Top Spin 2 shots show a certain sheen on the 360

two words: "Hot Coffee".



Please please please.

The uncanny valley is one thing, but modeling characters so they look like dolls is another. These models are "good" in the sense that they use fancy tech and high poly counts, but in the sense that they are lifelike and capture the essence of who they are modeling, they are bad. This is like looking at a technically proficient but crappy painting (think mediocre fantasy art). From the back, in gameplay, I'm sure they will look fine, but in those closeups, they just are lacking something.



Photorealism in games: Gonna be around for a while, as it's what most people expect when they read "next-gen" done well, it could be really awesome. Done poorly, it's just going to get annoying (and it won't be photorealistic).

Can someone explained why the screenshot above looks great? It is nothing. The eyes are cold. Even my 3 year old PC games with lesser graphics has better eye animation.

Environmental photorealism...? sure.



Humanoid photorealism...? Not sure if that is a good thing when used in certain games (shooters for one).. though it sure will be fun ;)

Yeah man, my Windows 98 machine had an Eye Animation Chip in it that rendered puppy-dog-eyes like nothing else could. But I couldn't afford to upgrade to the Angry Eye Chip. Oh well, I didn't play too many angry games.

Oh my, this whole next-gen thing sure looks fancy an' whatnot.



Too bad developers don't realize there are people like me who can't afford an "proper" gaming rig.

Eyes are the hurdle and I don't know of non-prerendered image that has life-like eyes. I think animators are so focused on the mouth or the machines haven't been powerful enough, that they ignore the other facial muscles. I think the skin movement around the eyes will yield more life-like results. You'd think the 360 could do it. Maybe it is just a matter of finding animators who are adept at making realistic faces.

She needs to buy a new visor, that one is crap.



look at the light getting to that forehead.



MS should have invested in some better visor shadow rendering chips.

maybe all next generation machines should license 'Barbie' from Mattel, and start creating all the titles with Barbie, in the way Nintendo does with Mario. if this game was named 'Barbie Tennis', you could say the art was 'fantastic' and 'dead on'.



'next-gen consoles: bringing all your gay Barbie dreams to life (with bad shaders)'

These pics look amazing. I can't believe anyone would complain about them. It IS still just a game, folks.

What's going on with her left hand? It's a claw. I thought the eyes in Beyond Good & Evil were pretty good.



The problem I see in a lot of games is movement around the eyes. Also, the eyes don't get a nice wet looking surface, which makes them look like doll eyes.

People, what is this fascination you have with 'photorealism'... wouldn't you rather play games that have 'Fantastic Fantasy and creation of wonder new images movement and colours!' Games are not about photorealism, how about some STYLE, creativity etc... eg, what SIN CITY did for cinema recently (either successfully or not)... excuse my language... but FUCK photorealism, it is this concept which will destroy the gaming industry. Leave photorealism for films, where the 'effect' needs to blend with real people.



and send you 3D artists to school again, to learn about photography, film, movement, realife, dust, dirt, fantasy imagination and style.



I want games to be totally 'UNREAL' (and certainly not in the epic unreal sense)...



http://gxyz.blogspot.com/
People, what is this fascination you have with 'photorealism'... wouldn't you rather play games that have 'Fantastic Fantasy and creation of wonder new images movement and colours!' Games are not about photorealism, how about some STYLE, creativity etc... eg, what SIN CITY did for cinema recently (either successfully or not)... excuse my language... but FUCK photorealism, it is this concept which will destroy the gaming industry. Leave photorealism for films, where the 'effect' needs to blend with real people.



and send you 3D artists to school again, to learn about photography, film, movement, realife, dust, dirt, fantasy imagination and style.



I want games to be totally 'UNREAL' (and certainly not in the epic unreal sense)...



http://gxyz.blogspot.com/

sorry for double post

Aside from watching flies fuck it's STILL the most boring sport on earth.

I think it's only natural that developers will try to create a fotorealistic world. And gamers are waiting for that. It's interessting to watch so process and to see how near to reality a game / computer generated world can be.



Thin of the next two or three console generations. They will certainly become powerful enough to render a fotorealistic world.



And then on some point you won't be able to sell games just by new and improved grafics. Then it will be all about creativity again ... and ,maybe more than ever!



So have fun while watching the process! It's interessting times we live in ...

Everybody here is commenting on the same thing. There is a paradox in photorealism and character modeling. The closer the model is to real-life specs and imaging, the more the human brain rejects the character as unlife-like.



Mario and Sly Cooper don't need to be realistic because we accept them as characters, much like we accept cartoons as actors. But once you make an effort to create ultra-realistic models the brian will easily spot the details that don't conform to it's expectation of reality.



Think about it. You can be totally lost in the magic of a movie like Toy Story in which EVERYTHING in the environment is a fabrication. But at the same time it's easy to be distracted from a live-action movie if the actor in the 2-second action sequence looks digitally manipulated by CGI.



Even when entirely CGI creatures like Jar Jar Binks are created, we can accept them as characters because we have no frame of reference for how they should appear or be animated.



The most realistic models are often times the best animated ones. Half-life 2's character models are more realistic because of facial expressions, not polygon counts.

I'm a 3D animator, and I always get upset at the use of the word "photorealistic". Striving to look realistic and being photorealistic are two very different things. I doubt anyone looked at that picture of Maria and thought it was photo taken from her last tennis match. All I know is that we don't have to worry about "photo-realism" in this generation of games. I mean even look at the Metal Gear and Killzone trailers for the PS3. Those look great, but they aren't even close to photoreal. The day games become photoreal is the day when we watch trailers for upcoming games and the debate isn't "is that pre-rendered or real-time", but instead is "are those 3D models or real life actors?"

Most of the best animation (Incredible for example) are not close to photo realism, but and convincing styles, so I agree with wallbanger and mike. Photorealism has it's place, but not in every game! :) with the use of cross platform development tools, it leaves little space for creative play.

You people are forgetting this is a tennis game, and you mostly wont ever see the character up clsoe enough to see the face during actual gameplay. so i dont really think it matters too much

I saw a trailer for this game in the store the other day.



I noticed that the players would swing the racket, and the ball would 'bounce' back, but the ball never touched the racket. It was unnerving to never have the two connect.



Until the motion, physics and momentum are faithfully recreated, it won't matter how many polygons the character models have. The illusion of 'reality' is broken the moment things don't behave real.



Funny, this was never an issue in Mario Tennis.



http://www.mariotennis.com/launch/index.html

Good on ya Mike. Plus, Maria does have b00b1es that big.

There really is no excuse for models this crappy. Look at http://www.joystiq.com/2005/08/11/project-offset-demo-stuns-wows/ for an example of what photorealistic graphics should look like on today's hardware.

I can't wait until this whole "photorealism: good or evil" thing goes away and people start focusing on what the real problem is: realistic movement. Many who have posted on this topic here in the past, including myself, keep saying the same thing. I hope some developer out there has a sign posted in their office that says "It's the animation, stupid!".



Right now it is much easier to get the graphics near photorealistic quality than it is to employ a complex system for realistic movement that isn't a canned animation.



Graphics is where the technology is focused right now so let them go hog wild with it. They don't have much further to go before we *really* couldn't tell the difference between a video game screenshot and a photograph. Hopefully by the time they reach that goal the technology focus will have continued to shift to physics chipsets to the point where complex collision detection, kenematics, and other physics based calculations are handled with the same effectiveness that a GPU handles it's graphics workload.



Of course we will all still be bitching about how stupid the AI is...

Agree with you 100% #17.



And for the guy complaining about photo realism. You have a point, but you seem to forget that since the advent of video games, people wondered what it will be like when you can't tell the difference between a video game and a movie. We always want better graphics. Always. And the point at which graphics are no longer an issue is when they truly become photo realistic.



The graphics vs. gameplay debate isn't a debate at all.



They are not mutually exlusive. You absolutely need fantastic gameplay for it to be a great game. And you need stunning/cutting edge graphics for people to flock to it. Geometry Wars has wonderful gameplay, and even though it is a simple game with vector-like graphics, the grid effects and particlar effects and sound are very pleasing and very next gen. Just play the retro version and you will see.

Looks bad...look at her hands...never held a racket that way...



The graphics hunt is ruining gameplay.

If developers spent half of the time they spend on graphics on gameplay, we would make progress.

check out fight night 3 for the 360 (demo out now) that is much much closer to photo real.

Why is no one emphasizing AI. Imagine a FPS shooter like Call of Duty where you can command or be commanded by smart troops. Ones that don't block. that act intelligently like a person would in multiplayer

This debate will never be settled until we have a sex simulator on the 360. get crackin' boys!



Why is it that all the cyber-strippers and sex games are only present on the PC. How does the PC get away with that kind of controversial content (people ACTUALLY having sex, such as in Virtual Eve, or realistic looking strippers as in several other programs) when the consoles get nailed for some blocky-looking CLOTHED characters bumping against each other in Hot Coffee?



Seriously- Why all the focus on consoles by the outraged parents? Haven't they gotten past the "video game consoles are for kids" mentality yet?

Its crazy how you guys can tell how skin movement and muscles in

the

face and eyes work from a still picture. Im not that advanced yet in

my 30 years of being on this earth. Whats even more crazy is the fact

that people dont know about that large ball of fire in the sky that

makes things in them shine. Man the sweat that comes out of my poors

shines in the daylight how does yours not?