With Crysis 2 in the works and plenty of industry insiders talking up the new CryEngine 3, it stands to reason that Crytek CEO and founder Yevat Cerli had some things to say at this week's GamesCom event in Cologne, Germany.
Yerli's session was entitled "The Future of Gaming Graphics," and perhaps surprisingly, he believes we won't be seeing any significant visual upgrades between now and 2012. This is due to the fact that "engines are bound to console cycles," and therefore, this means he thinks the next generation of consoles will arrive around 2012. He also says this is when the next major upgrade for his team's CryEngine will be available. However, while this may sound disappointing on the surface (why do we gotta wait so long for better graphics?!), Yerli did say we'll still see definite improvements in the areas of "physics, AI, and simulation of special effects over the next few years." As for comparisons to CGI movies, he says we'll see Ice Age visuals in games (in real time) in 2013, and as a nod to Final Fantasy fans everywhere, Yerli said he has used "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" as a benchmark goal for the CryEngine 3.
"We wanted to beat the faces in the Final Fantasy movie, but doing in real time what they were doing offline. Every day I was getting posted images from the Final Fantasy movie." Then, after showing off one of the faces his team has produced, he proudly announced that "one face has more technology than the entire first Far Cry."
For our part, we've always wondered when we'd be seeing in-game visuals that are similar to those of the modern-day CGI films. And if any team is capable of pulling it off in the next three or four years, it's Crytek; Crysis was most impressive and everyone is expecting great things from the sequel. Do you agree with Yerli's predictions?
That would be Fackin sweet. I dont care for that movie, but if I saw a game that looked as good as the CGI in that movie I would SHlT my pants.
Last edited by Jed on 8/17/2009 10:07:36 PM
Namoura or what ever from Square mentioned something about Final Fantasy Versus XIII's engine is going to replicate FFVII Advent Children. They are trying to make the games graphics as close to Advent Childrens as possible.
I agree with everything he said, except about the next generation of consoles….I mean, it's too early.
I wonder, what about the uncanny valley theory?
Japanese androids scare me.
Are they planning on bringin Crysis to consoles? I kinda hope they don't.
They are for Crysis 2, but not the original. May I ask why you are hoping they don't =D?
Crysis was a subpar, little less than mediocre fps. Its graphics where fantastic, and no one can say they weren't. But the game it self was lacking in just about every other area substantially. You really feel as if they put most of there resources into the graphics and hoped that would carry the game.
imo, its a decent FPS in which PC fans can grab and go nuts with "You all fail at PC graphics" sigh…
cmon crytek this is your thing right here
Last edited by Xra897 on 8/17/2009 10:57:50 PM
I don't understand why some developers want to talk about games they're gonna do on a console that isn't out yet. They should be focusing all there attention on what's going on now.
Indeed.
I cant wait to play NFL 2k13 with CGI graphics, then I will sh** My Pants lol
Uncharted 2 Looks better than a CGI movie!!!!!!!!
U2 reminds me of a Pixar movie.
I think its pretty close… but the polygon count is not as high as a pixar movie in-game. The "real-time" cut scenes could come close, but as you know, they are using most of the memory for those without having to run a "game engine" simultaneously.
When the game actually runs, it is a different story…
Actually, hardware wise the PS3 could come close… what stops it… RAM!!! Always the damn RAM… we needed more of it. Sony made a mistake not releasing the PS3 with 1 gigabyte of ram as minimum; or at least make it expandable… that would not have hurt at all, to give us "ram" access via slot where we could have added an extra bank or two. Pity!
Q!
"i am home"
Gaaaawd Spirits Within was Squares biggest mistake. If it wasn't for that God forsaken movie they would still be SquareSoft. I used to think the CGI was amazing until Advent Children came out. Mucho better.
I think it stands to reason CGI quality real-time graphics are the next big thing; and very achievable within the next 5 years. If not, I would be very surprised.
Simply do some research on the net and see what NVidia, ATI, IBM (and their Cell), AMD and the like are doing with regards to advancing multi-processing core silicon. Cores will double, triple and quadruple in the next few years, with GPU's jumping quickers and further than all other components of a general purpose PC. Sony, Nintendo and M$ will undoubtedly look at incorporating this brutish hardware into their console pipeline in the years to come… so honestly, it is no surprise… it is what is expected I think…
Let us throw in the ability expected of engines to natively churn out 1900×1200 visuals as standard (for all platforms and games) in the future, once can see what you need. Processors and GPU's with multi-core architectures 2 to 3 times more powerful we have today (at least), and ram of 2 to 4 gigabytes as minimum …an yes, a PS4 will have some catching up to do 3-4 years from now… If we do indeed get new hardware in a similar format as we have today.
Let us not forget where services such as "OnLive" would have developed to by then…
…will we really need next generation hardware in our living rooms at all in the future?
Here's to Final Fantasy, The Spirits Within graphics in real-time in the not too distant future… cheers to that!
Q!
"i am home"
i hope hes not implying that crysis 2s visuals are roughly the same as crysis otherwise im going to be really pissed.
when are we going to see games that take advantage of TODAYS! hardware not 2 years ago hardware.
i wish valve ID and crytek just stuck to the pc and keep producing the quality titles they were doing, every system has its exclusives so why not PC?
im starting to wish i dident spend 3K on my PC, by the time theres games taking advantage of it im going to be in a nursing home.
@___________
i really dont understand with people who buy 3k pc.
my 350USD pc already run games in max in 1440×900 and it still run CoD4 in 130-200fps.
there still too many power left unused on my pc…..
What is he talking about? We have already seen ingame graphics that are cgi quality. Games like ratchet and clank crack of time, heavy rain, uncharted 2, and maybe final fantasy versus XIII are just some of the example of games that can generate graphics as good as prerendered graphics.
Wont cgi movies graphics also improve by that time. Coz by now in game graphics of some games are better that older cgi movies eg incredibles, toy story. and the likes
from what i understood if copanies are working on cgi graphics for "real-time" then whose working on the vitural reality part? i read in a magazine but 2013 we would be seeing virtual reality coming out since our technology is capable to running small versions of such activities
"engines are bound to console cycles,"
Bull dookie, graphics changes are bound round PC hardware and always have been. Look ATI and Nvidia are in the consoles now as well so that statement is false. Have always been in the forefront and never was it the other way around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies
@ KoldStrejke
when he said that "engines are bound to console cycles," first he was referring to games consoles and not to PC's, two his statement is true because once a console is built whatever components it has its stuck with for the life of the console cycle, so what he meant is that they cant create a game engine that is more advance than the tech supported in a game console, in that essence the engines are bound and limited to the consoles life cycle until the next wave of more powerful and faster processing power and better graphics consoles come out and then whatever engines available then will be bound to those consoles until the next advancement in visual and computational technology. now on the PC that statement is not true because computer hardware is constantly being upgraded and newer tech is available for computers roughly every 6 to 8 months theres new tech developments going on in the PC side of the tech and game industry.
so your taking the comment out of conttext and misunderstanding the point of the comment in the first place.
@ Qubex:
We have been in the MULTI-CORE era for years now. Multi-core means a processor that has between 2 and 8 cores. Any dual-core, quad-core or *current* Cell processor with 6, 7 or 8 SPEs is still a multi-core processor. The NEXT major leap is called MANYCORE, which means at least 10 cores if not more, scaling up to tens of cores or dozens of cores, and eventually to hundreds of cores. Intel's upcoming LARRABEE GPU / GPGPU architecture is one of the most anticipated chip-families of the coming manycore era. Also, the NEXT-GEN Cell processor, which IBM has said will be coming in 2010-2011, will have 32 SPEs. It will therefore be a manycore processor also.
Everyone else is working to bring manycore chips to the market over the next few years.
This decade has been the multi-core era, the next decade(s) will be the manycore era.
@ Everyone:
The next-generation of consoles in the next 3-5 years (3rd-gen Xbox, PS4) will probably combine manycore CPUs with a few dozen cores (i.e. 32 SPE Cell) with massively parallel GPUs (advanced versions of Larrabee or similar) that are more advanced than the yet-to-be-released DirectX11 AMD R8xx and Nvidia GT300 GPUs. The upcoming DX11 GPUs should offer 2-3x more impressive graphics than the best current cards, and next-gen consoles should be of the DX11+ or DX12 gen.
Larrabee will be unlimited in capability (beyond DX11) performance will only be dependant on # of cores.
Will next-gen consoles push real-time in-game graphics that look every bit as good as Final Fantasy The Spirits Within CGI movie? No I highly doubt that. However, it should be reasonable to expect real-time graphics on par with LOWER-END but still DECENT pre-rendered CGI, such as those used in videogame INTROS and CUT-SCENES from the PS2-Xbox1 era. That's what I am hoping for, anyway….
@parallax.. Nice info. How do spe's translate in terms of cores? It confuses me. Is one spe one core? How does it work.
Wow Ben, I thought pc developers were s***. Thanks for the improvement in writing anyways.
@ Day_v: I am no expert on the subject, but in general, one SPE is indeed one core. Now it's true that the SPE is not a full-blown CPU core like a PowerPC, MIPS Rxxxx, or Intel X86. The SPE is more like a glorified (and greatly-enhanced) Vector Unit, like VU0 found in PS2's Emotion Engine. An SPE is somewhere *between* a VU and a CPU core. It's PS3's main workhorse unit, the PowerPC-based PPE core is not, even though its more flexable than the SPE.