For the most part of my Gaming Life, I had been immensely fascinated (to put it mildly) with Videogame graphics. Back in my school days, I used to visit one of the only cyber cafes in my town which had a proper internet connection (that was around 2005) and spending an hour (which cost about 20 bucks) reading, no, devouring everything related to the latest and greatest in Videogame graphics on the internet. From shiny new upcoming graphics cards to the latest games promising to push the graphical boundaries farther than ever before, from the myriads of benchmarks regarding the graphics card I had back then to the tantalizing images of the latest 3D Mark, my Love affair with videogame graphics (and videogames in general) knew no bounds.
And back then, there were mainly 3 titles that delivered a truly ahead-of-their-time visual experience which was Doom 3 (for realtime dynamic lighting and shadowing), Half Life 2 (for it’s complex shaders and physics) and Far Cry (for pretty much everything else) and these 3 were the biggest graphical trendsetters in the Videogame Industry during that period.
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| Mighty realistic... |
But around a year later, a gaming magazine that I used to read (the unforgettable SKOAR) back then had an article featuring the upcoming titles showcased during E3 2006, with several screenshots of them all. And upon seeing the jaw-dropping, realtime images of a third person shooter titled Gears of War, I was left awe-strucked and just couldn’t believe what I had seen—those in-game screenshots seemed so far beyond what I had seen till that point that they truly felt like something from the distant future.
It was a watershed
moment for me while the magazine had boldly stated that Gears of War makes games that were universally lauded for their groundbreaking
visuals like Doom 3, look like Pacman, and looking at
the screenshots, I really couldn’t have agreed more. It was a true ‘uncanny
valley’ experience for me where I just couldn't fathom how a game can possibly look that much realistic and far ahead from everything else at that time.
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| This level of rendering is easily several generations ahead from what we see now... |
And that's exactly what Unreal Engine 3 did----it basically kicked off a whole new era of videogame visuals that made everything that came before look like several generations behind. Then along came Crysis with the mighty Cryengine 2 which stood head and shoulders above Unreal 3 in every way and became a monolithic standard of visual fidelity for years and years to come. The Cryengine reached it’s apex with Crysis 3 which had some of the most realistic natural, outdoor renderings that still hold up exceptionally well even to this day.
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| If my past self could knew that Videogames would look THIS good one day, he'd have never believed it. |
Videogame visuals continued to evolve through game engines such as the Frostbite and R.A.G.E, all of which brought significant new improvements and took graphics as we knew to whole new levels of awe and technical wonders. Then of course came Ray Tracing with games like Cyberpunk 2077 which has kind of become the poster boy for the possibilities offered by this highly advanced rendering method and how it changes the landscape of videogame graphics on a fundamental level.
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| All outta words, for real. |
But honestly, apart from Red Dead Redemption 2 (but only to a limited extent), none of those visual ‘upgrades’ of the post-Cryengine-era had me truly excited, as most felt rather incremental in nature and none were nearly as groundbreaking as Unreal Engine 3 was in 2006, or even Crysis in 2007. Well, all that changed when I saw this demonstration of Unreal Engine 5.
We’ve been hearing the term 'photorealism' for decades but after watching this demo, I'm fully convinced that we've finally, truly arrived----the age of true photorealistic visuals are right here, right now. The forest rendering in the ‘Electric Dreams’ demo is without question, the very definition of photorealistic graphics which surpasses everything we've ever come to expect from videogames in terms of graphical fidelity and visual realism.
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| Sur-real |
This rendering of fully natural, organic environments is for me, the true yardstick of boundary pushing graphical advancements and the sort of multi generational leap that had made me excited for videogame graphics back in the days of Gears of War. And it’s beyond amazing that Unreal Engine 5 has managed to repeat that, making me get excited about Videogame graphics all over again, after a very long time. This is not just some amped up lighting, shadows and reflections that we’ve been seeing in ray-traced titles, this is real technological lightyears leap forward, the kind that totally redefines what we had even thought to be possible from Videogames.
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| Welcome to the Future...of Videogame Graphics |
And taking into account of the sheer number of games that have been powered by Unreal 3 since it came out, Unreal engine 5 could very well end up working under-the-hood of tons and tons of titles across all genres in the coming years, which would be phenomenal for Videogames in general. So without further ado, check out how UE5 looks right now and how games in the very near future could potentially look.
Of course, consumer level hardware possibly needs a few generations of upgrade, but I believe it'd definitely happen within the next 3-4 years time, as Software sells Hardware. So to sum it all up in as few words as possible, the future of Videogames has never
looked better, or more promising, Amen.
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