CG on your PC

Posted at: Wednesday 28th May 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

It's been 13 years since 'Toy Story' was released, but PC game graphics still can't match Pixar's breakthrough film. What's holding back gaming graphics, and could features such as ray tracing make games look like films? Ben Hardwidge investigates 3D in film and games to find out if we'll ever play a game that looks like 'Wall-E' in real time.

It's the start of 2033; high-res movies can be downloaded in nanoseconds, 128-core CPUs are considered underpowered and Duke Nukem Forever will definitely be released before Christmas. Whether you'll be donning your virtual reality suit after parking your flying car is debatable, but you can guarantee that the graphics in games will make Crysis look like 3D Monster Maze. Games are constantly adopting the 3D techniques used in films and Intel is talking about real-time ray tracing, so are we on the brink of film-quality CG effects in real time? We spoke to industry experts in both fields to find out how close we are to cinematic gaming.

FROM SPY HUNTER TO CRYSIS

To gain some perspective, it's worth looking at how radically games have evolved over the past 25 years. EA's senior graphics training manager, Sanjay Mistry, who previously worked in the film industry on movies such as 'Goldeneye' and 'Lost in Space', remembers the early 1980s well. 'Photography was a very mature medium,' Mistry commented, 'and you had CG, which was an up-and-coming area. But then you had games, which were very embryonic. The games of that time were pixellated, monotone and made up of primary-coloured environments, and that was it.'

Mistry has a point. CG films have progressed from 'Tron' to 'Wall-E' in just 25 years, while games have advanced from Spy Hunter to Crysis. Mistry argues that the differences between photography, CG and games aren't nearly as striking as they were then, and that games are catching up. However, there are still many areas in which 3D in films and games differ from each other, and it will take a long time for games to catch up completely, if it ever happens.

Read the rest of our special feature on CG and how it affects the games industry by clicking on the sections below.