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

[Lant_War]

So, this video popped up in my feed



And it got me thinking about how videogames have the potential to look better than real life.

Of course, the real life video in this case is very low quality and only 30FPS, but the videogame pretty much looks better. I think that thanks to videogames rendering all on real time, they can look even better than real life. What do you think?

 

[Dest]

Nah. It looks really good don't get me wrong but there's a lot of detail that that camera is not capturing.

 

[yogurt]

It depends on your definition of "better"

 

[banshee150]

Hell no lol

 

[Deleted member 54320]

Not too sure about that one Chief.

 

[Dennis8K]

Real life is too clean and angular.

 

[DanteMenethil]

What would better than real life even mean, we dont operate on texture size, resolution, polygons or fps.

 

[ClarkusDarkus]

graphics on panels are reaching sublime levels and with HDR/RT will also help bridge that gap, But for me it loses it's appeal then and you hit a ceiling.

VR on the other hand can literally put you in the gaming world, Interacting with the objects etc. That for me will always be more appealing than realistic pancake visuals.

 

[Xlad]

'Look better than real life' is such a weird phase

 

[Lant_War]

What would better than real life even mean, we dont operate on texture size, resolution, polygons or fps.

Click to shrink...

Well technically cells are like little polygons. But videogames have an advantage, everything you see has been manually crafted, so you could make it so that there's always ideal beautiful conditions.

 

[JusDoIt]

Absolutely.

Spoiler

I'm agreeing out of pity.

 

[Mountainous]

better than real life? hmmmm

 

[Ghos]

yes, video games can surpass real life when you use potato quality footage

I think that thanks to videogames rendering all on real time, they can look even better than real life. What do you think?

Click to shrink...

wha

okay

 

[Angst72]

Sure. It'll take a long while though

 

[Pancracio17]

Nah. It looks really good don't get me wrong but there's a lot of detail that that camera is not capturing.

Click to shrink...

Basically. Nothing beats seeing with your own two eyes.

Well technically cells are like little polygons. But videogames have an advantage, everything you see has been manually crafted, so you could make it so that there's always ideal beautiful conditions.

Click to shrink...

I did consider this though, videogames can have the most beautiful city ever, because it would be impossible for that city to exist irl.

 

[BadWeddingSpeech]

No, but in that example F12019 is looking great.

 

[JigglesBunny]

What would better than real life even mean, we dont operate on texture size, resolution, polygons or fps.

Click to shrink...

This is my question as well, what are you even envisioning here?

I would rather look at Breath of the Wild than the grungy vacant lot across the street, does that constitute as better than real life?

 

[Mona]

surpass real life? OP what the heck are you smoking

 

[Kemono]

It'll take a long time but someday for sure.

 

[tr1b0re]

It might eventually become indistinguishable from real life, with enough time

Better than real life?

Well...that might be up to personal artistic preferences...

 

[jay]

I don't understand the question.

 

[Nec]

Even CGI from big budget movies can't sometimes, imagine in real time. But give some more years and we will get closer and closer, we just need better high end consumer hardware to render in real time.

 

[Neural]

"look better than real life" like in a phoshopped version of life?

 

[Deleted member 18360]

Apparently you can have dreams that have more clarity and detail than 'real life'.

But for games I imagine we'd have to bypass the retina and jack the signal directly into our brains. So that's a soft no from me.

 

[GaimeGuy]

"Better than real life?"

Step 1: Invent a strong form of the Total Perspective Vortex that is able to, accurately, model all parts of the Universe at all scales.

Step 2: Invent a nervegear/matrix-like device.

Step 3: manipulate variables like wavelengths of light that the eye can see, friction of light in air, etc to acquire maximum aesthetic value as measured by human physiological feedback responses.

 

[Laser Man]

No, but your virtual camera can be better than your real world camera, in that sense it can come true. But then it's your eyes (or brain) that really compares these things and not cameras! Imagine you would be driving the car instead of judging the camera footage.

To be more precise, in every video game you are always watching through a camera, even in VR.
In real life you don't do that, but your comparison video is a comparison of 2 different camera sets (it's a video, duh), one is looking at reality and the other at a virtual world. You will never be able to look at that virtual world with your own eyes, there will always be a camera in between (Star Trek holodeck excluded). Not so much for the real world and I doubt your eyes have the same black level as that shitty onboard camera etc.

 

[QisTopTier]

Ok anyone that didn't vote for No please re-evaluate your life choices.

 

[rodrigolfp]

GT5 already did that, said Sony.

 

[Naked Snake]

lol this thread

 

[PSqueak]

Not when it comes to people and or biological characters.

Materials and machinery? yes.

I can see a game featuring realistic robots (think boston dynamics) being indistinguishable from real life pretty soon.

 

[QisTopTier]

Well technically cells are like little polygons. But videogames have an advantage, everything you see has been manually crafted, so you could make it so that there's always ideal beautiful conditions.

Click to shrink...

Ok yeah, but it's not fucking real.

 

[Mr. Poolman]

Do you see on 30fps or 60fps?
This is important...

 

[Why would you do that?]

When you're trying to make graphics look as accurate as possible, then there's no such thing as being better than real life. Anything different (including "better") would be inaccurate and stylized.

That said, you might like certain styles better, so you might say a cel-shaded game looks better than real life, for example.

 

[Gunny T Highway]

 

[Kickfister]

Dunno if some people are deliberately ignoring the general idea to score those easy points or not (obviously computer graphics can't surpass real life on a technical level...). As some others have said, artistically video games can do a lot that can't really happen in reality and allow for complete artistic control. With ray tracing increasingly becoming a thing in real time, we're getting pretty close to real time graphics looking as realistic as they need to (imo), and it'll always have the benefit of complete artistic control. So in an artistic sense, I'm gonna say the potential is almost there to make just about any scene in real life better in a game world, subjectively of course.

 

[Lant_War]

Do you see on 30fps or 60fps?
This is important...

Click to shrink...

I tried moving my head but I can't tell. Looks smooth but there's plenty of motion blur.

 

[Mr. Poolman]

Real life is too clean and angular.

Click to shrink...

This reference.
I got it.

 

[WadeIt0ut]

How do you even quantify something as being "better" than reality from a visual perspective?

 

[Deleted member 35204]

what?

 

[Doskoi Panda]

I just wanna say that that comparison video is super cool

 

[Evil Lucario]

That camera depicting real life doesn't seem good to me. I'd be wary of using that as an example if it turns out to not be optimal.

Regardless that's something that seems so boring to me. Like yeah, we'll probably get there eventually, but... it's not something I want to play with.

 

[Dragon1893]

How do you surpass real life? I don't get it.

 

[ProstatePuncher]

A lot of games look more interesting than real life, but they'll never "surpass" it, because how can you get more real than real?

 

[Deleted member 50374]

Dunno if some people are deliberately ignoring the general idea to score those easy points or not (obviously computer graphics can't surpass real life on a technical level...). As some others have said, artistically video games can do a lot that can't really happen in reality and allow for complete artistic control. With ray tracing increasingly becoming a thing in real time, we're getting pretty close to real time graphics looking as realistic as they need to (imo), and it'll always have the benefit of complete artistic control. So in an artistic sense, I'm gonna say the potential is almost there to make just about any scene in real life better in a game world, subjectively of course.

Click to shrink...

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.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

When GPU's hit 40 teraflops.

 

[Patitoloco]

The hell does "surpass real life" mean!? What would be that??? lol

 

[dark_prinny]

Real life has bad gameplay sometimes.

 

[slavesnyder]

video game graphics should at least look better than my appartment.

 

[Deleted member 27921]

if you don't think this looks better than real life, you're lying to yourself:

 

[sweetmini]

games can reach a part of reality we cannot see, going towards the Plank length or beyond our event horizon, and in such surpass life on Earth.

As for photorealistic... well... not really yet but it's getting there, another 30 years and that should be it.