The Veil Between the Real and Unreal Just Got Razorwire Thin

Telarus writes:

Pretty bad ass, yeah. Most of the high-poly stuff was done with the new DirectX 11 'tessellation' feature.

Ok, for those following along. The above video shows something rendered in a GAME ENGINE. This specific piece is considered a 'cut scene' or 'cinematic', and you can really crank the graphic quality way way up for various reasons during cinematics (one of which is you don't hae to bother with payer input to the camera, etc, etc). Also rendered on some serious hardware. So you can't expect this exact quality during game-play. But it'll be close.

And pulling off something _close_ to the above in a Real Time renderer, while also allowing for player input? HUGE.

We've finally come close enough to the point which John Romero foolishly proclaimed back in 1996 or so, that we've come so far in our graphics technology that we can finally focus most of our effort (as game-makers) on the fun factor.

Though it remains to be seen whether it can truly render Avatar-style graphics in a non-Blade Runner-like setting, or provide a 3D experience akin to the film... this looks truly fucking awesome.

And I'm honestly cool with more games in Blade Runner-type settings.

Joshua responded with:

I would take the setting of the video as any trend in future product design. It was chosen to specifically show off things like the new Image Based reflections (note the super detail in the reflected neon signs), etc, etc.

Juan Carlos Ochoa responds:

See the new Deus Ex for more cpunk.

To elaborate on your definition of cut-scene, normally the cut-scenes are done in a 3d engine, much the same as something like LoTR or Avatar. You gain movie quality, but you lose the option of having interactivity.
This is a sample of in-game graphics, meaning this is the quality you see ALL through the game.

Photoreal realtime graphics are currently held back by the ability to process complex shaders like subsurface scattering in realtime and by the amount of polygons availible. This tesselation tech seems to be doing the job, thanks for the link.