Anyone of a certain age will remember their wide-eyed wonder as they made the jump from cartridge-based games to CD formats. Using a compact disc alone was novelty enough, but those 32-bit graphics unlocked virtual universes that many had only dreamed of.
Since the 1990s, the video game sector has gone from strength to strength, with new generations of consoles arriving every few years. It’s also one sector that consumers seem happy to spend money on, with the market forecast to be worth more than $242 million by the end of 2023.
With the public's growing appetite for gaming, it’s no surprise that companies like Sony and Microsoft aren’t waiting around when it comes to readying the next era of consoles. Many games are already incredibly realistic, with jaw-dropping visuals that are only set to improve.
The State of Video Game Graphics Today
There’s never been a better time to be a gamer. Advanced hardware and online connectivity have made real-time games accessible on any device. Generally speaking, games have never looked better. While photorealism isn’t expected of every title, it’s pretty rare to find a game that upsets the apple cart with third-rate graphics.
Take The Lord of the Rings: Gollum as an example. Despite some pretty solid franchise inspiration, this scrolling adventure was a major misfire for Daedalic Entertainment and Nacon, but it’s not a common situation in modern games. Along with monstrous mechanics, the game quickly drew criticism for its inferior graphics and animations. During the 1990s, a cash grab like this might have been defendable. Now that we know the limits of console hardware, however, there’s no excuse for subpar graphics.
Some of the most beloved games of the past few years are hard to distinguish from reality, despite narratives taking place in sprawling open worlds with casts of thousands of NPCs. Red Dead Redemption 2 and Ghost of Tsushima are just two examples of games that strike the right balance between immersion and photorealism. When you look at the scope of these action-adventure titles, it’s fair to assume that we’re only a few years away from enjoying games that truly blur the line between virtual fiction and reality.
Key Video Game Graphic Technologies
Many would argue that we’re only a few years away from enjoying photorealistic games as the standard. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are both technically capable of delivering virtual worlds that could be mistaken for the real thing. With PC gaming, the technology is already there.
However, hardware alone isn’t enough to produce photorealistic characters and environments. Instead, developers need to turn to specific techniques, such as ray tracing. This technique essentially simulates how you see the world around you in virtual form. It uses the game camera viewing angle and the direction of virtual rays of sunlight to produce visuals that are as realistic as possible.
While ray tracing can be used to make an in-game environment feel more alive, it’s not a particularly practical method of enhancing graphics. If you want to enjoy the fruits of ray tracing, you’ll need to play on a machine with some seriously impressive performance specs. It’s only really feasible for PC gamers, although many of these gamers choose to disable ray tracing to improve gameplay performance. When it comes to hardware, the technology hasn’t quite caught up to the limitations of consoles.
Do We Really Need Photorealism in Games?
While photorealistic graphics certainly have applications for VR and AR experiences, there’s an argument to be made that not every game needs to look stunning. A richly detailed open world can enhance immersion when enjoying single-player campaigns, but people aren’t turning their backs on quirky platformers populated with colourful characters. Likewise, millions of players are choosing to download games from as early as the 1990s to their current-generation consoles. While there’s an element of nostalgia here, the appetite for these retro games proves that pixelated characters and flat textures don’t have a negative impact on gameplay itself for many gamers.
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