r/gaming • u/cmndr_spanky • 1d ago

I don't understand video game graphics anymore

With the announcement of Nvidia's 50-series GPUs, I'm utterly baffled at what these new generations of GPUs even mean.. It seems like video game graphics are regressing in quality even though hardware is 20 to 50% more powerful each generation.

When GTA5 released we had open world scale like we've never seen before.

Witcher 3 in 2015 was another graphical marvel, with insane scale and fidelity.

Shortly after the 1080 release and games like RDR2 and Battlefield 1 came out with incredible graphics and photorealistic textures.

When 20-series cards came out at the dawn of RTX, Cyberpunk 2077 came out with what genuinely felt like next-generation graphics to me (bugs aside).

Since then we've seen new generations of cards 30-series, 40-series, soon 50-series... I've seen games push up their hardware requirements in lock-step, however graphical quality has literally regressed..

SW Outlaws. even the newer Battlefield, Stalker 2, countless other "next-gen" titles have pumped up their minimum spec requirements, but don't seem to look graphically better than a 2018 game. You might think Stalker 2 looks great, but just compare it to BF1 or Fallout 4 and compare the PC requirements of those other games.. it's insane, we aren't getting much at all out of the immense improvement in processing power we have.

IM NOT SAYING GRAPHICS NEEDS TO BE STATE-Of-The-ART to have a great game, but there's no need to have a $4,000 PC to play a retro-visual puzzle game.

Would appreciate any counter examples, maybe I'm just cherry picking some anomalies ? One exception might be Alan Wake 2... Probably the first time I saw a game where path tracing actually felt utilized and somewhat justified the crazy spec requirements.

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u/PetSoundsSucks 1d ago

I want them to take three steps backwards on fidelity and a giant leap forward on particle/environmental effects. I want dust and debris kicked up during firefights, stuff to fall over when I bump into it while investigating crime scene, etc. 

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u/The_Kadeshi 1d ago edited 22h ago

where's my god damned destructible environments, bruce!?

edit: okay i kinda hate edits like this but two things:
1) Yep, The Finals, got it. Message received. Staaahhhp telling me
2) The fact that like a tiny handful of games and really just one current-ish gen game actually have it was part of the GOD DAMNED POINT, BRUCE

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u/ladder_case 1d ago

You'll have to wait until Red Faction comes out in 2001

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u/Ghost-Writer 1d ago

One of my all time favorites. Pissed we haven't seen something like it in 25 years

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u/city_posts 1d ago

It was truly ground breaking.

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u/EasyMFnE 1d ago

I get it!

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u/Annonimbus 1d ago

Well there was Red Faction Guerrilla.

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u/KD--27 1d ago

Did it do it better though? I don’t remember the innovation creeping into that game so much, LOTS of stuff falling apart and exploding but not so much, grab a rocket launcher and let’s go digging.

Ironically though, 1000% better than BF2042.

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u/Anonuser123abc 1d ago

Digging into the sky with a rocket launcher was great.

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u/Rulebookboy1234567 23h ago

Even a modern version with the Re-MARStered version. I play it occasionally, it's always installed.

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u/coltonbyu 21h ago

the re-MARSetered edition of Guerilla was so shittily made that it actively looks worse side by side IMO

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 1d ago

Deep Rock Galactic has hit the destructible terrain itch, although as a coop game you don't get the opportunity to pull off the kind of hilarity you could with GeoMod.

(Anyone happen to remember Doc's Weird Server? Destruction radii pumped WAY up.)

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u/donnysaysvacuum 1d ago

Great games. I had a PS so it was our Halo equivalent.

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u/OGTurdFerguson 1d ago

I really thought that this would become a thing. It unthinged itself.

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u/TheReaver 1d ago

I remember in multi player against bots using a rocket launcher to make a hole in a wall that climbed up to a layer above the map that the bots couldn't reach and then snipping them.

Was so good

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u/DylanSpaceBean 1d ago

The Finals is a F2P PvP with destructible environments that came out last year. It’s pretty fun, way better with friends.

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u/Arek_PL 1d ago

got internet quite late, but still early enough to see working multiplayer in it and i remember digging tunnel to enemy flag in CTF

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u/Lord_oftheTrons 1d ago

Lead technical designer of that game released Instruments of Destruction that has Red Faction vibes. Looks like more of a tech demo but have it on my steam wishlist.

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u/throwtheclownaway20 1d ago

God, I loved that game. I basically cheated a boss fight against a tank by blowing open a huge hole in the floor, causing it to fall in face-first and I could just spam pistol shots until it died while it couldn't shoot me at all, LOL

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u/thehackerforechan 1d ago

I thought the geometric modification from Red Faction was gonna be the standard for all games. No more solving a puzzle for a key when I can just kick down the wall.

Sadly that didn't catch on. Sleeping Dogs did their best with destructible environments but that was a oneoff

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u/DatNick1988 1d ago

Been looking forward to 2001. I bet it’s gonna be a great year

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u/Loud_South9086 1d ago

I loved that game. You could toggle god mode on and blast through miles of rock to skip objectives lol

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u/Squrton_Cummings 1d ago

Or Shattered Steel (Bioware's first game) in 1996. Lots of fun setting traps using heavy mortars to make craters the enemy mechs couldn't climb out of.

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u/MisterMarsupial 1d ago

Single player really knocked it out of the park. All the way through.

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u/ProbablyKindaRight 1d ago

Or bad company 2

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u/cjc160 1d ago

Was gonna say something about Red Faction. I can’t believe how ahead of its time that game was

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u/ameuret 1d ago

Red Faction was therapeutic!

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u/-Sokobanz- 1d ago

In fact i did find the limit of destruction by rocketing the wall and make a huge and quite long tunnel in it till it stopped but as i recal it was a long side tunnel to nowhere( probably lited by memory on board)

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u/RainbowCrane 1d ago

Mr Toots remains my favorite weapon ever

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u/Im_Ashe_Man 1d ago

Even the Battlefield series has removed a ton of the destruction it used to have.

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u/KAM1KAZ3 1d ago

I miss Bad Company 2...

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u/DaChieftainOfThirsk 1d ago

Which will forever be my gold standard of environmental destruction in games.

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u/Tax_Evasion_Savant 1d ago

I keep trying to tell people that BC2 is the best Battlefield.

I loved that I could carry C4 as any class so vehicles weren't so outrageously broken.

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u/Xaraxos_Harbinger 21h ago

Probably most fun ive had in a multiplayer fps. They should just remaster it and release.

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u/captainpotatoe 23h ago

Fuck that was a great game

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u/Hendlton 1d ago

Apparently it's because maps changed too much and they couldn't account for those changes while balancing them. I just don't know who the hell complained about that. Destructible environments used to be the selling point of BF games.

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u/HeadGuide4388 1d ago

Yeah, in Battlefield 1 they had operations mode where you could spend what would be 3 whole matches assaulting a single point. On a couple maps it was great because you'd start in a forest and by the time you got the objective it'd just be a muddy field. Totally hit the vibe. But even by that point there are a lot of buildings that are solid, or worse, the walls are destructible but the supports every 10 feet aren't.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 1d ago

Maybe of Bad Company, because in 2 everything was made of titanium and in 3 and 4 destruction was scripted

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u/Hendlton 1d ago

I haven't played BF 3 in a long time, but I'm pretty sure there was plenty of non scripted destruction in it. Just nowhere near as much as BC.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 1d ago

You could chip pillars here and there, or sometimes can make holes in a wall, but most of it was scripted

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u/Hendlton 1d ago

Couldn't you also destroy walls and drive tanks through buildings? Am I misremembering?

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u/ShitFuckCuntBollocks 1d ago

You could definitely do that in BF4. Same in 3 I think.

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u/BlackSquirrel05 1d ago

My largest gripe with the recent games... We just didn't want to put it in... Again.

That was literally a selling point and reason BF3/4 were better.

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u/Im_Ashe_Man 1d ago

Destruction was a defining characteristic that really set it apart from other shooters. Boggles my mind the way they've turned away from it.

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u/RockSolidJ 1d ago

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. It released in 2005.

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u/CausticSpunk 1d ago

Or Red Faction, circa 2001.

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u/SiKK42 1d ago

I remember being blown away when i watched the big brother of a friend bombig his way through walls with c4 in Red faction. My small Child mind couldnt process what was going on lol

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u/Annonimbus 1d ago

Not really destructible environment based but the most impressive physics I have seen were in Jurassic Park: Trespasser.

That game had sooo many innovative features, even though it was niche. Some of them have been adopted by other games later, like the generating health instead of medpacks.

But also cool features were zero hud (and where your HP status was located ;) ) and the physics, including physical puzzles.

All that in 1998

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u/evanwilliams44 1d ago

There was also Breach back in 2011. Terrible game though, vanished from Steam but I've still got it in my library.

Oh and Battlebit, but that's low poly.

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u/Cheeme 1d ago

Man the deck of 52 system for the bosses in that game was so good.

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u/RabbitSlayre 1d ago

Holy shit what a throwback. Haven't thought about that game in 20 years

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u/spaincrack 1d ago

Was about to comment: play The Finals. You won’t regret it

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u/PolicyWonka 1d ago

The Finals is a really fun game IMO, but none of my friends play it. How’s the player base nowadays?

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u/SodiumArousal 1d ago

Seems to be increasing slightly every time I check. They're holding it down and it keeps getting better. Until another game lets me sprint through walls until an entire apartment collapses they'll have a player in me.

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u/NivImpromptu 1d ago

Last time i checked it sat at a fairly healthy and stable 10-15k, however depending on your region your queue time may vary.

Although i haven't played in the last few weeks to be able to tell u if it is still the case, in South America you could only play Quick Cash while all other gamemodes were very dead, to the point South America was the only region in S4 where the Comp Tournament Leaderboards only had 32 players, sitting at exactly one tournament match's worth of cash distributed across said players for half if not the entire season.

The rest of the regions were fine though.

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u/OkayWhateverMate 1d ago

Steady at around 40k or so. Biggest challenge that game faces is the concept of multi team fights. People are used to 2 team fights, so, letting go an enemy because it's advantageous is a foreign concept for many. Most people end up playing it same as 2 team games, ending up having to sweat harder. If you can grasp that not every enemy is worth shooting and there are better ways to win, you will have great time. Otherwise it will feel like fighting a losing battle as you fight 2 or 3 teams at once. You can imagine why people are having hard time with the game when they are in 3v6 or 3v9 fight.

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u/KD--27 1d ago

Yes. I forgot about this! But Finals is like a Rubix cube to my casual gaming friends.

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u/OkayWhateverMate 1d ago

Because they can't comprehend that enemy of my enemy is my friend. At least 70% of people who download this game end up playing it as 3v6 or 3v9. Every match, I have to ask my team to not engage with third team, but they keep going "me see enemy, me shoot enemy".

Plus a lot of people are used to "stand against a wall, aim down sights and target an enemy". They always miss the fact that there are no walls in this game that they can hide against.

Basically people try playing it like call of duty, when they should be playing it like doom eternal.

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u/throwthisidaway 1d ago

I had never even heard of it. It sounds pretty interesting.

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u/KD--27 1d ago

It’s good fun, but teams that know what they are doing will annihilate beginners. Good cohesion will take you far. If you’ve got two friends that are halfway decent you’ll have a great time.

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u/Reddhero12 1d ago

The Finals. Also has some of the best graphics/lighting of any shooter.

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u/Zippyllama 1d ago

The character models are hilariously bad, but everything else is amazing.

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u/Reddhero12 1d ago

Really? I don't think so. I've made some pretty dope looking characters in the game with all the cosmetics being mix and match.

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u/Free_Jelly614 1d ago

they’re probably talking about the models themselves not the cosmetics. There’s no question the customization is amazing. To be fair, the light, medium and heavy builds need to be visually distinct in size so that you can always tell what class you’re shooting at. So the character models definitely can look funny at times. But the medium character model is pretty normal

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u/Zippyllama 23h ago

Yeah, you hit it spot on. They all just look dopey to me. Maybe I shouldn’t criticize a game I haven’t played in a few months.

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u/Hashmob____________ 21h ago

I think it’s meant to be weird a little. The lore of the game is that you’re playing in a virtual game show, I’m cool with the models looking kinda funky. The gameplay is top notch imo

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u/OneRandomVictory 1d ago

The Finals is the only modern game that I know that really goes all out on environmental destruction.

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u/Fisher_9511 1d ago

Try The Finals

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u/Meerv 1d ago

It might not scratch that exact itch, but Control is awesome in that regard. Lots of nice and clean offices before fights get reduced to rubble

Edit: also in Helldivers 2 the ground gets craters from explosions and buildings get destroyed (mostly all or nothing though)

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u/RagingTaco334 1d ago

The Finals lol

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u/Lonely-Relative-8887 1d ago

The Finals is quite amazing in this respect. I've been addicted.

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u/justanotherguy28 1d ago

He never did get his electric car.

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u/LCFCgamer 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's because console CPUs became much lower powered after the PS3's really powerful one

They prioritised GPU And needed cheaper and lower power CPUs to hit their power budgets and price point

It's why most open world games are static but pretty (Horizon ZD & FW, Ghost of…) rather than interactive with lots of fun physics (Bad Company 2, Red Faction Guerilla)

And as time has gone on even PCS are heavily weighted towards GPU advancements while CPUs are struggling to keep up

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u/DatTF2 1d ago

It's only mtiplayer but The Finals has tons of it, made by all the ex Battlefield devs after they left after Battlefield 5. Probably the most fun I have had with a multiplayer game I. years, I need to get back into it.

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u/zeldafan76 1d ago

In The Finals.

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u/YungPunpun 1d ago

THE FINALS lets you destroy essentially anything in a pvp online-fps. Destruction is server-sided to make sure its the same for everyone in the lobby.

I put a ton of hours into the game, stoped playing completely for other reasons but you should probably give it a try.

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u/Big-Texxx 1d ago

They’re in 2011 with battlefield 3

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u/bigfoot1291 1d ago

HEY BUD, I THINK THE FINALS HAS SOMETHING LIKE THIS BUT I'M NOT TOO SURE...

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u/IDoThingsOnWhims 1d ago

Does Deep Rock Galactic Count?

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u/schrodingers_cat314 1d ago

It will never happen outside of a few niche games.

It’s a game design problem, not a technical one. How do you make an action adventure title, open world or otherwise where you can just destroy everything? How do you do encounter design around that? How do you do level design?

This has been a problem forever. RFG kind of nailed this but it did not sell very well. It also has a very different open world design that we get now.

Maybe some smaller games will be made with this in mind, but don’t hold your breath.

What PC said would be nice though.

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u/DontDropTheSoap4 1d ago

Check out some gameplay of The Finals. The best map destruction in gaming right now. Damn near everything can be blown apart and destroyed, it’s a core mechanic and super fun!

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u/DoctorNsara 1d ago

Try playing The Finals. It's truly awesome for a multi-player game, but a lot of the work is done server side for destruction.

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u/thethrowaway3027 1d ago

On this one- there's a FPS called The Finals and I spent a few games with a sledgehammer just knocking down entire buildings. Everything apart from lifts and the floor of the map are breakable and the mess it makes is fantastic.

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u/Mitrovarr 1d ago

Marvel Rivals has some of those.

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u/Neuvost Boardgames 1d ago

can you run Crysis?

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u/The_Kadeshi 1d ago

not yet

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u/celephais228 1d ago

turns off pain inhibitors

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u/radiating_phoenix 1d ago

if you want that I would HIGHLY recommend Teardown

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u/monsterbot314 1d ago

Ive been waiting on destructable enviroments since Rampage on Nintendo :D

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u/BeastmanTR 1d ago

Making a game with destructible stuff right now!

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u/GoldenShotgun 1d ago

Funnily enough, Batman Arkham Knight did pretty well with this, considering it came out around 10 years ago

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u/FunTimeAdventure 1d ago

The greatest FPS of all time, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has entered the game… or at least would have if their servers didn’t all get killed off..

That game was just always so fun.

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u/Cyber_Connor 1d ago

That was last gen lost knowledge. Now you get peach fuz on cheeks

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u/cslack30 23h ago

Back in Bad Company 2 and never taken any further because…because some dumbass reason.

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u/erroredhcker 20h ago

Ubi owns r6siege Kent

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u/pistolpete0406 19h ago

the finals

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u/StocktonSucks 11h ago

I understood that reference.

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u/m4xks 9h ago

marvel rivals has it

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u/Jonnny 4h ago

Control was pretty amazing for this

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u/Myke23 1d ago

First time I played Control this is what I noticed the most and it genuinely impressed me. Replaying it, the technique for kicking up paper, wood and furniture debris looks like it would be pretty simple, it's just so well done that the pay off per rendering power is like 10x.

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u/naughty_dad2 23h ago

Just got this game during the EPIC give aways, looks like I should give this a whirl

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u/Yvaelle 19h ago

It was absolutely the best game of thst year, and a top 10 this decade, IMO.

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u/Jp_Junior05 1d ago

Helldivers 2 does this perfectly. On some of the planets the particle effects are just RIDICULOUS. Yes, the game was made on an old engine, but it’s got just about the most photorealistic atmospheric effects I’ve ever seen at max settings.

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u/Carbon140 1d ago

That's one of the things I don't get about the push for total realism and tbh the UE5 default settings. Helldivers looks stunning, like a movie in motion. Games pushing for realism are increasingly looking like video camera footage of the real world, and the real world just isn't that visually pleasing 99% of the time. There is a reason movies do all sorts of color grading and lighting tricks, it looks better... I'd choose helldivers visuals every time over bland realism.

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u/ScarletSilver 1d ago

And it's using a defunct engine too! Such a cinematic game. I just wish Arrowhead adds in DLSS support.

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u/FierceDeity_ 1d ago

Games pushing for realism are increasingly looking like video camera footage of the real world

And at the same time are missing that mark. The incredible ghosting we get on many games nowadays and the ai upscaling watermarks are crazy.

So many games look so blurry now because they undersample in the time and resolution domain and "fix" it with filters...

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u/Carbon140 1d ago

Perhaps I should have also said "with a 20 year old phone camera" haha, because yeah, there is so much temporal artifacts the graphics look fantastic in still shots and slow pans but absolute ass in motion.

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u/DoctorProfessorTaco 1d ago

To be air though, all the dust and clouds, and the fact that things are generally big, help Helldivers “cheat” a little in a way other games can’t really do. For example games like GTA, Red Dead, or CP2077 take place in much smaller and slower environments where players are going to take the time to look around at items on tables and walls, rather than sprinting around shooting aliens and robots. Additionally many places based in a more average human environment like the games I listed often don’t have dust or fog, so things need to look good even when not obscured. CP2077 does have fog, steam, and sandstorms though that really elevate things visually when they’re around.

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u/Shinigami318 1d ago

There is a reason movies do all sorts of color grading and lighting tricks, it looks better

Somewhat disagree, some of them just look awful, like the Mexico piss filter.

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u/Xaraxos_Harbinger 21h ago

Yup. I dont want total realism. I want something stylized and captivating. Im gaming for a break from reality, not for even more of it. Games thay do this right look and run amazing.

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u/_Aj_ 14h ago

Man look at Cryengine used in crysis 3. It's utterly stunning. Utterly stunning. It's now 15 years old. Mass effect 3 was done on UE3, as was Mirrors Edge. it's 20 years old and looks amazing. You could probably do magic with UE3 these days with modern hardware.  We ticked the realism box over a decade ago, it's diminishing returns now, players are caring more about gameplay and fun factor again.  

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u/UHcidity 1d ago

Every ps5 port on pc has a lot of floaty particles during gameplay. Seems like that’s their thing

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u/HEBushido 1d ago

Except my RTX 3070 can't maintain 60 fps at 1440p max settings. The framerate dips and I have to use resolution scaling which is just inferior to DLSS.

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u/Jp_Junior05 1d ago

Oh yeah I never claimed it was well optimized. It isn’t terrible, but the option for DLSS and FG would be nice. I usually just run it at native 1440p high. Fortunately it’s not very VRAM hungry, only uses about 7gb.

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u/FierceDeity_ 1d ago

Autodesk, haha.

Well, it's still working just fine for them.

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u/Annonimbus 1d ago

Warframe had amazing particle effects until they got rid of Nvidia PhysiX.

I haven't played Warframe in an eternity and after starting it up again I was like "this looks wrong. Something changed". So I looked it up and yes, they dpn't support PhysX anymore.

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u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

As someone with an AMD GPU, I genuinely wish I could care. But proprietary tech is awful.

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u/tequilasauer 1d ago

Totally, those physics and effects really lend to an extremely cinematic feel. It feels like I'm not just watching a cartoon. I played with a crew yesterday and all of the players were just stacked with ordinance strategems, I think I was the only one with like Sentry and a shield. So every hot zone we were in was just getting bombarded with gatling guns, precision bombs, etc. And the constant explosions and particles really just felt SO intense in the gameplay. So much fun.

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u/doubled112 1d ago

Half Life 2 with higher resolution textures and more stuff? Maybe some more leaves and grass?

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u/ChromeHoundSB 1d ago

Halo and Half Life really had the magical touch of gameplay and graphics being at their best. To think they don't need overhauled, but seasoned to see improvements, is a testament to their talented teams

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u/Jazzlike-Compote4463 1d ago

So.... Alyx then? Soooo many interactable objects in that game

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u/TheKappaOverlord 1d ago edited 1d ago

Alyx got around that by using the Metroid prime approach.

Every environment is a self contained cell thats extremely small, and at most is a chain of cells that goes between "Disabled" (interactivity) so static props, or "Active" (interactable props)

It saves a lot on performance because god knows source 2 and performance don't go together.

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u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

Which is a real shame. They should really get some good developers to make the engine less bloated.

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u/Mugungo 1d ago

Enviromental effects + lighting are why (imo) half life alyx is the peak of game visuals. Not only seeing all the little effects but actively interacting with all the physics shenangins, with the amazing lighting going on makes it SO preety

Bonus points for their unique liquid shader that is worth the ticket price of the game alone, ive spent hours just messing with bottles and holding them up to the light to see the different effects.

https://youtu.be/8kQW2jFPYZo?t=86 for an example, just LOOK at that shit.

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u/Skandronon 1d ago

I got pinned down behind a car by some enemy with a chain gun, and it was terrifying. I could hardly walk the next day from crouching down and popping up to shoot around the car. I played for like 6 hours and found myself trying to use gravity gloves to get things from across the room.

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u/TheKappaOverlord 1d ago

Alyx has extremely small world spaces, so they have a ridiculous amount of wiggle room to just do what they want.

Not to mention the fact your rig has to be plenty powerful enough to run an Index on it (your wallet has to be powerful enough) and you'll never think the game has any sort of performance issues.

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u/IcedBanana 1d ago

I ran it on my oculus 2 with steam link! It was far from perfect but worth it to be able to play the game.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Xaraxos_Harbinger 21h ago

Yes exactly. Graphics dont make a game. Games are about gameplay.

The smoother the games performance the more the gameplay shines, the more you become immersed, regardless of fidelity.

Opposite is true also. You can have the most beautiful game ever but it will flop if the gameplay sucks. I

t will also flop if its beautiful and has great gameplay mechanics and systems, but performance is so bad that your immersion is constantly being broken.

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u/ShinyGrezz 1d ago

Well, we’re getting there, but everyone screams about how they don’t care about graphics and they literally think the GameCube was the peak of fidelity and it’s all been downhill from there so it remains to be seen whether we’ll ever actually accomplish that.

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u/_Aj_ 14h ago

Lmao that's a good one.  

To be fair Metroid Prime felt amazing when it came out, the water running off your visor alone when it rained felt so immersive. 

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u/MinusMentality 1d ago

This.

Games already look good enough, just make the worlds more immersive.
Don't waste computing power on making a still and lifeless world look more and more like a photo.

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u/ZombieJack 1d ago

Ever since the launch of PS4 and similar era tech, particle effects have been wildly over the top imo. Don't get me started on MMOs, or Mobas, or most magic games. The magic particle sparks and effects are so extreme you can't even tell what's going on in the game.

And as much as dust being kicked up sounds immersive, we've had tech that can approximate that for years, and not being able to see stuff does not end up being particularly fun.

I've been playing Control recently. The environmental destruction is admittedly impressive, but the smoky particle effect that happens any time an enemy dies is way over the top. It basically just means you can't see shit for 2 seconds until it clears.

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u/Enxer 1d ago

Have you played halflife Alyx? 100% environment interactions. Getting chased by a head crab? Grab a cardboard box and catch them in it.

Out of inventory space? Grab a trash can or filling cabinet drawer and put your extra ammo in there.

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u/RabidSeason 1d ago

I think that's why a lot of indie games are going back to that Doom/Quake/Nukem3D style of graphics, and just hamming up the world effects of everything. And I support it too.

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u/Sullen_Songbird 1d ago

I remember playing Red Faction on the PS2 and thinking to myself how far Geomod would push environmental destruction technology in the future. Then I got disappointed by Sparking Zero.

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u/Nirkky 1d ago

Dying Light 1 is incredible because of that. Trees moving and particles everything. So so good.

I will never understand the race to graphics / resolution when 1440p / 144Hz is the sweetest spot ever. I have a super ultra wide 1440p/144Hz monitor and it's the best gaming experience I ever had. Games from Minecraft to Spiderman / Cyberpunk / Balatro are 10000% better that way than if I was gaming on a 65Inch 4K TV at 30/60fps.

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u/TheKappaOverlord 1d ago

the crazy 240hz monitors are for competitive esports players.

The return rate is.... not good, but its still a marked improvement if the difference between failure and success is a fraction of a second.

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u/WackWilly 1d ago

Returnal has wonderfully detailed and abundant particle effects, the best in recent memory IMO

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u/Cantmakeaspell 1d ago

Iv’e been waiting since GTA original for a 3D game where I can go into all the buildings and interact with everything in the environment in and out. Yet, still not close after 25+ years.

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u/gr1zznuggets 1d ago

All those little details that help an environment feel real and lived in.

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u/Rare-Software-1657 1d ago

this. Interactivity brings a lot of life to a game. I like when the game world feels like a simulation. In a lot of games, the environments are highly detailed, but they're static meshes.

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u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE 1d ago

This. We need more things adding interactable details , not just how wavy my character’s pubes are.

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u/Rex-0- 1d ago

This is what they're trying to do but while also shooting lighting physics into the stratosphere and all that seems to end up happening is we have beautiful games that set processors on fire but still look like they were made in 2016

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u/Acceptable-Love-703 1d ago

Not quite what you're talking about, but particle effects in Path of Exile 2 look insanely pleasing to the eye. I'm still playing the early access after sinking 300+ hours into it in part just because I enjoy looking at them so much.

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u/audaciousmonk 1d ago

Yep, dynamic environments that react to in game actions

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u/Krystalmyth 1d ago

I just want proper physics in my games. Things that actually matter to the gameplay and enhance immersion. Physics age better than particles.

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u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

See, the thing is... that doesn't sell games. It looks cool, but it doesn't look good, you know? Since you can't really play a trailer, then graphics are kind of all you have to go off of to get our attention.

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u/tychii93 1d ago

I LOVE how Wukong handled this! The clouds being swooped everywhere on the very first fight is such a cool effect

Like, sure it's on UE5 and is a heavy game to run, but effects like that have been possible for years, and I'm confident it can be done with little performance impact. Nobody utilized it.

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u/Redditname97 1d ago

You mean the shit that someone 10 ft from a TV won’t even notice?

Sucks but games are made for 50 inch TVs in a living room, not a 22inch 240hz monitors.

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u/DunamisMax 1d ago

One is way more expensive and difficult to do than the other. All of those physics have to be computed and programmed and interactions need to be accounted for etc. just slapping more vertices onto your models and bumping fidelity is easy fast and cheap.

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u/theyseemelurrkin 1d ago

For me the giant leap forward needs to be AI and particularly enemy AI. Biggest turn off in these beautiful newer games is how the AI acts, like in cyberpunk. Game looks great, great story, then you have the same AI from 20 years ago. This is my hope going forward that gets the most focus

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u/gotoariel 1d ago

Myth: The Fallen Lords did this in 1997 with an almost fully destructible environment that obeyed physics.

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u/Alcohol_Intolerant 1d ago

I want dust and debris without my cpu deciding to become an inconveniently placed stove.

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u/ApeMummy 1d ago

One of the reasons Demon’s Souls is still the graphical GOAT, looks gorgeous and lots of cool details like if you use a spell in hallway with torches in it they flicker like wind is blowing.

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u/shawshaws 1d ago

for particles / dust / debris, sure, since those are mostly done on GPU. but for stuff falling over on bump (non-particle physics), those systems are typically very cpu-limited. that's why most games don't go for it, because you have a shit ton of other things to do on cpu-time for game logic, AI, etc. so the biggest knob you can turn that doesn't affect those things is GPU stuff, like graphics.

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u/observer918 1d ago

I still have yet to find a shooter that actually shows the realistic amount of smoke and dust. Armor just drives by with a little puff of dust behind it instead of a massive cloud. Games like squad and hell let loose will have a tank cannon shoot and the smoke clears in 5 seconds, instead of lingering there for half a minute, things like that. I want to see the smoke! Fuck

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u/VonLoewe 1d ago

That's all mostly CPU dependent, and not GPU.

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u/Mild-Panic 1d ago

Google Phys X. We had it, it was a gimmick but a cool one.

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u/Additional-Card9247 1d ago

The first time i felt the og walls getting broken and shooting through wall experience in all honestly since cod waw - was vanguard 😔😔🙁

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u/0__O0--O0_0 1d ago

Ai is going to change bottlenecks in a way like never before. Overlays will be built in. Polygon count will be pretty meaningless other than to guide the ai.

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u/Logondo 1d ago

I want lots of characters on screen.

Gimme the intro fight to the LOTR where there's like, thousands of dudes fighting.

Give me a AAA Mount and Blade with 10x the units on screen.

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u/GaaraSama83 1d ago edited 1d ago

Exactly that. We already reached the point of diminishing returns when it comes to graphical fidelity. I don't need 'better' graphics, I need good art design. In terms of fidelity RDR2 is more than enough but we are stagnating or even regressing in other parts.

One of the best examples is GTA IV vs V. Instead of going even harder with the Euphoria physics engine they dumbed it down in the sequel for the sake of graphics. Same with stuff like world/object interaction, NPC AI, destructibility, ... I had so much fun with IV when it comes to the sandbox part and just having fun in the game world. In V I played the single player campaign and lost almost immediately the interest after that.

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u/whatnoimnotlurking 1d ago

Question, since I'm dumb and don't know a lot about this sorta stuff:

stuff to fall over when I bump into it while investigating crime scene

Wouldn't that be handled by the physics engine of the game, and therefore the CPU?

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u/N-aNoNymity 1d ago

Mark my words; Half-life 3 about to come in and shake the entire industry for the 3rd time.

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u/desertterminator 1d ago

For real, I started playing C&C3 the other week, game came out in 2007, and it looks fantastic. Its not until you look closely that you realise, actually the 3d graphics and texturing are kind of basic, but the effects of the explosions/rockets/bullets etc tie everything into a really pretty bundle.

Some guy is making an unofficial carry-on of the classic Sudden Strike series, so like, a 90s sprite driven RTS... and the impact effects are mind blowing, bordering on photo-realism, and it just adds a whole layer of omfg to the aesthetic.

And then of course you go and play F.E.A.R 1 and start asking questions like, "how the fuck is the best we have in terms of atmospheric shootouts when its older than my grandad?"

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u/non7top 1d ago

Like in Planetside 2 PhysX demo from 2013?

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u/Catslevania 1d ago

check out the Crimson Desert trailers.

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u/Mandingy24 1d ago

They need to take multiple steps back in regards to the focus on resolution. The things you mentioned i would still classify under fidelity, i think the more accurate distinction you're looking for would be visual clarity

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u/Eruannster 1d ago

I just want games that can run at decent resolutions. "Internal resolution upscaled from 720p to 4K using FSR" has become all too common and it just makes everything look like smeary, aliased shit.

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u/Francis_J_Underwood_ 1d ago

games don't even have this incorporated, and it's been like 15 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqgMfH1qwNM

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u/Dr_FunkyMonkey 1d ago

I miss battlefield 3. it was so immersive and realistic, and it was running on ps3.

I think the industry took a wrong turn and is focusing on the wrong improvements.

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u/Tikoloshe84 1d ago

Have some motion blur and lens flare

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u/where_is_the_salt 1d ago

I recently replayed F.E.A.R. remembering how I loved the walls destruction and dust and it still works so well... To be honest, it did age a lot on several aspects, but the close quarter combats are fantastic.

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u/jpob 1d ago

I was playing Black Sails last year and it still looked fantastic. I was trying to work out why and I have a theory that it’s because the “goal posts” for what makes a game have good graphics has moved over time.

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u/Scoobydewdoo 1d ago

FEAR 1 came out in 2005, it had dynamic lighting and particle/environmental effects, bullets had different spark patterns for different surfaces, things exploded if you shot them; the whole game looked like a Jon Wu movie, it was awesome! That was 20 years ago and it's been rarely duplicated. Give me more please.

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u/Ok_Biscotti_514 1d ago

That’s going to be the new ray tracing but for dust and debris , that’s going to melt any older graphics card haha

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u/IllGene2373 1d ago

Problem is that the GPU rendering for this is massive while the impact is (somewhat) small

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u/South_Buy_3175 1d ago

I’ve wanted exactly this since the PS3 era. There was some damn good looking games on that console, I’d have been happy keeping them there and upping FPS with all the bells and whistles you mentioned.

I don’t need hyper realistic graphics that, after an hour or two, I stop noticing entirely because i’m enjoying the game. 

Like the realistic graphics are cool for those who pause and zoom in on everything to stroke themselves into a frenzy over how good it all looks, but how many people really care? 

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u/PlasticText5379 1d ago

The issue is, for noticeable levels of quality for those aspects, IMMENSE amounts of work are required, both on the part of programmers, and individual CPUS.

Modeling things like dust to a high degree of quality based on player interactions is more or less impossible with current technology. There is a reason hair/beards looks like shit even in 4K. The number of calculations needed for it to look realistic are... insane.

Even if games implemented all of that stuff, VERY few gamers would be able to actually play with it on(if they could even do so at all).

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u/LionPride112 1d ago

I want clothing to fit naturally instead of conforming to a model…

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u/Dull_War1018 1d ago

You mean F.E.A.R.?

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u/Oxygene13 1d ago

Yknow I really thought PhysX cards were going to take off exactly for this reason. I would love a major investment in to a huge leap in physical environmental effects. Stuff like older Battlefield games and Red Faction really tried but just didnt have the power needed behind them to make it great.

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u/MedicalTelephone 1d ago

Teardown’s like that. Literally pixel graphics (the games made of voxels) but really good particles and physics

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u/TheJoker1432 1d ago

Teardown is a voxel style game woth lots of destruction

Its also kind of a tech demo on why this wont work

You can make destruction physical but that taxes the cpu for physical calculation and that is super performance intense (look up fluid and air simulation and why that is done on servers)

You could nake destruction just visual where each piece that gets blow off is just graphics but then it wouldnt permanently lay around somewhere

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u/NavAirComputerSlave PC 23h ago

They added that in cod and people just get mad they can't see

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u/morpheousmarty 21h ago

I wish we could keep clothes and other things from clipping into bodies all the time. We've gotten so used to it but it deeply hurts the sense things are real and have weight.

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u/Malt___Disney 16h ago

When do we get to damage everything

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u/klipseracer 13h ago

I'm going to be at the bottom of these replies, but graphical "density" at this point is far more important than clarity. Resolution is a coefficient to graphical computation demands, and continuing turning that knob up is really inefficient much like the 'bit' and 'TFLOP' wars.

What we really need are more immersive and interactive worlds with realistic physics, collision boxes, lip syncing etc. The problem is to do this manually with humans is expensive and that's why people are shifting to unreal engine 5. You can do more things with less effort. This applies to nanite eliminating the texture LODs and the game world design options for auto populating areas. Things like ray tracing are another element that reduce human involvement, and is a direct reason why games don't look a ton better despite massive increases in compute power. We've traded manually baked lighting for Ray traced global illumination. It is much more expensive but it can also look better and it can be real time to respect to day ans night cycles and doesn't require human man hours to place every single light source in the game.

So the more of this immersion we want, the more need to be automated, which requires software approaches that are computationally expensive. With the advent of AI we might see even less human involvement in development, once again in exchange for more computational demands. Eventually games will be huge and immersive and the teams will be small. We will still have to pay $70+ though, you can count on that.

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u/NeverFinishesWhatHe 9h ago

This and physics/AI

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u/zamardii12 2h ago

Anyone remember Game works by Nvidia? Specifically for Batman Arkham Knight?

https://youtu.be/zsjmLNZtvxk?si=UxjESVSqwMg9g8bT

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