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In this video I hope to assess how far we've come since the release of the Xbox 360 and
Playstation 3. Around the same time as these consoles came out, Nvidia released a demo
for the Geforce 8800 series. I remember being blown away, thinking that photorealism had
indeed been accomplished. Earlier this year they released another tech demo of a human
head and I felt that it would be good to compare the two and to see how far we have advanced.
Although not completely accurate, think of the first demo as being possible with today's
consoles, and the second as being an Xbox One or Playstation 4 equivalent. What can
tomorrow's consoles offer us that today's cannot?
So, why compare faces? With so much trickery going into today's games
to squeeze as much out of our hardware as possible, it can be difficult to visualise
just how far we've come. So with that, what better way of viewing mankind's progress is
there than using today's computers to render a photorealistic head? If games like Crysis
can render near-photorealistic environments, imagine what it could do if it forced all
of its epicness into rendering a single item. Like somebody's FACE. It can be hard to compare
game environments since these change over time, but a human head remains about the same.
It's unlikely to grow horns or to alter that much, so I feel that this is a good sort of
item to compare. ANIMATION -Let's get the obvious out of the
way. The first tech demo was to showcase the graphics, the second one's focus was more
on the animation. I'm sure that the muscle groups add considerable overhead to the system
rendering this so the two are not a direct comparison. Also note the lack of eyeballs
on the first head. They are both lacking a head of hair- perhaps some time in the future
we'll have a third tech demo with even more advanced graphics and animation- as well as
a full head of hair! Anyway, with that out of the way let's move back to the comparable
elements. TEXTURE QUALITY - This is where it gets interesting.
The first one holds up remarkably well under normal conditions though I still feel it loses
out to the second. If you zoom up to the newer one you'll see it becomes grainy. Normally
I'd criticise something for this but it's better than a horrible smeary mess like the
first one becomes. A couple more examples show that sometimes the texture resolution
isn't that much greater, but the shiny layer of the skin is more detailed. I think that's
what gives it the graininess. Finally, look at the forehead. The first is quite basic
and has surprisingly blotchy colours, while the second is a fine example of human skin.
The beautifully detailed spot in the centre is almost rubbing it in.
EYES - The first doesn't have any, and I wish it did because it would be interesting to
compare them. The ones in the new tech demo are nice, round and slimy looking and have
a nice feature that causes the cornea to appear in 3D. If you've ever stared at somebody's
eye from the side you'll see it's just like that. Oh and the iris can change size and
colour. All of these things could have been done on the old consoles as parallax mapping
was a directx9 feature. However, perhaps it requires a newer shader standard to run, as
DirectX 10 and 11 have newer shader models. Oh look, he's even got another eye on the
other side of his face. Fantastic. If the eye was present in the old tech demo it probably
wouldn't be as round since it requires DirectX11 to support tessellation. Plus the hardware
wouldn't have been as fast. If you think that ANY of these features won't be in games for
a while, think again- Crysis 3 already supports all of them.
POLY COUNT By turning on wireframe mode, you can see what the model is made out of, with
each line being the point at which the angle of the model changes. More of these lines
means smoother looking models. Too few, well... makes people look like this. The first demo
had a nice high polycount, but it remained the same no matter how far away from the model
you were, so it was too detailed from far away, and not detailed enough when near-by.
The new one doesn't have this problem due to a new DirectX feature that I believe will
be in most Xbox One and Playstation 4 games: Tesselation. I briefly mentioned this in the
previous part, but in short, it makes more polygons when you get near to things so it
keeps it looking smooth. It goes as far as to give him bumpy skin in this demo. As you
can see it only increases the polygon count around the edges, since this is where you
see them the most. This also keeps the computer running faster than if it was done everywhere.
SHADOWS Both tech demos use a different style. The first has visible pixels and a clear-cut
point where shadows end. The newer one is more fuzzy. I personally quite like the old
style, though I suppose the new method accounts for ambient occlusion where enclosed areas
are naturally darker. What do you think? SHADERS - In my opinion, both tech demos have
fantastic shaders. Their skin looks oily and dirty, and I love things like that. Both have
a shader that makes the skin look translucent. By that I mean that light bounces through
the surface before coming back out. By adjusting the sliders here you can see how much it can
affect the skin's authenticity. The new one however allows for light to bleed through
the ear, giving it a reddish appearance. I'm not quite sure why the older demo didn't have
this, since earlier Nvidia demos showcased it.
So there you have it. A comparison between last gen's the upcoming gen's graphical capabilities.
What will the future hold? I really can't wait to find out!!!!!!