"Why can't games be photorealistic"?

[Unicorn2]

8 years ago, I was playing FMV's that were photorealistic. Now, I realize that it was pre-recorded video, etc.. but, the people weren't 'polygonal'

I am currently working on an animated video that is WELL above 1600x1200, and when I render, my machine can do it in real time (or faster).. the imagery is "true color" quality, (but the artwork itself is not 'realistic' but It would be, theoretically possible for me to design an "actual person" as per was imagined in movies like s1m0ne...


What I am wondering is, why aren't there any games that are truly photorealistic. You don't even need 1600x1200 to do it.. MOVIES on dvd are only 720x480, and television quality mpeg is 352x288..

If we can render triangles at 1600x1200 @ 300FPS, why can't we render 100% pixel shading @ 352x288 @ 23.976 fps ?

Is it lack of skill?

[HRGraham]

I've wondered about the same thing. I'm not sure why they can't do that.

[Viper007Bond]

'Cause textures are a *****. :p

Seriously though, not sure. I think it's just a ton more work and they have to go get textures instead of just making them.

So, probably just cost and that it probably wouldn't look as real as you might think with all the stuff going on in a game... I dunno.

[y6y6y6]

Well, think about the photorealistic scenes in LOTR. Those shots were well under 1600x1200, and well under 300 fps. And yet the shots took a room of computers months to render.

Current hardware isn't going to be able to do something on the desktop that takes a rendering farm to do for Hollywood.

There are just too many calculations.

And I'm very curious what your doing with 1600x1200 @ 300FPS.

[vanselus]

It seems like that would be seriously cost prohibitive at this point - epecially when the market seems a lot more concerned with action and gameplay than pure beauty.

although IMHO the original Myst's main selling point was it's graphics...

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by y6y6y6
Well, think about the photorealistic scenes in LOTR. Those shots were well under 1600x1200, and well under 300 fps. And yet the shots took a room of computers months to render.

Current hardware isn't going to be able to do something on the desktop that takes a rendering farm to do for Hollywood.

There are just too many calculations.

And I'm very curious what your doing with 1600x1200 @ 300FPS.

There are tons of games that can be run at that performance level nowadays. Just look at the benchies.


I mean, when I run, say 3dmark, @ 1600x1200 (i've got the regged version) I can top WELL over 300fps, and even if I couldn't.. 100fps would be MORE than enough..

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by y6y6y6
Well, think about the photorealistic scenes in LOTR. Those shots were well under 1600x1200, and well under 300 fps. And yet the shots took a room of computers months to render.


I'm not too sure about that.

Picture this concept.

If you take a photograph from a digital camera and use TIFF (uncompressed, lossless) at 1600x1200 and put it on a 50' wide movie screen, won't it *STILL* look pixelated? Yet, you don't get that with films.. Why? because of the A/A I think, mostly, of software, but because the outputs aren't quantified in screen resolution.

If you really consider the fact that a 300DPI inkjet printer, for example, would only need a little over 5 inches x 4 inches to print a 1600x1200 picture, yet, movies are 600 inches wide, or larger, then there's something else going on here


But, also, as I said, regular tv, when captured, is only 352x288, and you can do that without it looking all blocky

Wouldn't todays hardware be able to model : pixel by pixel (instead of textures on triangles with pre-drawn bitmaps) the whopping 100K pixels needed for a 352x288 picture? My contention is that you don't actually *NEED* 1600x1200 for photorealism, that you can do it at a much LOWER resolution.

[vanselus]

what's the benchies?

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by vanselus
what's the benchies?

benchmarks.

[vanselus]

oh yeah, duh. i didn't get it in context.

that was a good point on your long post too - are those assumptions or is that technically accurate?

[y6y6y6]

" Why? because of the A/A I think"

No. Film uses film. There are no pixels in film. Just little molecules.

And the pixels aren't what make it look blocky in games. That's caused by the need to use very large, crude polygons so that the computer can render the scene. To get rid of the blockiness you need to use many more polygons, thus creating a huge slowdown in framerates.

"I am currently working on an animated video that is WELL above 1600x1200, and when I render, my machine can do it in real time (or faster)."

You still didn't tell us what that was.

[Unicorn2]

snip.. removing comment

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by y6y6y6

"I am currently working on an animated video that is WELL above 1600x1200, and when I render, my machine can do it in real time (or faster)."

You still didn't tell us what that was.

Noticed that.. did you?

[vanselus]

but the rendering is where it takes so much power right? taking the 3d image in polygons down to a flat 75dpi display...

or am i just using my "little bit of knowledge" to sound absurd?

[vanselus]

Originally posted by Unicorn2
Noticed that.. did you?

We won't squeal. I promise. Well, y6y6y6 might, but I won't.

[Dalfiuss]

post some pictures of your photorealistic animation.

There are so many details when animating a fully realized 3d world with incredible detail.

[y6y6y6]

Yes, please. Link to a few of the frames.

[vanselus]

seriously, i'd love to see it too. just a couple frames is all.

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by vanselus
but the rendering is where it takes so much power right? taking the 3d image in polygons down to a flat 75dpi display...

or am i just using my "little bit of knowledge" to sound absurd?

My high res stuff renders real time.

If I was drawing for 352x288 it'd render FAR faster than real time...

my entire point is I think the polygonal design is what is slowing things down.. throwing heavy math on it..

I'm saying that if you don't use poly's, but in fact, describe each pixel with it's X,Y coordinates + a color shade of the 16777216 colors in 24 bit color (actually, 16 bit color, in my opinion, is quite photorealistic.. but it's agreed that 24bit is the true photorealistic..) then it's not a lot of date.

480,000 pixels (if your doing 800x600) + 3 bytes of color info could be described freehand.

X,Y,R-SHADE,G-SHADE,B-SHADE
0,0,FFFFFFFF,99999999,66666666 = the very upperleft most colored pixel is peach colored.
17,280,000 bits (not bytes) of data would be required to draw an entire screen if it was done that "raw" ..
[800x600 resolution, 24 bit color]
414,305,280 bits of data per second for 23.976 fps.
or 51,788,160 bytes per second (49megabytes per second)

Since a cpu can process GIGS of info per second, and so can the video card, and ram.. and since an 8X agp port can handle 1.066 gigabytes per second.. I don't see why it's impossible to just do 'bitmap pixel shading" @ 800x600, which offers MORE resolution than a DVD..

we're only asking the computer to process less than 50mb of data per second.

[y6y6y6]

"I'm saying that if you don't use poly's, but in fact, describe each pixel with it's X,Y coordinates"

And how will you be determining how to draw each pixel without polygons?

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by y6y6y6
"I'm saying that if you don't use poly's, but in fact, describe each pixel with it's X,Y coordinates"

And how will you be determining how to draw each pixel without polygons?

by defining a sprite on a per pixel level, instead of a triangular/polygonal level

[Fuzzylogic]

The reason that it can't be done is that it is still too complex.

Take a look at Final Fantasy Spirits Within, or Animatrix flight of the Osirus (spelled that wrong).


The problem is that in the real world everything is made up of tiny tiny particles and they each reflect light in their own way. Everything is also governed by physics.

Computers of course have no light or physics in their animations by default, you have to add it all in.

Tracking how each object is supposed to react is very CPU intensive.

Of course you could do it for say 3 blocks, but 3 blocks a person won't build. You need to break the models down into smaller and smaller pieces so that it begins to look more life like.

The options then are textures, which still look a bit odd, or to build models out of polygons, but even then doing just a hand is extremely complex.

Polygons are not round, but human fingers are rounded at the end, so it takes a lot of tiny tiny polygons to make one up in a game.

Now lets say you actually manage to make a life like looking person on a monitor, you are going to have to calculate how all those polygons have to move, how they have to react, how light will bounce off them.

That takes a LOT of computing power.

[y6y6y6]

"by defining a sprite on a per pixel level, instead of a triangular/polygonal level"

Yeah, but that's not 3D rendering. That's just layering 2D images. Of course you can do that in computer games at very high frame rates. That's been possible for years. Diablo was great at that back in the late 90s. But you were talking about photorealistic animations. Which requires rendering. Which requires polygons.

[Dalfiuss]

Unicorn, if you question the skill of those in the field, and then further it by describing methods of rendering faster, why cant you show us what you have done?

As they say, a picture says a thousand words, so let your animations speak for you.

[vanselus]

yes, until we see what you're talking about, it's just all in theory. like y6 so eloquently said - what you're talking about is just 2d... which sounds all great in theory, but isn't going to have the same life-like character as 3d polygons will have.

[Dalfiuss]

suddenly your animations aren't as photorealistic as you had thought?

[y6y6y6]

Not to mention - Photorealistic at 1600x1200 rendering 300 fps.

[sxtxixtxcxh]

heh...

photorealistic animation vs photorealistic interactive world. there's a slight difference.. not to mention that the money in gaming is at the nearly the lowest common denomination... maybe it's possible to render something close to photorealistic, but how many OTHEr people have paid $8000 on their computer to play the game?

[vanselus]

exactly - there's no way i'm going to spend $8k on a system. nothing against people that do, but I have basses to buy!

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by sxtxixtxcxh
heh...

photorealistic animation vs photorealistic interactive world. there's a slight difference.. not to mention that the money in gaming is at the nearly the lowest common denomination... maybe it's possible to render something close to photorealistic, but how many OTHEr people have paid $8000 on their computer to play the game?


Most of my 8k is not in horsepower :-) (if you look at the config, you'd see that)

well over $1300 of it is just on displays...

--- I never said my system renders my animations at 300fps.. what i said was (to paraphrase myself) that 'GAMES CAN BE RUN AT 300FPS @ 1600X1200' ..

300fps @ 1600 x 1200 = 576,000,000 pixels / second.

(remember, video cards nowadays are capable of over 2,000,000,000 pixels per second.)

if you reduce your 1600x1200 to only 23.976fps (tv quality)

You get : 46,033,920 pixels per second required 'bandwidth'

if you drop the resolution to 800x600 (which, as I've stated, is well ABOVE DVD quality) then you get 11,508,480 pixels/second that have to be 'processed'

your telling me that you can't pull 1 shade out of a 24 bit color palette, and apply it to 11 million pixels with todays hardware? When the VIDEO CARD in my computer can do it to over 2 BILLION pixels per second?

[Unicorn2]

I look at a movie like FF:TSW and say to myself "if the artists had just chosen different colors from the pallete, it could have been true that it looked real people on that screen"

Maybe as much as I *use* rendering software, I don't understand the actually technical requirements behind it.

I know I can draw a scene (the actual art "work" i.e. creation of which, takes me a long time, but that's skill), have it look 0% 'poly'd or verticed' , render, and it will render "faster than real time" (not 300fps), but faster than 23.976.. I get about 42fps normally.. :-)

and I'm on a single processor unit..

[vanselus]

Isn't that still talking about photorealistic animations, not a photorealistic interactive world?

[Unicorn2]

I don't see why it's different. If the game can be pre-programmed with information for the world (i.e. it doesn't have to "invent" the concept.. and preprogrammed with reactions.. such as ragdoll effects that occur when a character is shot).. what is there really to process.. Maybe I just want arcs instead of poly's and triangles.. :-)

[Pyaray]

Well, this is my first post to these forums, I've lurked before but never got involved, but this thread has gotten my attention. :)

I am by trait a professional game developer.

The short answer to your question is that it's simply not possible to get photorealistic rendering in real time.

The longer answer is that you can get close to photorealistic. And you can see what's considered higher end in games like Wolfenstein and Medal Of Honor.

When you talk about having the computer keep track of the pixels instead of using polygons, what that breaks down to is simply using so many polygons that it's 1 polygon per pixel. Your math is wrong, because you're talking about how many pixels you need to render the screen. But you're not taking into account all of the pixels that had to be calculated that aren't displayed. In 3D everything has a back side that you're not seeing. Every object that moves in front of another object is blocking pixels that you aren't seeing. The computer can't just ignore all of those, it has to calculate each and every one of them to know whether they can be seen or not. It doesn't know that some of the pixels for the ground are hidden by the person standing on the ground until after it's calculated both the ground and the person standing on it.

Calculating a scene pixel by pixel is called Ray Tracing. And has been a technology that has been around for many years (if not decades). It's very slow. As was pointed out it took a farm of machines months to render the photorealistic scenes in movies like Lord of the Rings.

Also, what is considered "photo realistic" has changed over the years. The movie The Last Starfighter, was the first movie to use CG for all of it's space scenes instead of using models. Everyone raved about how terrific the graphics were and that it looked photo realistic. Looking at it by todays standards... well, most modern video games look far better. But that was the best that was available back then. In 20 years we may look back and lord of the rings and talk about how fake golumn looks. We won't know for 20 more years.

But computers constantly get faster and faster. Things that were downright impossible 20 years ago are now childs play. Did you know that the Cray 1 supercomputer that came out in the early 1980's is significanly slower than the average 3 Ghz PC is now? It cost around $100,000,000 when it first came out. My P4 was a bit cheaper than that. ;)

We'll get there, but probably not in this decade.

Pyaray

[vanselus]

wow... thanks for the post!

[Dalfiuss]

You still have yet to show any of your work Unicorn.

[Fuzzylogic]

A GREAT example of how far computers have come is the movie Tron.

If any of you saw it when it first came out it was rather amazing.


Now the video game Tron 2.0 looks better than the movie did :)

[Pyaray]

And if any of you didn't see it... go rent it... Tron is required viewing for anyone who considers themselves a geek or a gamer. :)

And that's kinda funny, I said the same thing about the game looking better than the movie.

Pyaray

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by Pyaray
Well, this is my first post to these forums, I've lurked before but never got involved, but this thread has gotten my attention. :)

Welcome to the forums

I am by trait a professional game developer.

Oh good, someone who might have an actual answer on this.

The short answer to your question is that it's simply not possible to get photorealistic rendering in real time.

I will disagree in just a second

The longer answer is that you can get close to photorealistic. And you can see what's considered higher end in games like Wolfenstein and Medal Of Honor.

Yes, MOH is a good game, but hardly photorealistic.

When you talk about having the computer keep track of the pixels instead of using polygons, what that breaks down to is simply using so many polygons that it's 1 polygon per pixel. Your math is wrong, because you're talking about how many pixels you need to render the screen. But you're not taking into account all of the pixels that had to be calculated that aren't displayed. In 3D everything has a back side that you're not seeing. Every object that moves in front of another object is blocking pixels that you aren't seeing. The computer can't just ignore all of those, it has to calculate each and every one of them to know whether they can be seen or not. It doesn't know that some of the pixels for the ground are hidden by the person standing on the ground until after it's calculated both the ground and the person standing on it.

Can't all this information just be culled? Can't a sequencing subroutine (complex, I understand) be setup in games to have it "cull processing of these parts" by figuring out what is blocked BEFORE hand rather than after the fact?


Calculating a scene pixel by pixel is called Ray Tracing. And has been a technology that has been around for many years (if not decades). It's very slow. As was pointed out it took a farm of machines months to render the photorealistic scenes in movies like Lord of the Rings.

Right, but thats photorealistic on an immense display. Again, I say that DvD resolution (720x480) is considered superb.. in fact, Digitally captured TV at 352x288 is also 'decent'..


Also, what is considered "photo realistic" has changed over the years. The movie The Last Starfighter, was the first movie to use CG for all of it's space scenes instead of using models. Everyone raved about how terrific the graphics were and that it looked photo realistic. Looking at it by todays standards... well, most modern video games look far better. But that was the best that was available back then. In 20 years we may look back and lord of the rings and talk about how fake golumn looks. We won't know for 20 more years.

Oh, i understand that concept. I watched Terminator *2* the other day and commented on how crappy it looks, and I remember RAVING about it. I also can watch say, StarTrek : The Next Generation.. and see the 'lowend' quality in the show, when it was considered so fantastic at it's time.


But computers constantly get faster and faster. Things that were downright impossible 20 years ago are now childs play. Did you know that the Cray 1 supercomputer that came out in the early 1980's is significanly slower than the average 3 Ghz PC is now? It cost around $100,000,000 when it first came out. My P4 was a bit cheaper than that. ;)

We'll get there, but probably not in this decade.

Pyaray

My question:
Can say.. 800x600 "true color" ray tracing be done at 24fps on 'todays' hardware? You might know better than I do..

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by Dalfiuss
You still have yet to show any of your work Unicorn.

You're still catching that, aren't you. I've specifically stated that I WILL NOT publish any of my (specific) work until the product is finished.

[y6y6y6]

"Can say.. 800x600 "true color" ray tracing be done at 24fps on 'todays' hardware?"

This depends on what the model is. If it's a few spheres and no background, then sure. If it's a zombie wandering through a castle, then not even close.

".......by figuring out what is blocked BEFORE hand rather than after the fact?"

Putting processing power aside.......

There are millions of permutations of how each scene might transpire. Storing the data for each of those permutations for each frame (each pixel with it's color) would take a huge stack of DVDs to store.

Yes, it could be done. And that's basically what DVD movies do - store the data for each pixel in each frame. But the actions of the characters are set in stone. If you want to store the data for all possible actions for each frame your talking about hundreds (a low estimate) of option for each frame. So if a movie takes one DVD now it would take 100 under your scheme.

But of course 100 options is way to few. For a game you'd need millions.

[Pyaray]

Originally posted by Unicorn2
Welcome to the forums
Thank you. :)
Yes, MOH is a good game, but hardly photorealistic.
I said "close", there is obviously no way that anyone would be tricked into thinking those were photos. But they look awesome in comparison to what we had only a few years ago.

Can't all this information just be culled? Can't a sequencing subroutine (complex, I understand) be setup in games to have it "cull processing of these parts" by figuring out what is blocked BEFORE hand rather than after the fact?

Well, yes & no. Yes, they can be culled. No, in order to cull you still have to calculate their position and orientation, which means you still have to do math on pixels not shown. You don't render them, but that doesn't mean they don't take clock cycles.

The basic process of figuring out what to render is this:
#1 calculate where everything is.
#2 calculate which things are within the cameras view pyramid, and throw away everything not within that region.
#3 calculate everything that faces the camera and throw away the rest.
#4 calculate everything that is completely blocked by some other object, and throw it away.

So every single pixel has math done on it, whether you see it or not. In the case of visible pixels, they have several steps of math done to them.

Right, but thats photorealistic on an immense display. Again, I say that DvD resolution (720x480) is considered superb.. in fact, Digitally captured TV at 352x288 is also 'decent'..

..snip..

My question:
Can say.. 800x600 "true color" ray tracing be done at 24fps on 'todays' hardware? You might know better than I do..

Side note, you really want 30fps, not 24. Monitors sync at 60hz minimum, so at 24fps you'll see jittery performance. On video they do fram doubling, but that never looks right on computer monitors, because they tend to be non-interlaced.

No, it really can't. You MIGHT be able to pull it off at something like 320x240, but even at that res I have my doubts.

It's not really the "true color" that's the issue. Most modern games are (or at least can be) true color (24bpp). The thing that makes them look plasticy and not realistic is the lack of bump mapping, which some games are starting to do, and the lack of realistic lighting and shadows. And when you start adding lighting to the equation, you're starting to have to do many more calculations per pixel. And for shadows, it means you have to project every single object, and how it blocks and/or reflects all lightsources on to every other object in the scene. Including objects that you can't sees. Because their may be a tree behind you that's blocking the sun, but the light is reflecting off of a building that is taller than the tree, and a mirror of a car driving by.... And when you're talking interiors, you are generally talking hundreds of light sources. When you're doing full on ray tracing to make things look realistic, talking about seconds, or even minutes, per pixel is not at all unrealistic. Which is why they use hundreds of computers to render things for movies.

I assure you, if it was possible to do photorealistic imagry at real time, the movie industry would be doing it first, because they spend millions (if not billions) each year on computer animation. And time = money. Just think, if you could do it real time, you could probably get rid of newscasters, and just have CG reporters, like in the show Max Headroom. Especially if you could do it on a consumer level machine. They'd have no problem spending a few hundred grand on a machine to do real time rendering, because it would be cheaper than paying the actors.

But give it a decade or so... See where we are then. :) We're already at the stage that you can do on a consumer machine what supercomputers were doing 20 years ago. According to Moore's Law (I think it's Moore's) computers double in speed every 18 months. In 10 years we will theoretically have computers that are 64 times faster than they are today. So we'll be running 192Ghz computers.

Pyaray

[a-pluspc]

Originally posted by Unicorn2
You're still catching that, aren't you. I've specifically stated that I WILL NOT publish any of my (specific) work until the product is finished.

Whats with your icon.... :D

[Unicorn2]

What about my icon? What's wrong with it?

[a-pluspc]

Originally posted by Unicorn2
What about my icon? What's wrong with it?

Nothing at all, actually I find it quite striking. I was taking a long shot and seeing if it was possibly a character from your project that you keep so secret (which I think is awesome BTW - stick to your guns).

Alas - from your response I must asume that I'm wrong.

[Unicorn2]

Originally posted by a-pluspc
Nothing at all, actually I find it quite striking. I was taking a long shot and seeing if it was possibly a character from your project that you keep so secret (which I think is awesome BTW - stick to your guns).

Alas - from your response I must asume that I'm wrong.

Nope.. That's my New hearthrob : Amy Lee : Evanescence.. but I like large chested betty page knock-off goth girls..

[Isis]

Benchmarking software often provides a kind of "Perfect environment" for it's tests, to help boost the actual numbers on your performance.

Most games nowadays you can get realtime fps readouts while playing, and can see how good your video card is. My GF5800 FX can put up well over a few hundred FPS in WinBench, but when I do a display check ingame, the frames drop to anywhere from 30-50fps depending on the game.

I've been told this has to do with how the software is written, and how the game engine handles the hardware drivers differently than the benchmarking software does.

[intricate]

2 words. TIME and MONEY.

[Fuzzylogic]

Originally posted by intricate
2 words. TIME and MONEY.

Well it is just lack of technology.

You may have noticed graphics improved CONSIDERABLY in the last 10 years, just give them 10 more :)

[vanselus]

10 years? no way - the way development accelerates, it'll only take another 5 years to blow our minds. I'm so glad i'm still relatively young!

[Fuzzylogic]

Originally posted by vanselus
10 years? no way - the way development accelerates, it'll only take another 5 years to blow our minds. I'm so glad i'm still relatively young!

No, 5 years is a predictable development curve.

Quake III was almost 5 years ago, my mind is not yet "blown".

However, Doom WAS 10 years ago, we've come a long way.

Who knows, in 10 years we may have actual 3D games.

[vanselus]

3d games in 10 years? Man, that would be amazing. I can't imagine what it's like for my Grandpa (81 yrs old) since he grew up on a farm and didn't even see a car until he was in high school. In his lifetime the change in technology has been staggering. I'm still amazed Grandma is so computer literate.

I can't wait until i'm old and all the things we can't even imagine at this point happen...

[sxtxixtxcxh]

anyone remember 10 years ago when they were saying VR would be here in ten years? hah.

i remember playing duke nukem with a vr headset at an arcade years ago... clumsy and fun.

[Ophelia]

i remember playing duke nukem with a vr headset at an arcade years ago... clumsy and fun.

Oh we had one of those at the arcade I used to work at. I remember we had to give people a 3 minute time limit. (it cost $2) The time limit wasn't to get them to pay more, it was because that's about how long people could play it without getting totally nauseous and throwing up or passing out. I played a few times, it was fun, but Duke Nukem was really old (this was when Q2 was the big FPS) and I got really queasy afterwards :D

[Pyaray]

I actually have a VR1 headset for doing VR. If you think Duke Nukem will make you nausious, try playing Descent with it. Bluck! All that flipping and turning...

Pyaray

[fac3less]

In reply to the whole 'rendering/etc type thing' : yeah.. i'm glad your system can render in real time.. whatcha rendering? stick men?

1 screen of a film like: finding nemo, final fantasy, etc: (rendering/developing) few months.

have fun.

[Tammy]

"Virtual reality in ten years" reminds me of "hydrogen power in ten years" and "economical solar power in ten years" and a lot of other bogus beliefs of the past. I'll believe that stuff when I see it - and believe me, I want to see it. ;)

[fac3less]

Well - I mean a lot of those things are already 'available' today but people aren't buying into it or don't feel like spending their money on it.

Sure you can run your car on vegetable oil - (diesel engines only) (fark.com for reference)

and it only costs 1 grand to convert any vehicle really.. yet people are still using gas. :)

[vanselus]

Yeah but you're comparing it with things that certain companies spend millions of dollars trying to keep from happening.

VR and photorealistic games have a huge market, and I don't think anyone will try to block those technologies.

[Pyaray]

The things blocking VR from becomming a major thing in our society is simply cost of equipment. With time that cost will come down. Also size & weight. The VR headsets are heavy, and bulky, and basically uncomfortable to wear for any extended period. Sooner or later they will be as light and easy to wear as standard reading glasses, but that takes time & money. When we get to that level, that's when it will cath on bigtime.

Pyaray

[Fuzzylogic]

Originally posted by Tammy
"Virtual reality in ten years" reminds me of "hydrogen power in ten years" and "economical solar power in ten years" and a lot of other bogus beliefs of the past. I'll believe that stuff when I see it - and believe me, I want to see it. ;)

Well there is a story behind the lack of oil alternatives... however, back on topic.

I'm serious, 10 years, 3-D displays.

As in your monitor will display things in 3D.

I'm not saying 10 feet of 3D, but you will get at least 3" of depth in things, which is plenty.

More than enough to allow for some kick ass file tree navigation.

They already have monitors where you can look at it without any special glasses and it displays things as a 3-D hologram.

[vanselus]

Has anyone here seen that 3D monitor in real life?

[Fuzzylogic]

Originally posted by vanselus
Has anyone here seen that 3D monitor in real life?

Yeah, MIT where they built it.

[vanselus]

So YOU saw it?

[Pyaray]

I saw one at E3 last year. It was rather impressive, but it was kind of blury and gave me a headache after a few minutes. It's definately a technology worth looking at, but it's not ready for prime time yet. Also the one I saw was rather low resolution, like 320x240 type resolution. It certainly wasn't 1024 or 1280. I'm looking forward to seeing if they have any improvements at this years E3.

Also, at E3 they almost always have the 3D headsets, and the shutter glasses. At the moment, the shutter glasses are the best and least annoying of the 3D solutions. It's got a little flicker, but it's not bad. The advantage is that they're perfectly clear, no bluriness at all, and they can be run at any resolution your monitor can run at.

Pyaray

[Fuzzylogic]

Originally posted by vanselus
So YOU saw it?

What exactly do you want from me?

Yes, they exist. I really don't know what more you want. Don't believe me fine, whatever, I really don't much care.

All I'm saying is that in 10 years don't be all surprised when they have them on the shelf at the local Best Buy.

Scientists at well to do organizations, especially ones who work with DNA and other such tasks use these things all the time to render protein sequences in 3-D so they can get a look at things.

[Viper007Bond]

3D + FPS = omg...

Can anyone imagine playing UT2k3 in 3D? That would be... wow, something else.

[Pyaray]

Actually, I can imagine it perfectly, cause I've seen it. :) It works just dandy with shutter glasses. The LCD shutter glasses solution works for something like 98% of all Direct3D and/or OpenGL games. If you really want to see it, I think you can get the shutter glasses for as low as like $60. Not terribly expensive.

Pyaray

[Viper007Bond]

That would totally be worth it... :D

[Pyaray]

Well, sine there's some interest in this subject, I looked up some links for LCD information that I had.

Here is a website I found explaining the technology and how it works:
http://www.frostbit.com/Catalyst/shutter.html

And here is a website that you can buy it if you're so inclined:
http://www.edimensional.com/products/edglasses.htm

I am in no way affiliated with either of these places, just happened across them.

Personally the pair I got came as a free promtional item with my GeForce 4Ti video card I got a while back. Sadly, they do NOT work with LCD monitors, you have to use them with a CRT monitor because LCD's just don't have a high enough refresh. And I'd rather have the clarity of an LCD monitor than the coolness of 3D glasses. :)

Pyaray

[Viper007Bond]

If I can see 60 Hz on my monitor, I would think something like that would drive me nuts...

[vanselus]

Speaking of that.... why don't LCD's have high refresh rates?

[Pyaray]

Well, you take the good with the bad actually. LCD's don't have refresh rates at all technically.

With a CRT monitior you have a single beam that is scanning across the screen lighting it up, and doing so fast enough that it looks like a whole image rather than just a single pixel. In reality it is a single pixel, but the screen is coated with a phosphercent chemical that glows a little bit after the beam has moved on. How often that beam draws the entire image is the refresh rate.

With an LCD monitor, each pixel is it's own element (well actually 3 elements for color), and will turn on and based on the signal it's getting. But on an LCD monitor if the image isn't changing, the elements are not actually turning off each frame. They have a refresh rate of 60Hz (or sometimes up to 75Hz) just so they're compatible with the older architecture. But in reality, the screen is not redrawing completely each frame, it's just changing the pixels that change each frame.

The way an LCD works is by polorized light. The chemical reaction in the LCD element is causing the polarization of the reflection to rotate up to 90 degrees. Unfortunately because this is actually a chemical reaction, it's not instantaneous. And there are 2 numbers that represent it, the rise and the fall. The rise is how long it takes for a pixel to light up, and the fall is how long they take to stop glowing. The sum of these two numbers is the average refresh time, usually in ms. 1000ms is 1 second, so if you take 1000 divided by the refresh (sum of rise & fall) you'll get the maximum framerate for the monitor. My LCD monitors are very fast at 25ms, so my maximum framerate is 40fps.

Now after typing all this it dawns on me that you may have been talking about the LCD shutter glasses, and I just talked about something completely different. But since I thought of that, I'll answer that question too.

The LCD glasses are actually much faster, and can have a refresh rate in the 60 fps range. But for them to actually work that fast, you're computer would have to be generating 120fps, on a monitor that supported 120Hz refresh rate. Then you'd get 60Hz or 60fps for each eye. If your computer is only running at 60Hz, or 60fps, then you're ending up with only about 30fps/30Hz for each eye. And 30 Hz is really not all that good. Unfortunately, most games run significantly slower than this. Some games run as slow as 20-30fps, so with LCD glasses you'd effectively be seeing 10-15fps.

Did either of those answer your question? :)

Pyaray

[vanselus]

absolutely... and then some!

[Tammy]

Originally posted by Pyaray
My LCD monitors are very fast at 25ms, so my maximum framerate is 40fps.

In practical terms, what difference does the framerate make? That is, would I notice a difference between a 20ms and 40ms framerate, and if so, under what circumstances. I don't play a lot of games, but I do use streaming data a lot and was wondering how important the framerate is. Thanks.

[Pyaray]

Well, at a certain stage, usually around 20fps, you can see it as noticably jerky. Around 10fps is where it's so jerky it's nearly unplayable. It's estimated that the human eye can't percieve anything faster than about 24fps, which happens to be the frame rate of movies (you know, theaters running film.)

Older cartoons are usually frame doubled, so they run at 12fps, and just show every frame twice. If you've ever noticed that the motion in the old loony cartoons is not terribly smooth, that's pretty much why, it's not because of the talent of the artists. It was a production time decisions, since in cartoons every frame is hand drawn (not anymore thanks to computers) it would cost half as much to make a cartoon at 12fps than at 24fps.

Televisions run at 30Hz interlaced, or effectively 60Hz. Interlaced means that they only draw every other scan line. So on the first frame they draw all the even rows, and on the next frame all the odd, rinse repeat.

Now all that being said, while you can't "see" any of the higher framerates, you can "feel" them. What ends up happening is that the frame you are looking at right now, was actually drawn during the last refresh cycle, you're always seeing the previous frame, and never the current frame. That's called double buffering, and it keeps you from actually seeing the lines & polygons being drawn. But when you hit a key, that means it can't affect either the current frame, or the next frame because it's already in the state of being drawn. So whenever you hit your controller, it's 2 more frames until your character responds. Your eyes can't really perceive the 1/10-1/30th of a second, but the delay between hitting the key and your character responding makes it feel sluggish, even though you can't conciously perceive it. It's because you're used to instantaneous feedback in the real world.

So you really want as good of a framerate as you can get, but anything above 60 is usually good enough, except for like the tournament level gamers.

Pyaray

[Fuzzylogic]

Basically you want at least 40 frames per second, if for no other reason than to avoid a tearing effect.

Like when people scroll and the screen moves in chunks, very not cool :)


Also in many cases motion sickness or headaches can be caused by monitors set with too low a refresh rate or things with too low a frame rate.

For example, I can't use a CRT that refreshes at less than 70 Hz, I can see the flashing from the redraw and it drives me up the wall and makes my eyes extremely tired.

[Viper007Bond]

40 fps?!?! I'm a gamer so I demand at least a 60 FPS in most games - 40 wouldn't cut it. That's the main reason I've stuck with a CRT.

[vanselus]

Sometimes, life feels like it's at 40fps.

[fac3less]

ever have sore eyes.. realize hey my monitor refresh is at like 60fps, and then change it to 120 and your eyes all of a sudden get better? :b

maybe i'm using cheap monitors.. I think the max they can do is 90.. but I put them at 120 anyways and hope they explode or something.

[Tammy]

Thanks guys, I have to look at the monitor all day long and I understand the sensitivity to frame rates. This issue is one of the reason I have held off on getting an lcd, my crt doesn't give me eyestrain and so no reason to change yet. But I want to be prepared for when I do make the switch.

[Viper007Bond]

I almost always run the highest resolution the monitor will run which means that usually I can only put it up to 75 Hz. :(

[Fuzzylogic]

Originally posted by vanselus
Sometimes, life feels like it's at 40fps.

That almost made sense...

[Fuzzylogic]

Originally posted by vanselus
Sometimes, life feels like it's at 40fps.

That almost made sense...

[vanselus]

I know, scary huh.

[Pyaray]

Just a side note, don't confuse framerate (or FPS) with refresh. A game running at 30 fps, depending on the type of game, is perfectly acceptable. But a monitor running at 30Hz (refresh) is really painful to look at for long periods of time.

The nice part about LCD monitors is that even though they have a refresh speed, they are not refreshing every frame, so it doesn't cause the refresh headaches that low refresh monitors have.

That beins said however, you have a refresh that's higher than your framerate, but you can not have a framerate higher than your refresh.

Also, Fuzzylogic mentioned tearing at anything below 40fps. Tearing does not happen even at 1fps if the game uses refresh syncing (sometimes called fram syncing) and double buffering. Because it means the new frame is put up during the vertical rescan, so by time the new frame starts drawing it's got a completely new picture, so it won't have that tearing affect. Most games support syncing, if it's off then tearing will occur at any framerate, even like 120+, but you may or may not notice it. I always leave sync on, because I hate tearing. That's a personal choice though, it does slow down your framerate.

Pyaray

[Fuzzylogic]

I guess I should clarify, what I mean by tearing is that if a computer gets bogged down it just isn't able to draw the frame fast enough to feed to the monitor.

So the monitor is doing it's thing, but the computer has only given it say half a frame to draw, since it hasn't gotten the rest out yet.

Though maybe you are saying that to and I'm misunderstanding you.

[Pyaray]

Yes, that exactly what I meant by tearing. But that doesn't happen if you have sync enabled.

The reason it doesn't happen is because of a process known as double buffering, which is used in all 3D hardware. The video card allocates 2 video pages in memory. It displays page #1 while drawing on Page #2, and it displays page #2 while drawing on Page #1. Whithout this process you would see individual polygons draw, but instead when you see tearing it's always a horizontal line.

What is happening is that when the monitor is halfway through displaying the image, the image on the other page is done drawing, and it flips while the monitor is in the middle of displaying, so you see a visible change beyond that point.

If you have VSync enabled, it won't flip in the middle of the draw, it will only flip between each frame. It's actually flipping while the scan gun is moving back to the top of the screen, and it's not actually displaying anything.

There is a downside however, with VSync enabled your frame rate is limited to an even divisor of the refresh rate. So if your refresh rate is set to 60, and the game can display 45 FPS, it won't. It will be limited to 30fps, because it will only flip during sync. If you have sync off, you'll actually get the 45 fps, but there is tearing because every other frame is swapping in the middle of the refresh. It's even more catostrophic if your game runs at 29fps, because it couldn't quite do 30, it's now limited to 20fps (1/3 of the refresh), or maybe even 15fps (1/4). Or 59 fps is really bad, because it will drop all the way to 30fps. Another reason to have your refresh rate as high as you can make it, so that your frame rate has more steps down the chain.

Side note, you can sort of use this to your advantage if you know the framerate of the game. If your game can run at 45fps, if you set the monitor to 60Hz then it will actually run at 30fps. However, if you change the monitor to 90Hz, it will actually run at 45fps with the vsync on, because 45 is 1/2 of 90. But if you set it to 120Hz, it will run at 40fps, because 1/3 is the closest it can get to 45. So in that particular case, it's better to run at 90 instead of 120.

This was an even bigger problem back in the days of the IBM XT with CGA monitors, the frame rates were so slow that occasionally you would get snow (or static, pick your term) on the monitor during refresh. Like a bad antenna connection. But it only happened when the refresh was really off from the frame rate.

Wow, this whole conversation got a whole lot more technical than I ever intended. I apologise to anyone who didn't want this level of explanation. I'm just like this. :)

Pyaray

[vanselus]

No way Pyaray, that was a great explanation. Thanks for taking the time to write all that. How do you tell what framerate your game is running at?

[Viper007Bond]

Originally posted by vanselus
How do you tell what framerate your game is running at?
Most games have a built in console command, but I just use Fraps (http://www.fraps.com/) to display my frame rate (it's also a really cool screenshot/video caputer program). :)

[Pyaray]

Well, as Viper said, most games have a command you can do to get it. Not all however. Pretty much any game based on Quake or Unreal engines do though, and almost all first person shooters are based on one of those engines these days.

I didn't realize fraps could tell you to, however running fraps will degrade your framerate and make it run slower. So using that to instrument your game will affect what is being instrumented. How much it affects your framerate is very dependant on what kind of hardware you run, as some video cards are more sensitive to being poked and proded than other video cards. Back in the bad old days when 3D cards were new, some of them could go from 60fps to 10fps if you did anything to their frame buffer. Most newer cards aren't that bad anymore, but it's not what they're designed to do, so most (if not all) of them will have some kind of performance hit.

Pyaray

[Viper007Bond]

I notice no real difference between Fraps on and off (maybe a fps or 2). :)

[vanselus]

Do I trust windows when it tells me what framerates that my monitor can display?

[Viper007Bond]

Originally posted by vanselus
Do I trust windows when it tells me what framerates that my monitor can display?
I think you are thinking of the refresh rate and not frame rate. Anyway, if it's showing like 80 or so and down, then it's correctly reading the monitor and showing only the refresh rates it supports.

And I think the difference between frame rate and refresh rate was explained further up...

[Pyaray]

*points at Viper's post*

Yup, uh huh.... :)

The frame rate is completely game dependent, and has nothing to do with Windows settings. The Windows settings are referring to the refresh rate of the monitor. As I explained before, the refresh rate can affect the frame rate, but the frame rate does not affect the refresh.

Windows "should" properly display all of the refresh rates available, if you have your monitor set properly. If it says something like "generic monitor" or "vesa monitor" or something like that, those numbers may or may not be correct. But if it says the brand and model of your monitor, it's most likely an accurate list of all the refresh rates available.

Pyaray

[vanselus]

Damn, I really shouldn't post that late when i'm tired. I did mean refresh rate.

[Viper007Bond]

Mmhmm, ssssuuurrreeee. ;)

[Tammy]

Refresh rate is a hardware thing and a game's framerate is a software issue, is that right?

[Viper007Bond]

Originally posted by Tammy
Refresh rate is a hardware thing and a game's framerate is a software issue, is that right?
No, both are hardware. Refresh rate is a monitor thing (how quickly it can redraw the screen per second) while frame rate is a video card thing (the amount of frames that the video card can pump out a second).

[Pyaray]

Well, the framerate is both software and hardware dependant. After all the video card can't draw frames that the software doesn't give it to draw. Depending on how the software is written will directly affect framerate. Really well written software can be slowed down by slow hardware, and really fast hardware can be slowed down by software trying to draw too much.

But the refresh is absolutely 100% all hardware.

Pyaray

[Viper007Bond]

No, it's all hardware. The only way it would slow down is 'cause your CPU isn't fast enough.

I don't see the frame rate being limited by the software unless it was the wost software ever. However, I can see the software making the frame rate lower than it could be due to extra code and such.

[vanselus]

Originally posted by Viper007Bond
I don't see the frame rate being limited by the software unless it was the wost software ever. However, I can see the software making the frame rate lower than it could be due to extra code and such.

Don't those two sentences contradict eachother? If the software makes the frame rate lower than it could be, isn't the softwaer limiting the frame rate?

[Viper007Bond]

Gah, I was never good with words.

Anyway, I mean that the software may be sending in a poor or inefficient format to the video card making it get produce less frames than it theroetically could, but I don't think you could get the video card sitting there waiting for the software to send it the next set of data unless you have a REALLY slow CPU.

Am I making any sense?

[Pyaray]

That's not quite right Viper. In actuality doing things like AI and physics take an aweful lot of CPU. Even things as simple as collision take a lot of CPU. The math behind figuring out if two objects have collided is rather complicated.

I've seen games that can barely get a video card to 30% of it's max framerate. A lot goes on behind the scenes of most modern games. People forget that it takes a lot to figure out what to show prior to actually generating the image that is shown.

If that weren't true then a 1Ghz computer should be able to drive the most complicated graphics in the world, since all the actual drawing happens in the video card. But that's not the case. Likewise a 3 Ghz computer is being wasted if it doesn't have a fast video card. It's a very delicate balance. The optimum is when the video card and the CPU are both not waiting on each other. Very few games pull this off, almost always one of the two of those is in a wait state, often it's the video card waiting for the calculations from the CPU.

Pyaray

[vanselus]

So it sounds like Viper thinks that the vid card does the majority of the calculations and Pyaray says the opposite.

What's really happening? What calculations are the card's job, and which are the CPU?

[Viper007Bond]

Pyaray is right. :)

[vanselus]

Aww, you guys agree. That's nice.

What about the other part of the question? Or am I just asking a question which I will not understand the answer to?

[Viper007Bond]

Where everything is, what happens when you do something, all of the actual game stuff is CPU. What it should look like - applying the textures to the models, making the models, etc. is all video card.

[Pyaray]

*nods*