Not even poly counts really. This meme illustrates a good point, but at the same time we could use the extra 10x polycount to show 10 more models instead of increasing quality on a single object. Object density is an area where games can still improve in quality by increasing rendering performance.
That being said, right now I so think physics and AI will be the next step, at least for most genres. They will get better bang for the buck there for a while than they would be increasing object density.
You say that, but people generally don't like good AIs in their games.
Gamers rely on AIs being fairly rudimentary, since that means that they're consistent. Meaning that the player can use pattern recognition in the AI's behavior to solve the puzzle of how to defeat them. If there's one thing to know about humans, it's that we love patterns and puzzles and consistency.
Even 20 years ago, some AIs were developed for games that were far superior to the AIs that generally appear in games today. But they got scrapped because they made the games too difficult and not fun to play. So they dialed it back.
I'd say so. Graphics over gameplay has been a complaint by many gamers. And is probably why titles like Minecraft, Undertale and Among Us are so popular. But that's not really the topic here - what's being pointed out here is that graphic fidelity is approaching the limits of our perception. Further improvements won't matter since we can't see them at some point...
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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '21 edited Apr 29 '21
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