Is Next-Gen Visual Fidelity Really Worth It? 

The biggest issue is that the actual games have not evolved these past 10 years. Some enemy AIs from the 2000's are still better what we get today.

One of the reasons why games like RDR2 still feels ahead today is because of how the objects in the environment react to player actions. Many modern AAA games look flashy but are so dead at the same time

I think were just entering areas of diminishing returns where we really have to sacrifice lots of performance for little perceived gain in graphics

Ithink it's time for most AAA to push towards the other more important aspects of making a good game. Ie. Fun innovative game mechanics, engaging story and AI advancement in NPCs and such.

I'll settle for 60 fps over ray tracing 8 days out of every week. 30 fps at 4k with pretty lighting is not worth the downgrade in gameplay 99% of the time. Strong art direction and style with a high framerate is desired.

I think the "worse graphics" argument is more concerned with swollen budgets + AAA games playing it increasingly safe (in terms of gameplay types, writing, themes and so on). Everyone wants better graphics, but it now feels like shiny graphix come at the cost of everything else

I think a big part of that problem is visual clarity and perceived resolution. Sure, visual fidelity has improved a lot (with a lot of diminishing return from the layman's perspective), but still, when you see some recent releases, you can have the most impressive PBR materials with the best raytraced lighting, infinite polycount for your static meshes, but does it REALLY matter when everything becomes a blurry mess the second you turn the camera? The image is always in motion during gameplay! I know AAA games like their "cinematic" look, but that also goes to hell the second the player gets control. It feels like perceived resolution has dropped back to the ps3 era, even while running stuff at way higher resolution than back then. Temporal artifacting, dithering for transparency, lack of msaa, fine mesh details, all coupled with reconstruction techniques, low framerates and bad framepacing ruined visual clarity! Some old 3D games with higher internal resolution look absurdly good. You take MGS2 and run it in 4k on an emulator and it's like a new game. Or Silent HIll 3. Half-Life 2. Hell, even Virtua Fighter 3. We traded visual clarity for excess detail. What good are your fancy PBR materials and infinite geometry if I can't see shit the moment the camera moves? A waste of money, effort and talent. That's why the AAA industry is unsustainable, the diminishing graphical returns for exponentially increasing budgets DO NOT match. I feel some studios should pair some stuff back at this point, specially action games. Maybe invest in stylization. Games look too similar, art direction seems to have also vanished from 'realistic' games at some point. It didn't feel like that in the PS3 era.

That "worse graphics" quote in full: "I want shorter games with worse graphics, made by people who are paid more to do less. And I'm serious." Translation: "Modern games are too long and too focused on graphics, and the developers are overworked and underpaid."

I think the core issue is that many of us are upset that too much development effort is put on graphics and not enough on gameplay, leading to broken releases at worst and release delays at best. And of course, too often there's a price to be paid for FPS. We really thought that with current-gen consoles 30 FPS would be dead and gone! It's not that we don't want good visuals, it's that we think the priorities and balance are wrong.

I value higher framerates, art style and interesting gameplay. I don't really care to see every droplet on a leaf fall, it's cool if it's there but it isn't all that necessary to me. I find things much more visually appealing when they have a distinct style/art direction compared to just looking more true to life.

Interactability is where they should be pushing next. In essence Physics, especially now that we have great CPU's for these consoles. Mindset wise a lot of developers and managers still function that of last gen.

Art direction, animations, physics and interactivity, lighting quality, consistent performance, visual clarity, and sound design are some of the things I look for over raw graphical fidelity. I think this gen has been focusing so much on looking real that it neglected making games feel real and fun to control and play. Not that every game needs to be play realistically. I just think the games that market themselves as realistic should also feel realistic. Even something "simple" and cartoony as Mario Wonder feels a lot livelier than a lot of these super realistic looking games.

I would rather see gameplay evolve rather than graphics… Like I wanna see 100 enemies on screen with some mind bending physics

It would be nice to see more studios prioritize smooth performance and higher framerates. The controls feel so much more responsive with higher framerates.

Gran Turismo 7 is a great example of the problem, it does look amazing, however, Kazunori Yamauchi was quoted saying that each car takes about 270 days to be developed for the game. When you balance the huge list of cars and tracks in the game and the small amount of single-player progression the game was released with, and even now after the Spec II update it still pales in comparison with the older games. A lot of people, me included, consider that game to be a lot less fun and shallower than the older games from GT to GT6, and wouldn't mind a less graphically impressive, but more fun game to play with.

The issue is, we're getting games that are using new technology so poorly, that people are having to turn down settings and resolutions to the extent that they look worse than their predecessors on the same hardware. I don't think we've ever experienced anything like this.

We’re just waiting for Rockstar to raise the bar again.

Vampire Survivors GOTY

I think a big thing that is kind of missed in the 'new gen games, particularly UE5 ones, don't look much better than previous gen games' is the amount of work it took for previous gen games to look that good versus the amount of work it takes to get the same results in UE5 (or engines that have or are developing similar tech). The point of tech like Nanite and Lumen isn't so much 'make game look more good' as it is 'make game take less work.' In previous gens the art pipeline involved hundreds of man hours of taking high fidelity assets and retopologizing and UVing and baking to get game ready assets that would be almost indistinguishable from the originals, and then more time making LODs and tuning LOD transition distances to avoid noticeable popping. Nanite (or, to a lesser degree, mesh shaders like Alan Wake II uses) all but eliminates that workload (at least for static meshes. But that's still a LOT of time saved). And then lighting is a whole other kettle of fish: baking lighting can take DAYS (unless you dump an absurd amount of money on a render farm for it), and involves a lot of time adjusting lightmap resolutions and lightmap UVs for different assets, and that has to be done over and over again as assets get updated or layouts change. Or if you're doing real-time lighting having to do tons of lighting hacks to fake global illumination and having to settle for 'good enough.' Lumen makes that easy because you don't have to bake lighting any more. Or you can use Lumen for the overwhelming majority of the development cycle to tune your lighting and get the look where you want it, and then go through and do many fewer passes at baking lighting now that all the assets are finalized (assuming of course that you don't want things like a real-time day night cycle or something).

In my opinion this generation has brought almost instant loading and game switching (series x) and developments on quality of life improvements (Cross-Play, Cross-Save) that transcend graphics. That is way important to me I would say. I would stay at the graphics level we're at and focus on 60 FPS entirely if I could. Nintendo and Blizzard take that approach where they priority is gameplay and not JUST graphics. Graphics to them seem like a 3rd or 4th priority

I have a different angle. I retrograded to a GBA by selling my Switch and VR headset. The visual fidelity looks nice, sure. It also seems to come at the expense of microtransaction, offline, single player, day-one updates, unfinished launches, repeated updates, paid DLC, toxic online discussions ... etc. I checked out. There are hundreds of GBA games I never played in it's short life. I really want quick and uncomplicated entainment. Git good doesn't work for me because that's not my life goal. I rather practice Hindi or Spanish over practicing a video game. Plus, I feel like I am paying too much for too many compromises to aspects of games that makes them games. I honestly intend this GBA to be my last system. I am doing my own form of digital detox, I guess.

I imagine a big part of the focus on "next gen visual fidelity" by developers is to avoid fielding questions from investors like: "Hey, that game looks just the same as the last one, why do you need a bigger budget?"

Honestly art direction is a much bigger factor in a game looking good imo. Every game these days looks so samey, there's nothing to give the wow factor. Everybody pursues photorealism like its the only thing people want to see. "Guys you can see each hair on Kratos beard if you pause the game and zoom in! Aren't we amazing!!?" (Didnt pick god of war for any reason, just a modern game I'm aware of) And as others have said. Sure the games are getting more graphically intensive, but the way we interact with games has not been innovated since the PS2 imo. We have lots of interesting tech, even if maybe not feasible to use yet, I'd like to see more ways to interact with the game worlds.

Yes! This is what I have been thinking for a while. I was so perplexed by all the reactions to the matrix demo and felt that the game was a complete visual mess with awful clarity when I played it on PS5 and then the city demo on PC. Same goes for games like Spider-Man 2 and even big stylized games like Kena or Ratchet and Clank, which have more visual clarity than Unreal games but still fail to look pleasing in my eyes. Some weeks back I played Cocoon on a whim and I was absolutely stunned by the graphics on a 4K screen. It is a very simple style but artistically driven and executed with perfection. There are no artifacts whatsoever, everything is crystal sharp and clean in motion, and the materials are free of any shimmering and noise. I wish the big players would dare such styles.

The fact that tech like raytracing makes good lighting easier than baking means that more time can go to those other important details. So it is not all just about absolute theoretical fidelity, but also how can it improve dev and the overall game as a result (nanite fits into that bucket as well). Once mainstream hardware can easily handle RT, the same that happened with shaders, it could prove that plugging in the sun or a few lights is quick and straightforward.

Loading times and responsiveness of the console is a huge upgrade for me this generation. I see the visual upgrades too, but for people who are not nerding over games, I think reduced loading-times and more stable performance are more important than the "minimal" improvement to graphics. A friend of mine invited me over to play Lego Skywalker Saga on PS4, the constant stutter in multiplayer got me a headache. The graphics weren't as great as I am used to on PC, but it was the lack of smooth of gameplay that made me want to stop playing. I imagine playing the same game on PS5 is a huge upgrade in overall experience, disregarding graphical upgrades. Bad graphics can reduce the immersiveness of a game, but bad responsiveness can destroy it completely.

Graphics are in the diminishing returns part of the curve. It has always been the case but I think will become more evident in a few years: artists and good programmers (quality of professionals, not quantity) can make a lot more difference than hardware.

As a guy who still prefers playing retro games such as classic Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc, I personally don't give a shit about graphics. Gameplay is what matters to me. The graphics could be literal stick figures for characters. As long as the game is fun and engaging, I don't care. I'm among those who wishes developers would stop putting so much focus and obsession on ultra photorealistic graphics, tons of post processing effects, ray tracing, etc.

Frames Per Second is more important than Resolution, I'd rather have a game run at 60Fps at 1080p over 30Fps at 4K.

Video game graphics peaked when characters got individual fingers.

I'm playing red matter 2 on quest 3. While it's not the pinnacle of graphics, for a mobile chip I was fairly blown away by it. The fine details and higher resolution of the textures in that game give it the illusion of looking almost like low settings on PCVR, compared to other titles that have the flat, half assed "mobile game" textures. So I agree, the devs have to care about what they're doing when attempting to make a game look good on any platform, but at the same time the new hardware and updated engines will take time to work out the kinks.

I'm not so old (35), but I never cared much about the graphics. The gameplay comes first and foremost for me, that's never changed for almost 30 years of gaming. If the game not fun, no matter how good the graphics are or other elements, it's not worth playing. When it comes to visual presention of the game -- the most crucial part for me is ART. Yeah, it can be clunky and rough technically (like many japanese games) but if the art is great I'll get the visual satisfaction 100%. If it's comes down to the tech stuff -- I'll always prefer FPS over picture quality. Especially games with fast-paced gameplay, like shooters, fightings and actions. In terms of visuals overall I'll say that I'm comfortable with first years PS4 games level of graphics, like Infamous: Second Sun, Order 1886, Bloodborne and etc. I'd say the newest stuff is just a justification of nickel&diming for the the new graphic cards. What I most appreciate about the new gen is definetely loading times. It's a miracle for me especially because I am playing many games and most of them are kinda long, like RPGs. It's a game changer for a smooth experience.

Tears Of The Kingdom proved that artstyle still trumps visual fidelity. Armored Core 6 proved that performance still trumps visual fidelity. At the end of the day striking artstyle and smooth performance will always be more important to gamers than photorealistic graphics fidelity.

I love seeing the new shiny graphics. Diminishing returns gen on gen now. How many more generations until they are of photorealism? Is that the goal? It what I wished for standing in an arcade as a young un. The days of Megadrive to Saturn & PS1 to PS2 leaps in graphical fidelity will never come again.

Art style is huge , the ‘realism’ is secondary to me

I think there really needs to be a push for environments that actually react to your presence/actions and generally deeper interactivity. Sure, raytraced lighting, reflections and shadows look stunning and help with "realism" but the illusion immediately falls apart when I try to actually interact with anything the game doesn't want me interacting with and I'm reminded that 99% of everything I'm looking at is completely static. As much flak as it gets, Star Citizen is where the industry should've been 5-8 years ago. The reveal of Star Engine and the ways you can interact with your surroundings is incredible while also still looking like a AAA game. This just goes to show that this level of interactivity is possible, but that nobody wants to do it either out of sheer laziness or publisher meddling

Agreed that it's also about the minute details, not only raw graphics. Creativity and having a good "feel" for a cinematic approach almost always trumps raw graphical fidelity.

I think graphics and art direction are two different things. When you just look at ticks on a chart on what a game has graphically, you miss out on the game's direction. For instance, Monster Hunter World still looks amazing. The art direction was so well done that I sometimes forget it's a 5 year old game.

I think going forward visually will depend on conpanies like Ninja Theory and Remedy who've come up with innovative ways to eek more juice out of their budget with less toward the end of the gen as always well get surprised by some maybe more unlikely devs

What I want today is: more power to run other types of physics simulations and more advanced server technologies. This should bring a more distinctive imersive experience to the players.

I remember watching the ps5 announcement and the only game that felt like "the next big step" being Ratchet and Clank. It weren't the graphics, it was the way the rifts work, thanks to the console's ssd. And yes, older games feel more unique. Big companies spend millions to give us the best graphics, but games tend to feel a dime a dozen.

Just give me good performance and focus on fun. Last of Us 2 was a ps4 game that looks amazing and runs perfect on ps5. I feel like we can chill with advancing visuals and prioritize games running well

1440p-2160p at 60fps is all i need just give me that every game am satisfied.

60FPS\steady frame rate should be a bare minimum requirement for most games. GoW: Ragnarok in performance mode should be where we're at in the current console generation.

Gotham Knights VS Arkham Knight

I think the inflated prices of hardware, and the less disposible income everyone has nowadays plays a part in it too. people arent as willing to upgrade as they would be 10 myears ago.

On gt7 what looks really bad are the environments (trees, bushes) The car models and the road look really good.

The problem with newer game is that the visuals are pretty much impossible to run at great settings and make them run smoothly. A prime example is FF16 on PS5, it looks good but only when standing still. For the most part it’s choppy and jittery in motion at both 30 and 60 fps, not to mention the drops to 720p. The only way to make the most recent eye candy titles is to have a top end gpu like a 7900xt or 4080; anything less will look good but run at 30fps, stability not guaranteed.

The last dude nailed it, a good looking game is not good looking because of the tech it uses, it's a question of presentation (camera angle, color contrast, etc), so to some the evolution of the hardware might not matter that much. Asking for worse looking game is incomprenhensible tho.

I can't imagine needing better graphics than Cyberpunk on a high-end computer, but 25 years ago I said I couldn't imagine needing better graphics than Gran Turismo on the PS1. I guess I was right, though, because that game still looks awesome.

As a game dev and artist I can absolutely appreciate what the new tech provides, but when you balance that with every cost it's often not worth it. Like you said there's the cost in time, in hardware, in performance and even in energy consumption. I believe that once the current tech matures, devs make better use of UE5 features and better hardware is in circulation we'll truly see the difference, and that will be the last time. Right now a well crafted last gen game is more appealing than a mediocre current gen game, and whatever comes next will truly be impossible to tell from a well crafted game made with current tech.

4:23 the perception of a game’s quality imo is a culmination of multiple advancements in graphics and tech, some times we just focus on RT while other aspects haven’t changed then we compare RT to better RT and better RT to PT, we compare one to one, but all put together (character models, PathTracing, physics, AI etc.)will help see the difference in a clearer way

As so many people said again, new graphic but old games, bring innovation in gameplay!

What's the point of progressively better graphics if the games themselves are not as fun as something like Vampire Survivors?

This guy Ollie Mack really knows his stuff. What a great addition to the DF team. ❤

When you look at the development time of graphically dense games, we might be better served by shorter development cycles: 'rawer' games that are a generation behind perfection but can be done by a small and experimental team. We'd still see improved graphics and performance over time as the 'easy baseline' went up, but the extra effort over 'easy' could be spent on refining gameplay, dialogue, character, story rather than reflections and vegatation. Then the breakout successes can get remasters with top-level fidelity.

For me, the one aspect of cutting edge games like AW2 and UE5 games on console that bothers me, is a general feeling of fragility. Things shimmer and fizz, aliasing isn’t great and it’s made more noticeable by 4K displays. I’m finding myself seeing the imperfections more than what’s working, the flaws just scratch my eyeballs a bit. GTA 5 PS5 update is bafflingly stable. Nothing is jaggy, nothing shimmers or fizzes. Its an old game, and so this make sense, but it showed me how important a stable and consistent image is.

Short answer, yes. Long answer: the graphical upgrade is too minimal for the cost, and the cpu could be used to create a more interactive world, not a correctly reflective world. Same with gpu utilization, which could be used to generate more fluid gameplay.

I see the argument that a lot of developer are pushing themselves to the wall because of how resource intensive next gen games are... And in that sense I'd say it isn't worth it. If a truly innovative game was released with last gen graphics similar to Uncharted 4 or God of War would anyone say it looked bad?? Look at Elden Ring. It's also worth remembering that a lot of the best games of the last few years have come from Nintendo, on a 2015 mobile chipset.

I have a hope that games at some point will hit a sweet spot in photorealism that is both stunning whilst not hindering gameplay. If you put a Witcher 3 fight into a scene that actually looked like a dense forest it would be a nightmare - camera clipping through branches and tree trunks constantly. There's a balance to be found.

I actually recently stopped playing Alan Wake 2, because the gameplay was excruciatingly boxed in for me. I think the game looks quite good! But a gen ahead? For the performance cost? I don't think so. I started playing Ratchet and Clank in stead of AW2 (a polar opposite title in terms of gameplay and stimulation) and I think the game looks INSANELY good. Maybe because it's not going for realism stylistically- but maxed out, the game runs at about 3-4 TIMES the framerate of AW2, in huge open environments, with lots more going on game-engine wise.. (and on par with alternate dimensions on tap behind the scenes.) Both games absolutely maxed at 1440p, DLSS quality in both titles. The problem with today's "next gen" visuals is that they are simply trying to compensate for real-time vs prebaked effects. Most of the time, they look exactly the same! Until something dynamic happens, the pre-baked effects probably still look BETTER. This is the gaming gen that will go down as wasting our resources switching from baked effects, to real-time traced effects.. much in the same way that ps3-ps4 era generational uplift was "spent" on going from horrible performance to stable performance.. with somewhat similar visual fidelity.

My first gaming experience is the Sega Master System 2, anything looks good to me. Im all about the gameplay. All the looks in the world wont save a bad gaming experience. Art direction is also a massive thing to me, solid art.

I think it's true for the average PC owner. Only the most expensive systems can run those high end games at a playable frame rate. It's so much nicer when you play a 10 year old game and it runs at 4k 60 flawlessly.

For me the defining PS4 generation wow-title was Driveclub. Almost a decade after it still looks and feels on par or even better than the recent titles. And it haven't even had a PS4 Pro update... So even though simulating an object is easier than a human body (and advancements in animation & organic materials are great), but yeah, the point is kinda valid.

Gotta say ark on ue5 looks stunning compere to ue4 it would be a good video to compere these two engines since it's the same game

The graphics industry could really benefit from better displays that are not sample and hold by nature. I have a pair of Nebra Anybeam MEMS laser projectors that on the whole cost less than $500, they run a signal at 720p 60 Hz but at that resolution it is capable of CRT style motion clarity while displaying true black. The real world resolution of two of them running in tandem is about 640x720 but it's crystal clear in motion and at about a 98 inch display size. The problem isn't with using low resolutions it's with having displays that simply cannot accurately display that data.

Agreed. We don't really need 4k digital eyelash rendering 😀

As someone who both LOVES advancements in game tech + also thinks the artform is a healthier focus than specs in the broader enthusiast community...I would say the sentimemt is about the cost, in money, labor standards for workers, quality of gameplay, etc. that comes with (often exclusively) prioritizing clearing the uncanny valley with one's efforts as opposed to, say, new & varied gameplay ideas or art-styles

The biggest thing is devs are trying to push more assets and more graphical fidelity without considering resolution (they are but just not in the way that would be ideal; visual clarity) so what happens is they rely so heavily on FSR2 to the point where the benefits of higher resolution is lost inadvertently turning the goal of more assets into a less ideal venture. So there really needs to be a more balanced approach rather than saying whether they can but if they should A lot of people are saying games not looking as good back then but they actually do look really good it’s just the clarity is lost in this upgrade

I could see the improvement for PS3 to PS4 instantly and it blew me away and bare in mind the first PS4 game I played was an indie game. I forgot what it was called I think it was a PS+ and the gameplay involved light and shadows. The jump to 1080p with detailed textures was mindblowing to me. With the jump from PS4 to PS5 to be honest I also thought the games looked like PS4 games. The thing that actally impressed me was the loading times in Spider-man. The reflection just had me thinking, is that an N64 alternate universe in there.

The peak of Next-Gen graphic leap was Console Generation 5 to 6. We've been in diminishing returns ever since. The jump from 6 to 7 was still big, but noticeably not as big as the jump from 5 to 6, and it was mostly carried by the jump to HD resolution, rather than actual fidelity. The jump from 7 to 8 wasn't fully apparent until two years into the generation's cycle ("Bloodborne" was the turning point, IMO). And the jump from 8 to 9 has been so small that we've been three years with cross-generation games without any major complaints aside from the most fidelity-obssessed gamers.

My biggest issue is that games are becoming blurrier, and I hate it. Crisp, good native resolution, or close with anything other than TAA, is so much more important than ray tracing reflections!

Gameplay & Art Direction > Graphics 100% of the time

Art style vs Matrix-like "visual fidelity" any day of the week.

I add another thing. Environments were more interactive before. Now things may look graphically better but it’s mostly non interactive eye candy.

From a PS5 perspective, I think the current fidelity seen in Spiderman 2 and Ratchet and Clank is great. I would say keep the fidelity the same and shift focus on increasing the framerate to 120fps for future games. It wouldn't hurt to also focus on gameplay and multiplayer. As good as those games are they don't have much replayability imo.

Consoles need to stop trying to display pc high end settings

After playing RE3 & Ghost Of Tsushima on PS5 with the graphics features turned on when available I'd say we are in a good place right now. They should just iron out the framerate to run smoothly when raytracing and other graphics features are on. I don't see why we need to push graphic fidelity further atm. I would just be happy with smooth framerates to match the amazing raytracing & image quality. I noticed in RE3 with raytracing on, it looks amazing but when I see zombies moving in the distance you can definitely tell somethings off. So yeah just get smooth framerates to run with the graphical features maxed. I'll be happy.

Graphics are good enough, developers keep trying to up the res but the frame timing makes the res not worth it

I love a game in beautiful high fidelity, with all the detail possible but given the choice I would sacrifice it all for portability and accessibility. My Steam deck has taken over from my PS5, Xbox and Switch and the new oled version extends that battery out enough to make it truly possible to run it as a main console. I hope more devices in the future lean into the portable form factor over raw power.

I use my 3060 ti to regularly go back to System Shock, Thief, and Deus Ex. It doesn't matter how advanced the graphics are by modern standards if the game itself isn't up to the design of 20-30 years ago.

The problem is that 99% of gamers are not DF subscribers. Most people don't care about the small details of how RT works, or know what ambient occlusion even is. For the vast majority of people graphics have gotten as good as they need to be. You could honestly stay on PS5 and XSX for a decade or more and I don't think most would be asking for new hardware. I was (and still am) of the opinion the 8th gen didn't really NEED to end, at least from a sheer graphical horsepower perspective. I've yet to see any game come out that truly justifies a new PS5 purchase. And by that I mean something that could ONLY be done on PS5, and something that truly elevates the gameplay experience. RT is not that.

Totally agree with John here. Great tools and hardware mean nothing if they aren't used fully. The switch is in the same power bracket as PS3 but games for it are often praised for their stunning art direction and use of the available horsepower. Will also add the proliferation of TAA I think is having an effect as people that play games unconsciously are put off by how blurry everything has gotten, esp as Rich mentioned, low res-upscaled to high res blurry soup games. Bring back raw pixels, even if it's lower fidelity. If the PS5 can't render a game at 1080p they need to turn down the graphics or figure out better software optimizations.

Why I personally can't be excited for RT today, or graphical improvement in general, is primarily the performance cost. And even if you have access to an insanely powerful graphics card I still don't think the leap in graphics does a huge difference to my enjoyment of a game (only about 5% or so compared to good rasterized graphics). The only game that has TRULY excited me on a new level these last couple of years was Half Life Alyx. And guess what? it uses baked lighting and parallax corrected cube maps for reflections... It looks incredible! And it is the most engaging and fun experience I have had in decades. And guess what? Innovation didn't come from graphics improvements (although the game looks amazing), but rather the interactivity and how I engage with the game world. So yeah, I'm on the camp that I wish AAA VR development was more of a thing. Where developers are forced to be creative again.

Gameplay and graphics are not mutually exclusive. Neither are graphics and art. Video games are a synthesis of art and technology.

I think a hard requirement for all PS5 and Series X games is that they need to run at least 1080p internal resolution at 60 fps in order to be published. I care much more about a smoother experience than things like ray tracing and particle effects. FF16 I feel like would be just as good without all that and would run a lot better than it does in performance mode. I feel like devs should prioritize the performance mode then build the quality mode upon that.

My problem with most new games is the overly soft and blurry presentation. 1440p TAA looks like 900p with FXAA, even if no DLSS/FSR is used.

Honestly I think graphics looked better 10 years ago when the devs really concentrated on the art direction. These days it's like the devs expect the tech to cover for the lack of art direction. There was a time where you could say objectively that there was a graphics improvement. At the moment it's purely subjective, and if the implementation kills the framerate then it's all for nothing. Give me a game that will maintain 120fps over any imaginary graphic improvements.

Somehow you guys missed the law of diminishing returns. Even jumping from PS3 to PS4, the uptick in geometry detail, resolution, and framerate was noticeable. Then the PS4 started showing games at 1080p60, or 4k30. Now the PS5 shows games at 1080-1440p60 and 4k30, and the increase in geometry is much less noticeable. We've pretty much passed the point where adding more geometry makes a visual difference. UE5 now has Nanite, which is theoretically cool, but realistically makes everything everywhere run bad because it's largely using geometry at such a high scale you can't see it anyway. So now we're in this area where it's taking more and more processing power for less and less returns, and the processors themselves are starting to hit that diminishing return. Raytracing is cool, I played through Metro Exodus entirely in RT, but over the last 20 years we've gotten so good at faking lighting that doing raytracing is a massive performance hit for not much different visuals, especially for anyone who doesn't know how insane it is to be running RT in real-time. Like any time people showcase RT they look at reflections, which is neat, but I've never had screen space reflections ruin my game enjoyment. They also don't know how beneficial RT is to all the other aspects of lighting, because we've faked it so well. So at the end of the day, the 3070ti I just bought is already struggling when previously I had my 2gb 960 for like 6 years.

I would say it is worth it in the long run for a variety of reasons. There are so many advancements being made within the tech used in these engines that there is still a lot of headroom left. The consensus every gen, going back to the PS3 era and earlier is always ‘games look fantastic, how much better can they look?’. Now people would shit if we kept PS3 graphics to this day in the name of 120 fps on console or something. Consoles will always struggle like this though as advancements are outpacing the hardware, which over a 6-8 year gen becomes outdated quite quickly. Last gen would have been even worse had it not been for pro consoles and the mid gen refresh. If console players continue to want 60 fps, they need to accept a 2 console purchase per gen or deal with 30 fps. Updating visuals every 10 years is going to hold the industry back as this is the draw for casual players and why gaming is such a huge industry today. Make it more niche, and we’ll get far less games, and variety, year over year as less devs throw their hat in the ring. I think the problem today is that console players look at the hardware as if it should do what a current gen high end PC can do, and that is just never going to be the case. With how scalable engines are these days, and this will continue, consoles and low to mid range PC’s will get a lower end version. I don’t think that’s a bad thing in itself. Expectations just need to be reasonable. Although I blame Microsoft and Sony for setting the 60/120 fps at 4K with RT marketing standard that people ate up, but was never going to be feasible. But even if we did all agree. Visuals sell. So you’d always get devs trying to one up each other. If everyone else scaled back visuals, someone would buck the trend and make a powerhouse and take the lions share of cash. It’s competitive and this is how it goes. It’s really more about art style than anything anyway though. We have some games from 7-8 years ago that rival triple A titles today due to technical prowess, smart art design, and great optimisation. What I think we’re seeing today is more devs getting a handle on new engine tech and things will settle down at least a bit. Especially when upscaling methods become better over time.

At the end of the day gameplay is the most important factor and if gameplay suffers just to make a game look a bit shiner or better shadows that in my mind defeats the point of games being fun. DF comes at these topics from technical standpoints usually revolving around visuals and seldom gameplay which in my opinion is king.

Nintendo is blowing every competitor out of the water with exquisite game design and art design

Not gonna lie I just got a 4070 messed around in Cyberpunk and decided to turn off RT and frame gen just so I could up the resolution to 4k and make the image looks nicer.

Gameplay/fun is always gonna be more of a games selling point then it’s visuals for me anyway

"Visual fidelity" at 720p resolution! 😂👍

I think I have some of my own thoughts on thie topic. I think the new gen graphics are greatly advanced indeed, actually so much more advanced than previous gens. But we have to look at this with the question - does it necessarily enhance the gaming experience? Gaming is an interactive media and we can't separate the visuals and look at it alone. In my opinion - Because of fidelity of the new gen graphics are largely increased, it actually made the experience worse. There are simply so many elements on screen for a human to perceive in every frame of the render. In contrast to that - the interactive definition is reduced. When I play Alan Wake 2, the first thing come to my mind is OMG that looks awesome, then following the question like "Ok where am I going now? I can't see my path clearly" Because the forest looks so much detailed and the intented "designed" element is sometimes invisible. I had that exact same feeling when I played Dishonored 2 in contrast to Dishonored 1. Dishonored 2 is a much more realistic and artistic archieved game, but the game experience is far worse than the first one because of the same reason I guess. When we humans perceive clearly defined things, we feel nice, otherwise we feel lost and confused. I think a lot of new gen titles are falling under the confused category, and high graphical fidelity definitely are contributing to it if not well utlized. At the same time, higher frame rate is making graphics weaker in some ways imo - think about this, a 30 fps game and a 120 fps game, which one is easier to hide it's flaws? Of course it goes to the 30 fps one because it simply has less frames showing any potential flaws of the visuals if there's any. The real world is full of motion in every blink of a second, and with today's tech, it's still too hard to simulate all of them. Actually the higher I go with frame rates, I find that the graphics tends to look faked. If I wanna have a realistic gaming experience, the first thing I do is to lower frame rate to a 30-40 range, maybe with a bit of motion blur - that will erase the potential flaws we can perceive by a huge percentage and game all of sudden looks more believable. So I'd say, going after numbers is not always making things better, like the fps, the screen resolution etc. The most important thing is to keep a balance between how to maintain an overall believability of the visual, and reducing perceivable visual flaws. And last, realism is boring - because when things get more real, they are just more "accurate". After seeing many accurated rendered games, it's hard to ask people to continue keeping their interests in them. Instead, we are more easily attracted by older games, because they are less accurate and more "artistic", "inspiring" ... whatever you can call that. I worked in the industry as a concept artist for over 12 years, and realistic styled game is the last thing I wanna work on, because it simply lacks possibility for creativity on the visuals. Espeically for video games as a media, should be the most imaginitive and fun one among all the other medias on this planet. Stylized graphics just simply have so much more potential for this media as whole. That's my personal thoughts I've been wanting to spill out for a long time, I think I rarely heard people mentioned some of the stuff I pointed out above, and I hope maybe my thinking can help.

One thing I hate about current image reconstruction techniques is how unstable the image is. I fail to see an advantage of having higher pixel numbers when upscaling is combined with dynamic resolution scaling. Like... ok, go for something like 1440p upscaled from 720p, but MAKE THESE NUMBERS SOLID. If you want to upscale to 4K from 1080p, do so but do not set DRS to fluctuate wildly between 1080p and some weird numbers like 1236p. Also, in such scenarios please, please give us an optrion to turn software upscaling off and output raw 1080p signal, seeing that so many TVs do a great job of mapping it to 4K display. I have two screens at home. Main one is 4K and another one is 1080p monitor (mid-range model). And let me tell you, even though TV is much better in terms of black levels and colour range, games look much better in terms of overall image clarity on a monitor. Why? Because it is essentially a MSAA image. In a game like CP2077, where there is a lot of bright colours clashing and sharp edges, jaggies are almost completely gone. And that's while Playing on PS5, not powerful PC. Makes me wish that I woud have a 1080p TV with all the bells and whistles of my 4K one.

I actually think it would be nice if companies focused less on ultra realistic graphics and more on interesting art styles and attention to dails, camera angels like one person says could be part of that, I actually heard some people for example that experience racing games as faster for example when they have a certain camera shake. Xenoblade Chronicles X is another example that I think looks absolutely fantastic and I personally think it absolutely crushes most open world games even today just because it's art style looks so freaking good, it just comes together to look really fantastic.

The way better question to have asked would have been about the sacrifices to the interactivity of the game worlds and AI, in favor of game engines that seem to prioritize visual fidelity over interactivity? Feels like they are creating more static and less interactive environments that look prettier, which I feel isn't worth it when it comes to the gaming experience...

I think a lot of people lose interest in graphics because people start to realize they just want GOOD.. GAMES.. FIRST. You can make it as pretty as you want but gameplay always wins. Graphics draws people in and draws attention but the product we buy is called a videogame, not a video. not ''a graphic''. Its the game we want, its gameplay we want. Maybe im just speaking for myself but even for a graphics junkie like myself im starting to lose interest in the newest triple A Unreal engine 5 games and getting more interest in the good old games, indie games, etc.