An I was wondering thread...

[seanMO]

I was thinking the other day about game graphics. I here alot of talk about how far we are away from from photo-realistic graphics. Most games nowadays have great graphics but we are still a long way from photo-realistic. I was wondering if its possible to make a game in where you interact with an environment or character that is videotaped instead of created with a graphics program.

when a character now is created , a 3d model is made then animated for us to interact with. Why couldnt game designers capture an still image of a real person and animate that. Is it just to damm expensive. Or how about videotaping an envirinment and using that instead of a drawng that is then rendered by a program. I really dont know to much about creating games, but was if this is possible .

Just imagine how real a game would seem if you were actually playing in a video environment against real people instead of drawn environments and characters.

Its late my mind tends to wander.....

[Boba Rhett]

...

 

I'm not really clear on what you mean...

 

 

"capture a still image then animate it"

 

huh? o_O

 

"videotaping an environment"

 

There's far far too many variables for anything like that to ever be considered. Every single movement in every single location in every single situation would have to be recorded. Also, the video is not a 3d world. How would boundries be set such as a wall? It would still have to be plastered onto a 3d environment.

 

 

 

Maybe I'm just off the mark about what you meant. If I am, please elaborate.

[acdcfanbill]

well, KOTOR sounds really close where individual blades of grass react to the wind and your movement... it sounds awesome, and from bioware, its gonna be a good game...

 

and if you into benchmarks.. try this out...CodeCult i warn you, it takes a really bad system to run, they recommend 512 ram, and a brand new vid card, but the whole thing is amazing... heh, my 8500 pulled an average of 11 frames a second:D

 

edit: oh i should say, on the website, go to downloads and benchmark...

[seanMO]

No i think you got it. I mean if virtual realityis to become a reality someday they will have to somehow figure these issues out. I thought about the variables to. Someday.... anything is possible.

[Lostman]

They can make games look real alright, but at a cost of size. Remember, to render an image and to have it look totally real, the file sizes are going to be huge. Anytime you compress anything, you loose quality.

 

So they probalby could have a game out that pushes the limits, but at what cost? You'd have to have a tope of the line video card and 20 gigs of hd space.

 

F R A G N A S T I K A

[Kurgan]

Actually Videotape games were trendy in the 80's. I'm not talking about those multi-media FMV games that came out on CD-ROM or Laser-Disc, I mean actual VHS tapes you popped into your VCR, then interacted with using a controller of some sort.

 

Example: Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.

Live action sci fi series, combining live action and CGI. You could watch the show on tv, tape it, or rent/buy tapes of it, plus there were "Training videos" using animated+live action.

 

All were interactive.. buy these ship/gun controllers and you could shoot at the screen, registering "hits" and "damage" and it would keep score. At the end you wrote down your scores on a scorecard for fun. ; )

 

There were others I remember seeing advertised back then.. games where you held a light gun (much like the lightguns that came with video game systems back then) and watched a Video on your Tv of actual planes you'd shoot at, or where the controller was a steering wheel and you controlled a toy car that was on a plane (it moved left and right when you turned the wheel) in front of your TV, which had a video of a first person high speed car chase.

 

That kind of thing has been done.. and it was quite cool. Most of it was done through flashing lights and simple tricks like the lightgun uses. Much more realistic looking than anything in games today, but much less interactive (ie: the video is always the same).

 

If you check Ebay you can find many of those nifty toys I've mentioned. I ordered several Captain Power vids and toys that way (I was a fan of the show back when it aired in '87).