Tendo City

EA concepts. From Magicbox.

NFS

Madden

Interesting...

Bah...

http://www.the-magicbox.com/0412/game041202c.shtml

Very nice.

Yes.

Conceptual, meaning they have no idea but are really hoping :D.

Consider what conceptual images of a lot of games start out like, and what they become.

But these are not drawings, Ms. Jaguar.

These are showing realistic poly counts that the next gen can display. So, take out the motion bluring and the neat lighting effects and you'll have an idea. Prerendered lighting effects are always spectacular and never give you an idea of actual graphic quality. Think of the video that Nintendo showed with Waverace Blue Storm and Metroid Prime. It looked almost exactly like the real games minus motion blur and the extremely beautiful lighting. Also, real-time will never look as 'solid' as pre-rendered. All 3-D video games have a cartoony 'floaty' look to them, like everything is made out of plastic. To make it look like pre-rendered, you'd have to light the game as you would a film, which means EVERYTHING would have to be real time lighting, EVERYTHING would have to be ultra subtle and you would have very little left for your cpu to use on graphics.

Real time lighting is still photoshop quality. Spotlights facing in different directions at different variables in strength and diffusion but all of them at extremes, nothing in-game will ever be subtle because then it wont be seen, or that's the fear anyway. Those pre-rendered shots have dynamic lighting that only top end machines can do in animation but not in real time. Hopefully it'll change, but I doubt it. I think even the next gen stuff, even as real as it will try to be, will still end up looking like a really well produced, realistic cartoon.

I'd love to see lighting in a game with progressivley darkening hallways that reach a point of pitch black in to the distance, where everything isn't flately lit so you can see 1000 miles in to the diatance in perfect detail... but that'll never happen. Look at Metroid Echoes, you visit "Dark Aether" but you can still SEE way off in to the distance while inside a cave that has no lights inside of it. It would have been cool if the game player had to charge their gun in order to illuminate their immeadiate surroundings. But oh well, realistic lighting will happen someday when some developer takes the courage to try it and sacrifice graphics detail for lighting detail. Resident Evil 4 looks like it'll have some nice lighting though.

Doom 3's engine was capable of very impressive lighting effects, it's just that they didn't use it that often. They just made everything dark.

Doom 3 has probably the most poweful graphics engine of any game out now for what it does... and if modified could be made better for more uses than just dark cooridors I'm sure. It's not next gen console levels yet, but we don't have next gen consoles yet either so it shouldn't be. It should be the best because ID is at its best when making graphics engines and because it's one of the few games actually designed for current high end PCs...

Yeah, and games using that engine could look a lot better if they decreased the lighting effects. A lot of Doom 3's polygons were shadows. Half of them, almost.

When you're going for a suspenseful, tense game, having it be very dark is one good way to do that...

Not when it's so dark that you can't even see most of the cool lighting and shadow effects. It's all wasted in darkness, which is why the game doesn't look half as good as it could have.

I bet if you took out most of the real time lighting in doom 3 it would look like shit. :D

Polygons are just illusions, after all. You could use billions of polygons on one model and then skimp on the lighting and you'll end up with a highly detailed balloon animal that looks like it's being illuminated from the inside out. Not very realistic if it's supposed to be a monster or a car for example. Alternatively, a low-poly creature or structure with excellent real time lighting and animated textures (bump mapping) can look awesome, there are some enemies in Metroid Echoes that are low-poly but take advantage of the lighting to create pretty spooky effects. The bosses have *extremely* good lighting! Especially Amorbis and... the last boss, I wont say its name. The lighting on all the bosses make all the bump mapping dance and the fuckers look alive, like you could touch it and you would know what it feels like.

Doom 3 has it in spades, I just wish it was coming out for Gamecube. :/

RIP AND TEAR! RIP AND TEAR!

Doom 3 is almost always shrouded in darkness, so you don't even get to see all of the cool lighting and shadow effects. And the one piece of lighting that you do see frequently--the flashlight--looks like crap! Worse than DX2's, which doesn't make any sense.

You've played through Doom 3, right? Well you know how there are pitch black corridors after pitch black corridors? They waste a lot of the polygons on shadows against pitch black interiors. A complete and total waste of processing power.