making games look even more real… but would you call them “CG” quality?
Technically, these are “CG” — they’re generated by a computer — but the term is now synonymous with pre-rendered 3D graphics in cinema. Artists “Puppy” and Mark Ranson put together these admittedly gorgeous scenes in Crytek’s latest engine and there’s no denying that they look great, but what I want to know is what framerates we should expect when these bad boys are being rendered in real-time.
I’m sure any sufficiently skilled programming team could code up a highly-detailed static model viewer, but making a smooth gaming experience out of it is something else entirely. Not to crap on Crytek’s parade — these visuals are impressive — but in the end, it’s about how it’ll play and look.
Images: “Puppy” and Mark Ranson
Leave a Reply