Enouugh with faster videocards, I want a card that has good picture quality

[littlegohan]

It seens to me there isnt a huge dfferent between a geforce 2 mx to a geforece 3 in terms of graphics quality

I mean, how come there are powerful hardware avaliable and yet there are no games that take advantage of them? In my opinion, The Shenmue 2 for dreamcast is better looking that most pc games. the dreamcast is consist of a powervr chip yet it has such great potential. Why dont a software developer take advantage of our video cards?

Is there a difference between 100 to 200 fps?

 

[Brizanicus]

I agree, can anyone tell the difference between 141 fps and 218 fps? I can't. I'll take greater visual quality and lower frame rates anyday, as long as those frame rates stay above 60 or so. Increasing the resolution helps. Enabling FSAA (or what ever) also helps. But, I would like to see some real improvements in visual quality. I know it takes time, and we have come a long, long way, but still. One thing to remember is that all the visual quality improvements that we want devour tons of frame per second, so to enable a greater visual quality that is still playable at 60 plus frame per second, the base frame frates will have to go much higher than the 218 stated earier. Oh well I'm young, well younger. DAMN, I'm getting old! Hurry up with those cards!

 

[VBboy]

<< It seens to me there isnt a huge dfferent between a geforce 2 mx to a geforece 3 in terms of graphics quality >>

Are you talking about sharpness/color (e.g. Matrox vs crap videocards), or about the complexity, textures and 3d in games? Modern videocards are more than capable of producing highly realistic 3d scenery, especially with 32-bit color and FSAA. Are you sure you're not just running bad games? Try Solder of Fortune, Max Payne, and Serious Sam 2. All these games have very good graphics.

 

[VBboy]

Man, you people must be playing Doom or Starcraft.

Try some new games! Return to Castle Wolfenstein has AMAZING graphics. In any case, it's up to the GAME developers, not videocard manufacturers or chip makers, to make graphics look good. What you're saying is similar to "I want a faster and better CPU so I can type with my voice in Wordpad". It's up to software, not hardware.

 

[Brizanicus]

VBboy,

I do have Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and it does look good. But it doesn't look realistic enough. There are still the sharp and jagged edges on nearly all models and alot of the textures look like, well, textures. Granted, RtoCW is a damn good game and it is light years from the original PC version, but, if you enable all the visual quality goodies that the game and video card offer and set your resolution up nice and high your fps are going to suffer a whole bunch. And not just on an older system like mine. The point I was trying to make is that fps and quality go hand in hand. The hardware designers and software developers are both necessary and equally important in any attempt at improving the speed and quality of not only games but all computer software. And, yes, I do still think that it can and should be improved. Otherwise, you better start selling your nVidia and id stock.

 

[AngelDeath]

I think if a developer set their game into high standar they sales will be decrease.

 

[Daovonnaex]

Well, Chibi Gohan, all I can say is that the newer cards do have more image quality, you must have a crappy monitor or you're playing older games. Another nice thing about newer cards like the GF3 is that you can actually run 4x FSAA and anisotropic filtering at higher resolutions, yielding fantastic quality.

 

[human2k]

I dont know about you guys but the current wave of games just dont impress me. Even games on the consoles, like the highly acclaimed GT3 or Final Fantasy X. Sure the graphx are nice, but thats only the cinematics, I want the game play to consist of graphx of that caliber. Enought of those first person shooter games, I just consider them all a doom rip off, whats so cool about just running around and shooting, it gets boring so fast and most ppl I know h8t that stuff cuz u can get very dizzy (VERY). Why dont game developers actually develop something thats impressive such as Pong or even solitare. As the thread says, I want picture quality!!!!

 

[merlocka]

A card can only render an image, it's up to the game developers to tax the hardware. Since they must cater to the lowest common denominator we get games which can run on TnT's and Rage128's but don't scale well to the latest HW.

This is an artifact of game development times. It takes years to release a game, and the hardware on which the game is developed is obsolete before the game goes gold.

The difference between playing on a Geforce2 MX and a Geforce3 is that with the latter you can enable image-enhancing features such as FSAA, Anisotropic filtering, and of course, increase the resolution without losing as much frame rate.

 

[VBboy]

Brizanicus -
<< I do have Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and it does look good. But it doesn't look realistic enough. There are still the sharp and jagged edges on nearly all models and alot of the textures look like, well, textures. >>

Yeah, that's why you turn on FSAA (Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing). It fixes the problem. Also, you see jaggies only around 800x600... Try 1280x1024, you won't see them. Also, have you even tried setting all the visual settings to the max? Speaking of Max, try Max Payne - the game ROCKED, at least visually Bullet-time, my friend.

So perhaps the issue is in the user, not the hardware?

 

[Comp625]

merlocka is right.

The game developers must cater towards the people with lower end systems. If the game developers make awesome games that take full advantage of the GF3, that would mean it would run like a pile of dog poopoo on Rage128 or TNT cards or it might not run at all. If it does not run at all, the game developer just isolated a largely potential group of gamers who have a Rage128 and the similar.

That would translate to weaker sales (not because the game is crappy, but because alot of people just simply can't run it).

Don't worry though. As people with weaker systems play today's games (eg RTCW, Max Payne). They'll be forced to lower the detail settings or else it would be almost unplayable due to low framerates. However, this is what drives the gamers into buying better hardware. JoeGamer might go "OMG THIS GAME RUNS LIKE SHIET CUZ MY SYSTEM SUCKS!" Okay...so now he'll have that desire to go out and upgrade his system. JoeGamer now upgrades his system to the latest hardware. JoeGamer's dollar just helped out the economy since it helped pay for someone at Nvidia or AMD's paycheck.

Also now that JoeGamer has the latest hardware, this trend of upgrading will also be seen in other gamers too. So in a few years when we see a GeForce5 or what not, game developers can now start to utilize the hardware seen in GeForce1,2,3 since the lower end gamers have now upgraded to at least decent hardware. This has been the trend seen throughout the past few years.

My point is:
- If game developers were to make a game just for GF3 owners, then they'd lose profit. They'd also hurt the economy because they would be forced to lay off workers due to the lost profit.
- Time is the key to better games. Hardware technology is accelerating fast but the people's hardware isn't being upgraded at that kind of pace. Game devleopers have to let them catch up. But for the game developers to actually stay in the business for another few years, they have to find a way to make money. To make money, they would make games that cater to the most largest possible gaming populous.

 

[VBboy]

Comp625,

Great explanation. I was too lazy to type all that. Good job.

 

[Mustanggt]

Brizanicus wolfenstein looks outstanding with my Radeon 8500 no blocks with smooth on. but I agree I would like to see a war game with the graphic intensity of that shrek movie now there some nice graphics. prob need a $2000 vid card to play it lol.

 

[VBboy]

Guys, you have a valid point about games not being all they can be, but just wait for a few years. Look at Wolf (the original) and some old 2d games - they SUCKED by today's standards. Similarly, in a couple of years, you'll see games with very realistic people models, better AI, higher-res textures and better special effects.

Look at how far the sound technology progressed in games. A few years ago, you'd be happy to hear your PC speaker go "blim, blim" when you shot an Imp in the ass. Now, you have 4.1 surround sound at 44 Khz. So just wait

Doom3 will be coming out (soon, I hope), and it's supposed to look awesome.

 

[KrispyKremer]

...too bad the hardware you'll need to play it at a decent clip won't be available until a year or more after Doom III is out.

 

[Daovonnaex]

<< ...too bad the hardware you'll need to play it at a decent clip won't be available until a year or more after Doom III is out. >>

Not even an overclocked Gainward Ti450 (or 550) mated to a northwood P4 or Athlon Palomino (or thoroughbred)? I don't buy that.

 

[Siva]

if you have a good monitor, at 1600x1200 with FSAA and detail settings on high on something like RTCW that game is gonna look incredible. That's the advantage of faster videocards, being able to do that and still get a playable framerate.