10 Graphics Technologies That Will Push The Visuals On PS4 And Xbox 720

George: "It's already happening on PC, and has been doing so for some time. Graphics and visual technologies prevalent within top end PC games are now becoming a standard that is sorely missed on recent console titles. All the upgrades and benefits of DirectX11 are sorely missed.

No tessellation and advanced anti-aliasing is a big call, one that becomes more noticeable as PC hardware eclipses its living room brethren. Next gen consoles offer a chance for serious improvement though, so we've rounded up ten contemporary graphics technologies we'd love to see PS4 and Xbox 720 games utilising."

[DigitalSmoke]

Focussing on "effects" is what is killing our hobby...

You can toss pixel shaders 3D texture's AA and AF in a scene all you want, but if it moves robotic and has weak-ass unoriginal art design with mediocre same old

mechenics, the game is soulless, and there are far to many of those.
And even worse these games get reviewed in the 8 to 10, its crazy how weak the perception of most of these
reviewers is.

Maybe i shouldn't have spoken this truth as well, i might end up with zero bubbles ;)

[PinkFunk]

You're right. But I wouldn't be so dismissive of new technologies. Where one developer might throw in a bunch of snazzy tech effects and couple that with dull and uninventive gameplay and art design, another developer will marry all elements perfectly to create something beautiful.

It's a brilliant thing to get a leap in technology, and we'll get a whole range of developers trying to do their thang. But pay attention to those who care about the craft and we'll be happily surprised what is possible with "next-gen" opportunities.

I've always thought art design to be much more important when considering visual graphics, anyway.

[arbitor365]

there is no dichotomy of "graphics or gameplay." plenty of games have both. for instance, something like farcry 3, which plays as good as it looks.

greater tech allows for more possibilities. games like just cause 2, god of war 3, uncharted 2, mass effect, mirror's edge, demon souls and virtually every other great game this gen could not have been accomplished on a PS2/xbox/gamecube

I would sure as hell prefer console companies focusing on enhancing console tech and broadening developer tools, than forcing motion controls, tablet controllers on us.

[hakis86]

Actually some techs I had not heard about, interesting!

[gameseveryday]

Here is the entire list:

Tress FX
Higher Levels of Anti-aliasing
Tessellation
Anisotropic Filtering
Real Time Local Reflections
Irradiance Volume
Dynamic Terrains
Screen Space Directional Occlusion
Parametric Skeletal Animation
Light Propogation Volumes

There are videos for each tech, but can't post them here.

[ninjahunter]

Hmm, Anti Aliasing might die out methinks. Why Mr.Ninjahunter, thats blasphemy! AntiAliasing is all the rage on consoles! Rabble rabble rabble.

Well Sirs, I will explain myself, Anti aliasing isnt an effect that gets cheaper the more power you have. Because The impact of Anti aliasing is directly related to your resolution. It has a smaller impact on performance at smaller resolutions and a larger impact on performance at higher resolutions. On a console resolution like 640p AA has a massive visual impact, and might have as low as a 10% performance hit. now if you bump the resolution a multiple of 9 times to 1080p AA has a much less notable impact image quality since the pixels are 9 times smaller, but now it will also have about a 9x high performance impact. Thats same level of AA could literally cut your FPS in half at 1080p.

[DFresh]

Another thing to add to the list is Volumetric Lighting which is being used by Naughty Dog on both UC3/The Last of Us to show real time light reflection/glare based on the object it's showing.

Super Sampling would also be a nice addition.
(Used on the The Witcher series to improve the smoothness and decrease the blur of textures in a game.)

[MysticStrummer]

I was much more interested in hearing about next gen's supposedly better AI.