The extremely high expectations surrounding the UE5 tech demo are concerning

[Pheonix]

First off, the Unreal 4 tech demo was surpassed as early as with KZ:SF. Then with second son, then the order, uncharted...etc.

secondly, this U5 tech demo, unlike very demo before it, was not just running "in-engine" on the PS5 but was playable. That alone says more to what is possible or not.

I am not concerned, stuff like that would be surpassed as is always the case. They don't have to look like that, they would just be of much higher detail than we typically see in games today.

Lastly, you know devs already build high-quality assets for everything right? U5 tech isn't saying you would have to build better stuff, its saying you would have to do less work since you won't need to build multiple lower-quality versions of that high-quality asset.

 

[Nintendo]

Why are you concerned about others' expectations? Let them be disappointed if it comes down to that. However, I do think next-gen games will surpass the UE5 demo.

 

[forgiventhrice]

Last of Us part 3 will match or surpass that UE5 tech demo graphics .

 

[nsilvias]

the tech demo is just a theoretical maximum of whats possible in perfect conditions as of rite now. once you start adding gameplay systems, more characters, environmental systems that tie into the gameplay and a bunch of other stuff it be alot less impressive as the demo. over time tho as devs figure out the hardware itll become somewhat easier to meet the demo tho and maybe even surpass it

 

[Paquete_PT]

We should wait until we see playable footage of first-party games from Sony and Microsoft before this discussion. Prior reveal videos for unreal were cutscenes, this at least looked playable in some way. I don't expect launch games to look as good but we will get there this gen. Besides, a game can be as impressive without having that many rocks or triangles.

 

[Deleted member 17184]

First we had people downplaying what next gen titles will look like for months, now there is concern people are expecting too much, lol?
That UE5 tech demo looked gorgeous, and I can see future games using UE5 doing some very awesome stuff. I just wonder about other graphic engines that do not have the Lumen and Nanite technologies. I guess they'll still have to use the same old technologies for their terrain modelling and lighting. They might not be able to create just as detailed games as UE5 can. Maybe that is why the God of War developer chimed in. He maybe knows that the visual quality is either not possible yet on big scale games like the upcoming God of War or that it is not possible with their graphic engine.

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Like I said in the OP, other engines can have their own implementations of these features. But this thread itself is proof that there are people expecting everything in that demo to be in a full AAA game, and what Epic demonstrated was that they are available to use altogether, running perfectly on every next-gen platform. While some features facilitate the workflow, others are still very time-consuming and expensive.

At some point, this will all be possible in a game like God of War. But I hope we don't create a threshold between "this could be done on the XB1/PS4" and "this is definitely next-gen" just because of this tech demo. It won't be a fair comparison.

Its def not smoke and mirrors, and I dont see him stating that. he is saying to not expect this stuff in your games for a while since populating game worlds with the detail seen here is very hard. Especially when you dont want to use photogrammetry libraries since those libraries only cover real life items and trying to match that quality with assets that have to be build from the ground up is very work intensive, even when you dont have to make LOD's.

95% of upcoming nextgen titles will not look like that until far later in the generation. This is a look into the future how games can look with this tech and for now its exclusive to epic, and UE5. (and I say "can look" not because its technically smoke and mirrors, but the fact that creating full games with this detail is incredibly expensive, both in money and in time until the industry catches up and finds better ways to create and populate game worlds with this level of detail.)

Also I can for sure tell you that the tech was on the horizon, but nobody believed any commercial engine would go there this soon.

Don't expect this tech to be in any other engine any time soon.

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Wholeheartedly agree.

First off, the Unreal 4 tech demo was surpassed as early as with KZ:SF. Then with second son, then the order, uncharted...etc.

secondly, this U5 tech demo, unlike very demo before it, was not just running "in-engine" on the PS5 but was playable. That alone says more to what is possible or not.

I am not concerned, stuff like that would be surpassed as is always the case.

Lastly, you know devs already build high-quality assets for everything right? U5 tech isn't saying you would have to build better stuff, its saying you would have to do less work since you won't need to build multiple lower-quality versions of that high-quality asset.

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Did you read the OP? I mentioned that it was playable, and I talked about the UE4 tech demo as well.

And the last point isn't what I'm arguing about. It's about the expectations of basically that tech demo except as a full AAA game. That's not going to happen anytime soon. It will happen eventually. And there will be games that are aesthetically more pleasing. But all that tech combined isn't painting a proper picture. I hope that makes more sense.

Why are you concerned about others' expectations? Let them be disappointed if it comes down to that. However, I do think next-gen games will surpass the UE5 demo.

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It's the kind of unnecessary pressure on developers' hands. Remember "puddlegate," or other bizarre "downgrade" discussions? I don't like to feed that culture.

 

[avaya]

It's good to expect the best. It demonstrated what 10TFLOPs of compute is actually capable of. I don't expect everything or the vast majority of games to look as good, after all the vast majority of PS4 games don't come close to Sony's titles, but I do expect first party on PS5 and XSX to be at this level or better.

 

[Baccus]

Maybe this isn't our problem

But what do I know

 

[EVIL]

It's good to expect the best. It demonstrated what 10TFLOPs of compute is actually capable of. I don't expect everything or the vast majority of games to look as good, after all the vast majority of PS4 games don't come close to Sony's titles, but I do expect first party on PS5 and XSX to be at this level or better.

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I can assure you, they will not be. not for a while.

This isnt what 10TF can give you, but its a ground shift in how geometry is dealt with in a game engine. I can assure you, every engine is now looking with envious eyes at epic and you will get this tech matched at some point in those engines but it will take a while.

 

[maximumzero]

I fully expect all sorts of "downgrade" backlash when "next gen" games don't look like this tech demo out of the gate.

 

[avaya]

I can assure you, they will not be. not for a while.

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No I'm not expecting that at launch but I expect it to come from 2023+

 

[kungfuian]

If you went back to the PS3 era imagining an open world game with the level of detail of something like Horizon seemed unthinkable. Like what kind of sorcery would it take to make those kinds of art assets. And yet that's what we got.

Just seems pretty inevitable that developers will be wasting much less time masking the limitations of old hardware and instead focusing much more on the creation of high quality art assets.

If they are drawing from existing libraries of mega-scans they will find ways to make them look unique and fit their games, or they will find ways create these types of assets much faster. Like when they go to take reference shots for a game instead of photos they will directly scan the objects and environments to create their assets, or maybe they will make miniature sets and objects and scan them directly into their games. Will be very interesting to see the work flow changes.

 

[mutantmagnet]

Im pretty comcerned as well, the expectations are going to go through the roof and good fucking luck rigging and animating movie quality characters with those kinds of meshes. One company, probably Rockstar or Naughty Dog will set some kind of insane precedent, probably through some unholy levels of crunch, and players will start expecting that kind of output from all developers.

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The big take away from the Unreal 5 demo is that it is technically supposed to reduce crunch. Especially with nanite you don't have to spend the time doing the optimizations you used to do.

I expect this method will still have performance issues that is very different from baking models but aren't you as an artist looking forward to potentially doing less work in aggregate?

 

[Herb Alpert]

Nah.
It's the same song and dance every start of a new gen.
All that maters is hype, and they know it.

 

[Jiraiya]

This demo, Hellblade trailer, and hearing so many devs excited about the consoles makes it difficult to not have high hopes for fidelity next gen. The leap in geometry over this gen is going to be more profound than I've been imagining. It's staggering. While I don't expect everything to be the best looking game ever, I do believe the benefits to scene geometry will be industry wide. I play NBA2k and it's still hard to imagine what this means for that title since it's such a closed setting.

 

[Rpgmonkey]

Developers who'll even have the resources of Sony or Microsoft behind them are saying not to expect it to easily scale to a typical big console game (expansive if not fully open world, lots of different environments, a bunch of different enemy and character models, 20+ hours long at minimum, several components running concurrently, etc.) anytime soon.

It's good to imagine what comes next but there's enough indicators out there that people need to be reasonable.

 

[jett]

The bigger story here, and what should be a topic itself, is that the GoW art director is suggesting the tech demo is effectively smoke and mirrors that will be unattainable in "feature length" titles. Sounds like MS's shit show was actually more representative of what to expect.

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It's not that it's smoke and mirrors, just that expecting this consistent level of detail throughout an entire actual game is most likely unrealistic. Nobody is going to be imbuing their open world games with nothing but 8K textures.

 

[CrispyGamer]

Didn't Phil Spencer say he expects this level of fidelity next gen? I've read so much the past few days i might not be remembering correctly

 

[Dennis8K]

Can't wait for this future of directly imported ZBrush assets and 8K textures.

 

[Superking]

You could argue the UE4 Real-Time PS4 Tech Demo is feasible today

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okay i'm sure my perception is a tad colored since i haven't seen this in years and especially looking at after the UE5 demo, but...does anyone else think this looks like ass? i mean, there's tons of compression artifacts and areas of absolutely choppy frame rate in there. i thought it was due to the uploader posting a badly compressed file but it's apparently on the official playstation channel.

 

[Armadilo]

Games always surpass tech demos eventually, Happened to the PS4

 

[one]

Why does the OP ignore Inside Xbox Series X Gameplay Reveal?

 

[cjn83]

Did you ... not read the OP?

Im pretty comcerned as well, the expectations are going to go through the roof and good fucking luck rigging and animating movie quality characters with those kinds of meshes. One company, probably Rockstar or Naughty Dog will set some kind of insane precedent, probably through some unholy levels of crunch, and players will start expecting that kind of output from all developers.

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Help me understand though, won't the vast majority of assets in a game with this detail come from photogrammetry rather than art teams, which whether from libraries or own scans is pretty much drag & drop?

I can imagine that future AAA studios will have a workshop attached to them (if that's not the case already), where a number of people are working on models and miniatures which are then scanned in to the games. I can not see artists sitting at a desk drawing things to this level of detail.

 

[Hawk269]

Why does it concern you OP? I mean, if I or the next person that posts here has High expectations, how does that impact you? What if we have no expectations does that impact you? Just seems odd that you created a thread of what others may feel when if they do or do not have high expectations of the UE5 engine when regardless if they do/do not it has zero impact on you.

 

[gothmog]

Why shouldn't we have high expectations? If console companies want to crow about 12TFs of power and better than PC SSD technology, they better be ready to back it up with some games showing it off.

I personally was more concerned after watching the XSX reveal last week. That was mostly underwhelming IMO.

 

[Crayon]

I dont see whats supposed to be unatainable in that demo. Maybe im misunderstanding.

 

[Deleted member 17184]

okay i'm sure my perception is a tad colored since i haven't seen this in years and especially looking at after the UE5 demo, but...does anyone else think this looks like ass? i mean, there's tons of compression artifacts and areas of absolutely choppy frame rate in there. i thought it was due to the uploader posting a badly compressed file but it's apparently on the official playstation channel.

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The current UE4 iteration can do a lot better today, yeah. The other obvious difference is that it's a cinematic, not playable.

Why does the OP ignore Inside Xbox Series X Gameplay Reveal?

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Because I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the technologies introduced by Epic on the tech demo for the Unreal Engine 5.

Help me understand though, won't the vast majority of assets in a game with this detail come from photogrammetry rather than art teams, which whether from libraries or own scans is pretty much drag & drop?

I can imagine that future AAA studios will have a workshop attached to them (if that's not the case already), where a number of people are working on models and miniatures which are then scanned in to the games. I can not see artists sitting at a desk drawing things to this level of detail.

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I'm no artist, but I imagine there are constraints because you're limited to what the asset is giving you. If there are level design issues, or it's not fun in playtesting, etc, you can't do much work. Just a guess, though.

 

[Jobbs]

I'm getting so tired of people saying "tech demos never come true" since it only takes working vision and 30 seconds of googling to see that that's not the case. The original PS4 reveal and all the tech demos that came with it were extremely achievable and ended up being not only met but surpassed by retail games. The only thing from that event that never materialized was the fire effect in deep down.

 

[Beef Supreme]

I can certainly see this as a concern for devs. Further down the line, though, I not only see them surpassing that tech demo on every level. It happens every gen. The only tech demo that has yet to be duplicated was the original showing of Watch Dogs.

 

[catswaller]

lol, so this thread is non developers arguing with other non developers based on hearsay from devs w/o context?

A ton of similar fidelity assets already go in to every single AAA game. This tech will enable skipping a lot of difficult, semi manual processing steps which sponge up a ton of artist time.

On the other hand, todays tools to work with meshes this complex are not good. Workflow changes and innovations in tools will need to catch up.

You aren't going to see any full size games that look like this demo right away, but as the industry responds (especially depending on how good this tech really works, and how good of tools ue5 ships with) art probab;y won't be any harder to make w/ these tools than it is without (aside from the regular creep of higher and higher quality bar).

You'll also keep seeing the regular shortcuts -- open worlds with less hand made polished detail except at setpieces. Repetition of props and details throughout the world. Lower budget games featuring sparser, less fleshed out environments. But none of that is specific to any particular tech for putting polygons on the screen.

(and, PS, megascans dont magically make things easier or harder)

 

[Iron Eddie]

The only concern, which isn't really about me, is how sustainable is the industry? We already seen games get delayed and still have crunch. I am expecting fewer AAA games this gen and even fewer new AAA IP's.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

That's fine, I don't need all those rocks. Especially since it means we're still crawling through small gaps to mask loading times of much more detailed rocks.

But the gameplay looked pretty damn samey. Show something cool. We've been playing the same games for too long. Use the new power to create new gameplay experiences that weren't possible.

I don't need slightly better shadows, reflections on metal poles and 8K rocks. I need new crazy gameplay and that's what I'm expecting of next-gen. Not the same old boring ass games we've had for 15 years. It's time to pump it up. Not the rocks or shadows.

UE5 should make it easy for devs to implement faster/more accurate directional inputs with a controller.

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They were showcasing what a AAA game might be. You aren't going to get new genres or experiences in AAA games now or next gen due to the absolutely massive financial risks these projects take. Thays why almost every AAA game nowadays is an open World third / first person shooter / melee game centred around telling a very cinematic narrative.

 

[Deleted member 17184]

I'm getting so tired of people saying "tech demos never come true" since it only takes working vision and 30 seconds of googling to see that that's not the case. The original PS4 reveal and all the tech demos that came with it were extremely achievable and ended up being not only met but surpassed by retail games. The only thing from that event that never materialized was the fire effect in deep down.

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I don't think anyone in this thread is saying they never come true. We have multiple devs in this thread and the Art Director from God of War saying that level of fidelity won't happen in 30+ hour games soon. Obviously there will be a way. But again, I'm talking about initial expectations being basically "next-gen is either like the tech demo or trash/clearly a downgrade/next-gen-gate.

lol, so this thread is non developers arguing with other non developers based on hearsay from devs w/o context?

A ton of similar fidelity assets already go in to every single AAA game. This tech will enable skipping a lot of difficult, semi manual processing steps which sponge up a ton of artist time.

On the other hand, todays tools to work with meshes this complex are not good. Workflow changes and innovations in tools will need to catch up.

You aren't going to see any full size games that look like this demo right away, but as the industry responds (especially depending on how good this tech really works, and how good of tools ue5 ships with) art probab;y won't be any harder to make w/ these tools than it is without (aside from the regular creep of higher and higher quality bar).

(and, PS, megascans dont magically make things easier or harder)

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I don't think this conflicts with anything that I've said.

 

[ken_matthews]

I can assure you, they will not be. not for a while.

This isnt what 10TF can give you, but its a ground shift in how geometry is dealt with in a game engine. I can assure you, every engine is now looking with envious eyes at epic and you will get this tech matched at some point in those engines but it will take a while.

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Well that's what I'm thinking about too. Did Nanite come out of left field and catch everybody else off by surprise? What exactly is it doing on the back end? Is it similar to mesh shaders and have other developers been working on similar tech? If it's an entirely proprietary and novel approach, then how likely/easy will it be for other devs to replicate it? So many questions...

As for me, I'm not personally concerned about expectations not being met. I was blown away by Nanite, Lumen and the enitre demo, buy it's wasn't the insane complexity/geometry that really made it look next gen, it was their GI solution. I'm sure a lot of other developers are already working on their own custom GI Solutions or planning on using raytraced GI. I also understand that it was a tech demo and not a game. Games are going to look really good and I am not worried about it. However, other people...there will be a lot of silliness with their expectations.

 

[Deleted member 17184]

As for me, I'm not personally concerned about expectations not being met. I was blown away by Nanite, Lumen and the enitre demo, buy it's wasn't the insane complexity/geometry that really made it look next gen, it was their GI solution. I'm sure a lot of other developers are already working on their own custom GI Solutions or planning on using raytraced GI. I also understand that it was a tech demo and not a game. Games are going to look really good and I am not worried about it. However, other people...there will be a lot of silliness with their expectations.

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This is a good sum up of my thoughts!

 

[WellbornWarrior]

I always wondered why nobody has yet figured out how to train an AI to create rocks or other mundane stuff and place it automatically. Seems like that is unavoidable if environments get more and more detailed.

 

[Jobbs]

I don't think anyone in this thread is saying they never come true. We have multiple devs in this thread and the Art Director from God of War saying that level of fidelity won't happen in 30+ hour games soon. Obviously there will be a way. But again, I'm talking about initial expectations being basically "next-gen is either like the tech demo or trash/clearly a downgrade/next-gen-gate.

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The really ambitious AAA devs will end up turning out games that rival that demo. I feel pretty confident about that. We may not see it right away but we'll certainly see it. Just look at how insane TLOU2 looks on extremely old PS4 hardware

 

[Jay-T]

Honest question, how is this different from all previous generations?

I remember in the time leading to every new generation we had these tech demos and target renders, and every generation we had games coming close or surpassing these demos, so what's different this gen?

 

[Jobbs]

Honest question, how is this different from all previous generations?

I remember in the time leading to every new generation we had these tech demos and target renders, and every generation we had games coming close or surpassing these demos, so what's different this gen?

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Nothing. A tweet from one dev who has the opinion that it'd be hard to do in a full game, I guess, but devs end up doing really hard things all the time.

If you're on Team "Retail games will never look as good as this demo", as some people seem to be staking that position -- I really feel like your posts won't age very well over the next couple years if not less.

 

[Deleted member 67920]

The demo running at 30 FPS helped me to keep it in perspective tbh.

 

[IronicSonic]

I thing sky high expectations is something normal in every new cycle of console generation. Just remember PS2 screnshots and magazine hype.

And are we sure UE5 demo was really that hype?. Side to side with those Uncharted 4 images in that analysis video, UE5 demo doesn't look that impressive IMO. I'm aware developer side of things is a different matter and I'm glad devs have toola to speed up their work, but in the user end, it's still look similar to what top AAA game offer right now. Maybe it was the genre they choose to demo?

 

[Deleted member 17184]

Honest question, how is this different from all previous generations?

I remember in the time leading to every new generation we had these tech demos and target renders, and every generation we had games coming close or surpassing these demos, so what's different this gen?

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Developers are a lot more exposed to all the angry comments and/or armchair devs arguing towards them because a game isn't looking as impressive as a tech demo, and something along the lines of "maybe you should've used UE5 instead."

This is also the first gen reveal after GG, and we all know what angry gamers can do.

 

[Pheonix]

Have we (gamers) always ben this doubtful and negative or is this something that just kinda happened over time.

 

[catswaller]

I don't think this conflicts with anything that I've said.

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Not particularly calling you out for what you said, but you do seem to be over-emphasizing the negatives a little. (Also, given the average era user's fixation on resolution and framerate, I think you'll find a lot of posters who think this has been "surpassed" as soon as launch titles come out.)

 

[Haint]

Its def not smoke and mirrors, and I dont see him stating that. he is saying to not expect this stuff in your games for a while since populating game worlds with the detail seen here is very hard. Especially when you dont want to use photogrammetry libraries since those libraries only cover real life items and trying to match that quality with assets that have to be build from the ground up is very work intensive, even when you dont have to make LOD's.

95% of upcoming nextgen titles will not look like that until far later in the generation. This is a look into the future how games can look with this tech and for now its exclusive to epic, and UE5. (and I say "can look" not because its technically smoke and mirrors, but the fact that creating full games with this detail is incredibly expensive, both in money and in time until the industry catches up and finds better ways to create and populate game worlds with this level of detail.)

Also I can for sure tell you that the tech was on the horizon, but nobody believed any commercial engine would go there this soon.

Don't expect this tech to be in any other engine any time soon.

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From the consumer's perspective though, it's ultimately immaterial whether the limit is the rendering hardware or the human resources/production pipeline. This is a reversal of the "bullshots" of old. Then it was presumably feasible to create the assets used in the fake trailers, but the hardware couldn't handle it. Here, it sounds like the hardware can handle it, but the asset creation is unfeasible. End result is the same.

 

[catswaller]

From the consumer's perspective though, it's ultimately immaterial whether the limit is the rendering hardware or the human resources/production pipeline. This is a reversal of the "bullshots" of olds Then it was presumably feasible to create the assets used in the fake trailers, but the hardware couldn't handle it. Here, it sounds like the hardware can handle it, but the asset creation is unfeasible. End result is the same.

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The thing is maybe my perspective on this is really different, but a lot of what I am blown away by in this tech demo you will see on ue5 powered games, even if the assets aren't such good quality.

You will see pixel sized triangles casting shadows, leading to very precise, detailed surfaces (even if that detail is cheap looking or low quality.) You will see no or almost no LOD pop in or ground surface swimming from tessellation or slow texture streaming or anything like that. You will play games that let you travel quickly around terrains with varying objects in them. You will see detailed objects far away, that don't flicker or change as you get closer to them. Each of those parts might not use as many amazing quality hand placed pieces as the UE5 art team was able to put together for this demo, but they'll all be there in everything that can implement and run this virtual geometry tech.

(You'll probably also see drawbacks, which we haven't gotten tto see yet since this was a special case tech demo. Maybe there will be bad transparency, like there is in today's deferred rendered games -- this demo dodged any glass, and had little foliage. There will be slow progressive light bounces. There will be artifacts as screen space GI converges in crevices. etc)

 

[one]

Because I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the technologies introduced by Epic on the tech demo for the Unreal Engine 5.

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If the UE5 tech demo on PS5 was the sole example of next-gen stuff it would have set people's expectation as high as that. However Inside Xbox Series X Gameplay Reveal is there for people to see how next-gen console games would look like.

 

[Deleted member 17184]

Not particularly calling you out for what you said, but you do seem to be over-emphasizing the negatives a little. (Also, given the average era user's fixation on resolution and framerate, I think you'll find a lot of posters who think this has been "surpassed" as soon as launch titles come out.)

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I am focusing on these points, for sure. I don't think situations like the "puddlegate" were healthy at all. I'm sure most devs didn't take that seriously, but it adds to the culture of armchair devs.

I don't think the tech demo was bad, or the features aren't welcomed, or anything like that. I do think that showing it on a consumer event (Summer Games Festival) instead of a developer audience (like how it was originally planned for GDC until that was canceled) and is playable creates different expectations compared to a cinematic like the UE4 tech demo. I know there are people who won't worry about this and won't contribute to "puddlegate"-like arguments, but I'm sure others will.

UE4 was released during GDC 2014, just a few months after the gen began. UE5, in its full version, will release a year after. And yet, we're seeing a playable tech demo a year and a half before. You could see comments about how games this gen don't impress anymore, or how games using UE like FF7R should switch to UE5 just because of the demo. At the same time, multiple devs on Twitter have been saying something along the lines of "please remember tech demos are very different from full games."

If the UE5 tech demo on PS5 was the sole example of next-gen stuff it would have set people's expectation as high as that. However Inside Xbox Series X Gameplay Reveal is there for people to see how next-gen console games would look like.

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Quoting you because I've explained some things related to what you said above. I'm not downplaying Inside Xbox at all, by the way. I'm very interested in some games announced there. But the impact from the tech demo seems way bigger at this point.

 

[catswaller]

I don't think the tech demo was bad, or the features aren't welcomed, or anything like that. I do think that showing it on a consumer event (Summer Games Festival) instead of a developer audience (like how it was originally planned for GDC until that was canceled) and is playable creates different expectations compared to a cinematic like the UE4 tech demo. I know there are people who won't worry about this and won't contribute to "puddlegate"-like arguments, but I'm sure others will.

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Oh yeah, I super agree there. The delay before papers/talks explaining details right now is really weird too (probably a result of changing to this summer games festival rollout?) and also not helping devs control the narrative at all.

But gamers have so little idea how things work anyway that you're just as likely to see them demand every game has 1000000 polygons as you are to see them demand every game has scuttling bug particles that avoid light -- I think the impulses of the crowd to have arbitrary, insatiable expectations can't really be tamed and arent specific to any new tech.

 

[eso76]

I don't expect a game the size and variety of Uncharted 4 to be entirely made up of multi-million-polys unique assets like those, no, but current games shortcomings (relatively speaking) in geometry are not due to problems in producing assets for the most part and having engines and hardwares that promise to allow devs to not have to manage their poly budget at all times will help produce much better visuals at every level of game development, from indie to AAA.