More detailed graphics in games?

why nobody have tryed to make eg. space ships be more detailed?

Graphics are expensive (especially if you'd need to have the complete ship modelled inside and out so that it can be damaged at any point), in terms of both development budget and system requirements. And little things like that which are more for show than any real benefit to gameplay are the things that tend to get cut when it comes down to the wire.

Actually, in Galactic Civilizations II ships do show sparks and damage as they take damage. 

But it has to be somewhat generic. If you are only dealing with a handful of ships, you can get pretty detailed but it would require a lot of memory to keep track of hundreds of ships.

wow multianna, your asking for a ton more than you would think...
as sweet as that would be the cost of the game and computer to run it would probably be remarkable, like kryo said, you couldnt stick with a twisted 2-D image of a ship any longer, you'd have to create a 3-D complete replica
which is insane...

although it sure would be sweet xD

What about bulges on the hull? that cant be to hard to make, can it?
Take this Gish game from reflexive that has some physics, that can be similar of bulges on the hull.

*shrug*, still, to put all that in memory for 1000+ ships...

I hope you have a really nice computer multianna...

yeah i can see it would be a problem with sins. With the tech we got today.
But my point is games in general though.
Company of Heroes have the best ive ever seen. But its still not there. The building you shoot at still have this health bar, but they are close to what im looking for.

Im not much of a person for that kind of games. More scifi game like sins is my tast

Since i started this thread was because of the last episode of battlestar galactica. There was a the best detailed battle ive ever seen within a movie.
So this came op in my mind once again

Dunno if its because im getting older, but most games is kinda the "same" i mean its like its a copy and paste, just with other images and story. Take Prey vs Doom 1,2,3 vs Fear vs Max Pain, though pain did start the matrix like feeling with the time slowing down. And so on. New ideas is what draws me to them.

SoaSE is a new kind of game that nobody has done before, with its 4x possibility, and its scifi thats why im still around

o yea it was you that wanted the non-health bar stuff *grumbles*
well w.e you are asking a lot... even though technology has come away your gonna need the core that intel wants to create within the decade that has 80 cores within it =p... that will be some major power!!!!!!

I cant wait until they compactify some quantum computing technology xD, although its going to be at least half a century before *that* miracle becomes a remote possibility for market

well when you said quantum, i thought you ment the new quad CPU from intel soon to come. So i did a google and wiki for it, and WOW i was wrong....

And i qoute from wiki

For example, some modern simulations that are taking IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer years would only take a quantum computer a matter of seconds.

now get that resource done faster

well w.e you are asking a lot... even though technology has come away your gonna need the core that intel wants to create within the decade that has 80 cores within it =p... that will be some major power!!!!!!

oh am i??
well take a look here then Intels 16 core Tigerton they hope to have it ready, third quarter of 2007. So thats about the time SoaSE comes out
Now i just need to win the lottery

Well, part of the reason why we don't see uber-graphics in games is ye old' lowest common denominator factor. While those of us here (most likely) are hardcore gamers and have dedicated gaming rigs, the vast majority of people don't. It's the vast majority that buy most of the games, so one of the key factors during development is making sure the title can run on a typical PC. Long story short, the money for uber-graphics just doesn't pay off since so few people will be able to experience them. It makes more monetary sense to spend the art budget towards graphics that the greatest number of people will actually be able to enjoy.

The bright side of this, however, is that as people buy new PCs, the minimum standard gets higher, so we should see uber graphics on the PC eventually.

like when im 70? and im 26 now zzz hehe by that time, i wouldnt be able to tell the difference of a mouse and keyboard
But an option to turn it on or off, like in Company of heroes, to let the "majority" enjoy the game too

Been reading some stuff on egosoft.com(X3 Reunion)some time ago. They did say that grafics comes first as it sells, then comes gameplay to keep it going.

Just think about it showing something like that at E3(if theres gonna be one again..) people would gasp and drool and stuff.
I belive that today technology can handle maybe about 10 cap ship with the physics, like a battlestar galactica game yeah im a dreamer

For example, some modern simulations that are taking IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer years would only take a quantum computer a matter of seconds.

yeah SciAM has an article on quantum computation, and if they could actually make one (currently they are highly theoretical, and the phyisics behind the concept, while confirmed, will take probably centuries to make smaller -_-) you could do all sorts of amazing stuff

when it comes to normal computation vs. quantum computation, think cherry bomb vs. supernova

It's so hard to spot a Stardock member that it's frightening. You sound literally like one of us! I guess that's a good thing.

Indeed, spending too much time on graphics only to be tuned down is a waste; however, not enough would disappoint the majority. It really is a tough decision to make.

Given the choice I would probably go the graphic route, though that's probably why I'm not an advisor.

It's so hard to spot a Stardock member that it's frightening. You sound literally like one of us! I guess that's a good thing.

personally I think most people on this forum sound like they belong in IC or SD...

It's so hard to spot a Stardock member that it's frightening. You sound literally like one of us! I guess that's a good thing.

Heh, well I am a gamer.   I previously ran the Adrenaline Vault games site for over 9 years before moving to Stardock last January.  In fact, I was the person here who "discovered" Sins.   

I've not been posting much, however, because things are still very preliminary on our end (and my PC crashed and burned yesterday). I don't want to post anything that may not turn out to be true, since that creates expectations that people will then be sore over if they don't happen. This will improve as we move along, however.

may i ask what you mean by "discovered"

oh and did you try out sins? can you tell us what the first thing you thought and did?

if you are allowed that is

oh and did you try out sins?

You may want to look at the player name on the last batch of screenshots

since that creates expectations that people will then be sore over if they don't happen

sometimes those expectations aren't bad things... especially if it motivates the Devs.

of course, our Devs have been practically reading our minds on every topic so far (the way they predict us is downright creepy...)

may i ask what you mean by "discovered" oh and did you try out sins? can you tell us what the first thing you thought and did? if you are allowed that is

We were looking for an upcoming game to publish and I happened upon Sins. The concept intrigued me so I pursued it and here we are.   It's actually uncanny how alike Ironclad and Stardock are. We even play some of the same board games...

I've tried to avoid posting my thoughts on Sins because it's going to come across as though I'm putting on a show. I'll just say that I sat down to play it and when I looked up from the PC, over 3 hours had gone by. Very few games capture my attention like that.

personally I think most people on this forum sound like they belong in IC or SD

1337 user(s) active in the last 5 minutes.

I doubt they have THAT many employees

tsk tsk,
I said "sound" not "were"

and... that has to be fabricated, because 1337 is too 1337 a number to be random...

actually, I did have to hit refresh a couple of times...

stardock or Ironclad must be playing with us

otherwise I'd have to say TOO DAMN WEIRD !!!

Heh.

I actually think that the video card makers are going to solve this problem for us.

There are two things we game developers need:

1) The video cards to support variable detail easily. I.e. reduce polygon count on the fly based on the game's needs.

2) DirectX support to make it easy.

Some games do things like mip mapping and other techniques but it's very custom and you end up typically with a non-seamless experience (it's most often used when zooming in and out and you see polygon reduction as you zoom out but it's usually not seamless).

In another couple of years, I think it'll be part of DirectX and that will allow developers to optimize more.

That way, the guy with the mega system can have incredibly detailed looking ships while the guy with the low end system just sees fairly rough ships.

 

Yeah, homeworld 2 has a very rough polygon reduction. It's really noticeable when doing those slow show-off zoom-in's.