TBH I think visuals have already reached a level where they can adequately offer a cinematic game experience (meaning they're realistic enough to portray real world locations, character reaction etc) so further advances in those terms is really just aesthetics for their own sake rather than enriching the games any further.
Where I would like to see the R&D invested is in AI, better story telling and scripting and realising objects. The guy in the above vid looks great, but he's still basically just a lump of maths covered in a pre-rendered skin. I would like to see games where a characters coat for example is actually an independent item, it exists in the game engine beyond being 'character skin file a1'.
I would like to see Environmental stuff that actually has texture and physical properties applied that you can interact with in a realistic way dependent on what its made out of, rather than just being skinned in an art package then given a value determining size and weight that the game engine can apply its 'physics' to. Some engines don't even go that far with any manipulable objects all behaving in exactly the same way when force is applied to them regardless of size and weight.
|