clearing on 23/7/2009 at 12:57

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Great article: (http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/7/21/why-directx-11-will-save-the-video-card-industry-again-and-why-you-dont-care.aspx)

Malf on 23/7/2009 at 13:48

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Cheers clearing, pretty interesting article.
Although, there's already stuff being shot in 4k in the movie industry, but I doubt we'll be seeing that tech in the home for at least another 5 years, if not more.
4k is 4096x2048, where 1080p is 1920x1080.
Thinking about it, I honestly can't see 4k being viable for home use, as screens that could do the resolution justice would be so big as to be impractical, not to mention expensive.

jay pettitt on 23/7/2009 at 14:24

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Actually, I do care. The push for selling graphics hardware has sent expectations and development costs spiralling to long past sustainable levels. The result has been the death of the once vibrant PC gaming and modding scenes.

And despite there being hardly a publisher left interested in funding PC titles, they refuse to give up their market dominance, keeping a hold on the PC game space by throwing their marketing might behind glossy but unimaginative console ports ~ effectively stifling any impact that independent PC game development can have.

Graphics technology killed PC gaming.

Renzatic on 23/7/2009 at 15:10

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Considering we're quickly reaching that fabled graphics plateau, I'm not at all surprised. Already, I think we've reached the point where the current generation of consoles could be sustainable for 8 years instead of the usual 4, and even then, the inevitable upgrade won't be nearly so impressive as the last.

While there still is a ton of room for improvement, they're all gonna be little tweaks that won't be as jarring. Like games in 2011 might have characters with a bit more realistic skin texturing, shadows that are a little higher res and accurate, engines are a little more efficient and can push a few more polygons than previous iterations. None of the jawdroppingly grand leaps we've seen in the last ten years, in other words. For instance, how do you improve on something like Crysis? Make it run better. Make it even more realistic. Make higher res textures. Improve on the art style. That's about it.

I think this is a good thing for us. Even we dyed in wool PC hardware junkies won't have to (and probably won't want to) upgrade nearly so often, and a console purchase is something that'll last about forever. But for the industry as a whole, the current setup can't be sustained, and something will have to change before the whole thing collapses under its own greedy weight.

Silkworm on 23/7/2009 at 15:26

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I totally disagree, there are MANY more things to be done for graphics in gaming

- More characters on screen at once (ie trying to render an average scene from New York City)
- Bigger draw distances (ie trying to render an average scene from New York City, again)
- Animation
- More complex models (polygons can't last forever)

And remember, video game graphics isn't just about trying to simulate real life, it's about recreating the vision of a game designer. There's nothing "realistic" about many game concepts (magic, sci-fi, etc.) - it's perfectly possible to have graphics capability that can recreate real life, but can't accommodate a particularly imaginative game. And nobody would even try to argue that games are photo-realistic yet anyway...

I don't think were anywhere near reaching the fabled graphics plateau - the community is collectively fooling itself. PC gaming is slowing down for the same reason every other high-tech luxury is slowing down - were in a quite harsh recession.



Are you sure about that? The fastest pace in technology advancement occurred in the late 90s* - precisely the time when the PC market was strongest. If anything, right now the pace of technological/graphical enhancement has slowed down - and PC gaming is much worse off. If this statement is true now, how come it was NOT true then? Shouldn't the need to upgrade to a Riva TNT in 1998 have hurt the industry just as much as a Geforce 8800 in 2008?

I think a much better hypothesis is that PC gaming is a high end luxury - and as the economy slowed down less and less people could take part. This suggests a little bit of cautious optimism - if the economy ever gets back on its feet, PC gaming may take a bigger share.

*in 1999 high-end computers were literally more than a 1000 times as fast 1993s, ie a game like Quake 3 required literally 1000x more computing power than Doom.