@welshbloke, i'm very curious about that. on one hand i'm all into content/art but on the other had before moving into the graphics creation field i used to dabble in the technical side of graphics so i happen to also be keenly aware of things missing in game visuals for example on the path to photorealism... so i'm quite split: on one hand i totally support a lengthy cycle and i believe it's the key to gaming becoming truly mainstream but on the other hand I imagine a point in the future where 5x or 10x times more powerful hardware will become relatively cheaply available for manufacturers and we all know games WILL eat any processing power you throw at them and come up with ingenious ways to use it...
The solution to this paradox I see in games becoming mainstream: i see a lot of room left for improvement in EVERYBODY getting access to a powerful gaming platform. Maybe we are indeed closer to the point where games could trully branch off: same game, same content, but differnt levels of quality... but this mental hypothesis always breaks off in my imagination: it's hard for me to imagine that once the hardware becomes able to do for example true breaking materials or fluids one developer or another won't be tempted to make a game that hinges strongly on say your bullets used to break off doors realistically or just the "splashing" of large quantities of fluids...
that being said though... with this and set top boxes I'm strongly hoping for gaming to emerge as a platform as accessible to anybody as turning on the TV and switching between the racing and the fps channels
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i'm very curious about that. on one hand i'm all into content/art but on the other had before moving into the graphics creation field i used to dabble in the technical side of graphics so i happen to also be keenly aware of things missing in game visuals for example on the path to photorealism...
so i'm quite split: on one hand i totally support a lengthy cycle and i believe it's the key to gaming becoming truly mainstream but on the other hand I imagine a point in the future where 5x or 10x times more powerful hardware will become relatively cheaply available for manufacturers and we all know games WILL eat any processing power you throw at them and come up with ingenious ways to use it...
The solution to this paradox I see in games becoming mainstream: i see a lot of room left for improvement in EVERYBODY getting access to a powerful gaming platform. Maybe we are indeed closer to the point where games could trully branch off: same game, same content, but differnt levels of quality... but this mental hypothesis always breaks off in my imagination: it's hard for me to imagine that once the hardware becomes able to do for example true breaking materials or fluids one developer or another won't be tempted to make a game that hinges strongly on say your bullets used to break off doors realistically or just the "splashing" of large quantities of fluids...
that being said though... with this and set top boxes I'm strongly hoping for gaming to emerge as a platform as accessible to anybody as turning on the TV and switching between the racing and the fps channels