Basically, they lost perspective on how amazed an average person would be. Similar to how porn addicts don’t flinch at triple penetration videos, or … you get it. Wish I could come (ooof) up with better analogies.
Yes, even I went “nope, that’s not real enough”.
This looks pretty amazing, I'll give that, but you can still clearly see it's a computer game. A bit better than the last one maybe, but not "can't tell if rendered"-realistic.
> you can still clearly see it's a computer game
I'll give you that, but we are comparing this footage to footage of other video games from the past. Can you name a video game that looks more realistic than this? Maybe some of those realistic racing games I guess, but that is a different type of video game. My point is: currently, this is as close as we get to real-life, no? Sure, it can be better (and it probably will be in the future), but I'd say this ranks pretty high.
> almost can’t believe this is a video game
Hyperbole is fine but it does tend to cause backlash.
It's not trying to look impeccably realistic cinema level CGI, but it's damn impressive given the limitations of a video game, and of gaming hardware.
HN users want to test how true a statement is because when you’re coding a program, any edge cases that prove your code wrong can literally break everything. I think that begins to rub off on how you perceive all kinds of propositional statements in other areas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi_RW2ofkFY&ab_channel=Gamin...
But I think it's quite amazing that we've gotten to the point where people in this thread are pointing out the details which betray that this is not photorealistic, in order to prove that point.
Even a few years ago, we would have been pointing to the small details which do make it seem photorealistic, like volumetric lighting or well done reflections.
In my decades of watching technology, those voices have always said things with the same tone.
I think this is it. When the games are less realistic overall, the mind can still suspend disbelief. And in fact it often does; so low-fi everywhere is all accepted and forgotten.
Who hasn't read a book (or in the HN crowd, also played a text MUD) and become completely lost in the fictional world?
But once we hit that near-perfect, we stop suspending our disbelief (or the bar is raised near the top); so the imperfections which are detectable become jarring.
But if you live in New York, San Francisco or London you would be tired of seeing your city in games. Even games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, supposedly a Nordic setting, it mainly focus on England and the visit to North America is as important as the time that you spend in actual Scandinavian land.
So, some people is not impressed by the settings while others are grateful just by being represented at all.
Rural town in thethe US with dinners and odd gas stations or some Manhattan clone like Max Payne? That's exotic.
Huh? I live in NYC and I don't think I've ever played a game set here. I know vaguely there's a Spider-Man game set here, that I never played, and at least one GTA inspired by but not actually set in NYC.
I'd love to play a game set in NYC that looks this great. It'd be my first time.
Wikipedia has a list [1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_set_in_N...
Very impressive for the time!
We don't improve things by gushing over how great they are already. We improve things by pointing out where improvement is possible. Clearly there are game devs (past, current and future) reading these discussions. Maybe just one can be inspired to solve one of the technical challenges mentioned?
I think it was John Carmack who bemoaned the fact that the video game audience quickly accepts any advancement in graphics as the new status quo for gaming, and complains about any game which doesn't immediately match it.
I think consumers of the medium don't always appreciate the technical achievement which modern AAA video games represent - it's maybe one of the few domains of computing which demands the people working on it to use 100% of the hardware, and to pull tons of dirty tricks to eek out every last bit of performance.
So sometimes it seems the audience attributes something to laziness, just because something is missing they have seen in another game, while what they are seeing is the result of very talented engineers working overtime to deliver a miracle.
This short video looks amazing, specifically because its not state of the art in engine work and current level of tech. Yet you feel like you are there, on one of the canals. Many games these days use better meshes and have higher count of triangles and other techniques yet they don't deliver these emotions to those who visited Amsterdam.
And games were, are and always will be about emotions.
I also like to hear from people involved in these things, who may post a comment or reply about efforts going into solving these challenges. I’ve learned some cool things about Far Cry 2 which I didn’t know about after posting that comment.
Nothing should be above criticism. The Titanic was an amazing achievement for its time but thankfully we have learned from its mistakes and now build better and safer ships as a result. We need both praise and criticism in the world in order to succeed. Whilst it is tempting to “bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone eat and be happy” it does not lead to happiness or successful outcomes in the long term.
To paraphrase Ferris Bueller, we should “stop and look around once in a while, else you might miss it”. We should especially do this after our successes. But nonetheless, the world spins ever onwards and we should aim to improve with every iteration of that spin lest we fall backwards.
Any that often and typically respond negatively and not constructively are usually compensating for a fragile sense of self-worth. Narcissists predictably pretend not to be impressed because they feel threatened by the accomplishments of others. They know they personally could not do better and fear the possibility of failure at their own attempt. They must instead act as if the accomplishments of others are flawed, inconsequential, trivial or meaningless, to feed their ego and inflated sense of self-importance.
And because they are easily offended, perceive any criticism as an affront to their character, they are about to interpret my comment as personal attack and downvote it into oblivion, ironically proving my point. But they better watch out, they better not cry, they better not pout, I'm telling you why, Newton's Second Law of Motion is never broken, and unless they seek diagnosis and corrective treatment, they are only able to cement their own misery by causing misery.
While dissent is of fundamental importance to progress, as nothing would advance if everyone always agreed, those who are consistently negative and somewhat terminally unimpressed reveal far more about themselves with their criticism than what they reveal about the target of their criticism. If criticism is validly supported, this is not what I'm referring to, but instead condemnation, exaggeration, labelling and nitpickery.
Everyone perceives the world differently. What is nitpickery to one person can be the difference between success and a car crash to another.
https://www.essentiallysports.com/greatest-f1-story-when-ayr...
I was trying to use that example to highlight the fact that we don’t know the skills and perceptions of anyone who is posting on Hacker News. One person might say that the immersion is ruined because of the lack of accurate sounds when walking. To the average person that might be nitpicking. For someone who is a sound designer or a musician or someone with a generally heightened auditory sense it could be the difference between immersion and the breaking of the illusion. The same person might even be fine with the previous generation graphics if the sound was spot on. We just don’t know who is commenting on the post and we don’t know how much their internal perceptions differ to our own. To label them nitpickers, narcissists and some of the other unsavoury stuff that is being levelled in this comment section is really unfair. I feel we should try and give charitable interpretations and give everyone the benefit of doubt where possible.
This is arguing an appeal to authority. It doesn't matter what their expertise is, what matters is their claim and whether it is relevant and validly supported. While the OP title claims realism, what they meant were that the graphics are improved and exceptional, leaving the naysaying criticisms along the lines of, "that doesn't look realistic, it has weird artifacts everywhere and the animation is unnatural" more revealing about the observer than what they've observed.
You’ve taken a tweet and you’re now trying to define a narrow window of acceptable discussion about the tweet based on it’s title. How many conversations are you having in real life that stick to such rigid parameters? That’s not how conversation works. This isn’t a formal paper that must be laser focussed on a single topic. It’s a much more relaxed space that allows for discussion of things that may even only be weakly related to the original content. Someone could post a story about their time in Amsterdam with no relation to Call of Duty or video games and I would still consider it valid discussion.
You can’t just just pick and choose that all technical discussion of the topic must now be about the improved graphics and nothing else. You also can’t assume that your interpretation of the title is the correct one or the one the author intended. Doing so is arrogance, which ironically enough, is one of the nine diagnostic criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder according to the DSM-5.
Notwithstanding the contradiction and equivocation, this is an appeal to authority.
> You’ve taken a tweet and you’re now trying to define a narrow window of acceptable discussion about the tweet based on it’s title. How many conversations are you having in real life that stick to such rigid parameters? That’s not how conversation works.
Ad hominem, focused on me for some reason. Straw man, by inaccurately rephrasing my argument in order to attack it. And fallacy of control, apparently a belief that you control definitions of terms and how things work. This was followed by going beyond the scope of our discussion to other discussions you deem valid.
> You can’t just just pick and choose that all technical discussion of the topic must now be about the improved graphics and nothing else. You also can’t assume that your interpretation of the title is the correct one or the one the author intended. Doing so is arrogance, which ironically enough, is one of the nine diagnostic criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder according to the DSM-5.
More control fallacy, straw man, ad hominem, but I believe this also includes the mind-readers fallacy. Apparently I am being scolded for what I secretly believe and my argument has been completely lost to the void. To avoid fallacy, one must ignore the person, focus on their argument without molesting it, avoid attempts to control them or assert what is in their mind can be known. What is said is the realm of valid argument. I did none of these things and my right to my opinion, whether correct or incorrect, is absolute.
If you think something is ad hominem, tell me how you think I have attacked your character. For example, it is not obvious to me how you consider the following sentences to be ad hominem:
> You’ve taken a tweet and you’re now trying to define a narrow window of acceptable discussion about the tweet based on it’s title. How many conversations are you having in real life that stick to such rigid parameters? That’s not how conversation works.
It is impossible to have a debate with you because you’re not engaging in good faith debate. A definition of Good Faith [1]:
GOOD FAITH: A “Good Faith” argument or discussion is one in which both parties agree on the terms on which they engage, are honest and respectful of the other person’s dignity, follow generally-accepted norms of social interaction, and genuinely want to hear what the other person thinks and has to say.
So in turn, now I will engage in some bad faith debate. I’ve been through your comment history and you frequently repeat the same tactics, most often on comment threads to do with mental health. Now I’ll use the fallacy argumentum ad populum: many other people have called you out on this boy-who-cried-fallacy strategy and your general lack of good faith argument. Finally, here’s a fallacious appeal to common sense with a nice smattering of ad hominem:
'If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.'
Seriously dude. From your comments, you seem like a clever guy with a wealth of knowledge and a lot to share with the world. Why are you acting this way?
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2020-07/Good_Faith...
Basically, by focusing on the argument alone, comprehending it simply and accurately, ignoring all else, there is less likelihood of going off into fallacy. The argument was in answer to a question, and was simply, paraphrasing, that any that are never impressed, typically always put down, dismiss, belittle, any others' achievement likely do so to compensate for their anxiety of self-worth, and have a fragile ego. The rest of my comment talks about narcissism, by definition; it's not an argument.
To me, this is nonsense. Your definition of ad hominem is way too broad. The sentence was:
You’ve taken a tweet and you’re now trying to define a narrow window of acceptable discussion about the tweet based on it’s title.
From the Wikipedia page:
> Fallacious ad hominem reasoning occurs where the validity of an argument is not based on deduction or syllogism, but on an attribute of the person putting it forward.
The sentence is not based on an attribute of your character. It is stating that your logic is as follows:
1. There exist sets A, B and C.
2. Set A = { a, a, z }
3. Set B = { a, b, y }
4. Set C = { a, c, x }
5. The title of the tweet is “a, z”.
6. Therefore, all discussion must be about Set A.
That however, is both a pain in the arse to read and write so we just say:
You’ve taken a tweet and you’re now trying to define a narrow window of acceptable discussion about the tweet based on it’s title.
Claiming a fallacy and saying I’ve attacked you and not your argument because I’ve used the word “you” is bad faith debating. We don’t have days to sit around writing all our arguments out in formal logic, especially in an online forum.
In my opinion, your straw man definition is accurate but again you’re using it with a scope that is way too broad. You’re using the control fallacy to try and restrict the scope of the debate to the very first point. Any criticisms of the defences you use to defend your original position, or my criticisms of your criticisms of my defences, you are labelling straw men because they are not about the very first point you made. We can’t get back to discussing the original point because we’re disagreeing about our disagreement. This doesn’t make them “straw men”. In order to get back on track the disagreements need to be resolved first.
An analogy might be two archers firing at a target. You hit the target, but I notice that you’ve stepped over the agreed upon line in order to do so. You then say this is a straw man because it’s not about hitting the target. I disagree because the rules of the game are that you need to be behind the line to take the shot. You then claim this is another straw man and that I’m using the control fallacy because I’m stating one of the game rules. Meanwhile you’re guilty of the control fallacy yourself because simply by disagreeing with the rule you’re setting your own rule which is that the rules don’t apply to you.
On to, the mind reading fallacy. You state:
> While the OP title claims realism, what they meant were that the graphics are improved and exceptional
If this isn’t an example of mind reading then I don’t know what is. But I call you out on it and you dismiss it an ad hominem, straw man, and control fallacy.
Finally, to your misapplication of fallacy of authority:
> Clearly this new version of CoD is graphically superior to previous versions, yet the criticism is focused on less than perfect minutia that probably also existed in or was inferior in previous versions.
As far as I can see it, people are debating what matters to them. What matters to you is clearly graphical superiority. If you became visually impaired tomorrow and were playing a game, would you care about the graphical superiority? I highly doubt it. You’d be much more focussed on the sound. Asking to consider other people’s experiences as being valid isn’t an appeal to authority, especially when the discussion thread is filled with subjective experience of a video game. If I’d have said, “you must consider sound of utmost importance because Hans Zimmer said it was the most important thing in video games” it would be an appeal to authority. But I didn’t. I simply stated that people value and perceive different things and will comment based on that and we shouldn’t be labelling them nitpickers, narcissists or haters without first finding out more about how they perceive the world.
No doubt you will dismiss this final argument as ad hominem because it’s got the word “you” in it and because I asked you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes which is irrelevant to the argument apparently. And of course I’ve committed the mind reading fallacy by assuming you wouldn’t care about graphical concerns if you were blind. And of course, according to your definitions, I’m also guilty of the control fallacy and a straw man because this isn’t about your original point but your defence of your point which is apparently above all criticism.
Are you enjoying this style of debate? Or shall we agree to speak like normal human beings again?
Clearly this new version of CoD is graphically superior to previous versions, yet the criticism is focused on less than perfect minutia that probably also existed in or was inferior in previous versions. The graphic realism is better than any previous version of CoD, yet that still isn't good enough for narcissists. Even if it was absolutely perfect in every way, this still would not satisfy them because they are mentally ill and suffering from specific symptoms that cause them anxiety, to feel like nothing they do is good enough, to feel threatened by others' accomplishments. When they dismiss and denigrate they are really focused on their own fragile ego.
It is also rather wild to throw around narcissistic personality disorder diagnoses based on one aspect of behaviour. I’m not a psychologist but I’m pretty sure you’ve got to match several behavioural criteria consistently to warrant such a diagnosis.
>>>>> Why is HN so negative about amazing things?
And as that is my experience also, I shared my theory and supported it. Further, NPD is diagnosed through observation of behavior or reports of behavior, and regardless of NPD diagnosis, any symptom of NPD is necessarily narcissistic. My slim hope is that narcissists will become more mindful of their behavior, recognize that they spread misery, get evaluated, treated, and either be cured or mitigate their disorder below detectability, and narcissism will become extinct, because there are few things in this world that completely and utterly suck as much as narcissism, and it is everywhere.
I'm not sure who made pride popular and decided that it can be harmed, because it is an indulgence. The virtue is the opposite of pride, namely, humility, and in general, virtues are the antitheses of narcissism, beyond humility including charity, modesty, gratitude, temperance, patience, courage, accountability, commitment, courtesy, cooperation, empathy, forgiveness, respect, reliability, sacrifice, sincerity, and so on and so forth. Rather than the Golden Rule, narcissists subscribe to egoism to act only selfishly and in self-interest, as their ego is central to the motivation and goal of their own actions.
This scene in particular is aiming for realism in an everyday scene, and likely relying heavily on photogrammetry (which makes it look even more realistic). But it's far from perfect. And so some may be able to simply appreciate it as a step forward in technical achievement, but for others it's going to be triggering uncanny valley effects. I suspect this may be a driving factor in the negative responses.
If this is the case this is going to be a major bottle-neck for graphics going forward. Even something as small as a character's eyes being in some indescribable way 'off' can trigger uncanny valley effects. So there's a long road ahead to trying to overcome the uncanny valley, but one where each step forward may not be able to be appreciated for the technical progress that is.
Have a look at the Final Fantasy movie. A lot of moviegoers decried the Uncanny Valley, especially regarding Aki, but if you watch it with today's eyes, there is no such effect.
That came out ten years ago! At a glance, this looks like it is using ray tracing, which is a big improvement in rendering.
Gamers and tech forum posters like HNers do this all the time about the things in their wheelhouse that they would say they know a lot about from graphics to React to dev tools to games.
It’s boring and I think it’s a dreadful thing to practice. A better exercise is to try to see the good things in something and appreciate those in light of the trade offs the thing must make.
Anyone can come enumerate the bad things about something.
It's not considered positive to be impressed easily and often, that's similar to how a child acts, which equates with immature for most people. Also, if you are hard to impress then you must have experienced more than those easily impressed. For some it's a way to appear superior with just a simple opinion. Basically arrogant assholes.
The alternative is cynicism but then again that's also sometimes used to seem elite.
E.g. I saw the CoD video, then clicked to see comments. And while my first thoughts were “yeah, this is pretty stunning,” I didn’t have anything else to say.
I wonder if most that agreed also didn’t have much to say? Especially since this wasn’t a “Show HN” where more positive feedback is targeting the author. There’s no one here to give positive (or negative) feedback to, so discussing criticism may be the more interesting discussion?
But I suppose this is pretty amazing tech, too, and there is likely something interesting to discuss there.
Also, basement internet drastically underappreciates the magnitude of effort that goes into creation.
I don't play CoD, but I can appreciate the years of development of work that likely went into this (+ the engine, the libraries, the mocap animations, the sound work, etc).
Is it perfect? No. But it would take an incredibly large and well-funded team a lot of calendar time to produce anything that surpasses it.
So kudos to the entire team at Infinity Ward for making something and shipping!
If you don't have anything to say beyond "yeah it looks awesome", upvote and move on.
I always attributed it to people needing to reaffirm that they are experts. They don’t really care what they are talking about, they just want everybody to hear them contribute. Perhaps it’s because they are defensive about their own skill level and are feeling “imposter syndrome.” Or maybe they are just super egotistical, who knows. Psychology is complicated haha
But like you, I was thinking, is that a video with actors pretending to be computer characters or actually a thing.
If you only want praise I recommend LinkedIn.
Blew my mind!
There's nothing "amazing" about this. Graphics don't make a good game.
In recent years I've been way more impressed by the visual design of highly stylized, anti-realistic games that, instead of simply trying to look like real life, instead create environments with distinct looks that you don't get anywhere else.
It shows that you can get a lot of the way towards people saying ‘wow that looks real’ just by using high def HDR textures and a good environment map. In almost every other respect this render is far from state of the art.
And as you say, if that impresses people then that’s great! The team have discovered the shortcut to where to put in the effort to convince viewers! The goal of this kind of game environment engineering is to create sufficient verisimilitude to have the player suspend disbelief - and this seems to do the trick for a lot of people.
But looked at critically it’s surprising how many ways this engine is producing bad results and yet people are willing to overlook and say they’re blown away by the realism. Maybe the uncanny valley for environments is not as deep as we thought.
I agree it's not an example of massive improvement technically, but I think it's pretty good work that pushes incremental improvements in a forward direction.
Technologies or tricks that enhance it are used. Technical masturbation that's ancillary is eschewed.
In the first CoD game, the illusion shattered instantly when you deviated from the expected path (e.g. linger in an area, backtrack, or take an odd turn).
But that was part of the focus and prioritization of effort... they could have improved that, at the expense of making the main path less stellar. They didn't.
I've gotta admire the focus and feature discipline.
Edit: One of the core things that strikes me from the video (not having seen generations of intervening games) is how far human animation libraries and mocap has come. At some point, they've climbed enough of the opposite wall of the uncanny valley not to have it be obviously wrong. Glad we finally got there.
And other side note, everyone should remember this is a multiplatform release. They don't have the luxury of spec'ing to the latest and greatest hardware from Nvidia and AMD. This has to run on consoles with decent performance and with a minimum of per-platform code rework and optimization.
Something that really struck me when I when I first played Half-Life 2 was how much it all felt like a movie set, where everything was designed to look fantastic along this one narrow path that you're quickly ushered along, but there was absolutely nothing beyond that path. It's all just lovingly detailed facades.
That's the story with all linear AAA games. I think for most players the illusion works great, but I can't help but see the artifice.
It's okay, since this a stylized classic HN insight porn comment.
Calling it an "illusion" is a really dumb take. It reminds me that hardly anyone in this forum reads fiction, and even if you created Ready Player One for them, they'd do exactly what the game designers gave them to do.
Anyway, Call of Duty games have a great variety of levels. "Defend Burger Town" comes to mind as a Modern Warfare 2 (2009) level you could explore pretty freely.
Half Life 2 had open set pieces. Uncharted 4 has possibly the best chase sequence in gaming. It would be so stupid and reductionist to call that an "illusion," just because they have some paths for your car to take.
What do you want? Even the real world expects you to walk and drive along paths. That's just architecture dude. It exists just as often in "open world games" like Red Dead Redemption as it does in "sequence of setpieces" games like Call of Duty.
The only thing that makes it immediately obvious that this is from a game, is the clunky movements from the people. They should really start putting some effort into that.
- the screen space reflections are broken in the left-hand 10% or so of the screen
- early in the clip there is some weird z-buffer error where reflections from the boat’s roof are showing in front of the car windows
- although the water surface has reflections that make it appear not to be flat, its geometry cuts off along the side of the boat in a pure straight line
- there are tearing artifacts a couple of times where we are seeing the top of one frame and the bottom of another (may be a screen recording artifact rather than a rendering one though)
I don’t think these are merely being ‘nit picky’ - these are clear ways in which the render is a long way short of ‘realistic’.
As I say, great modeling and texturing with environmental PBR clearly does a lot of work convincing a viewer a place is ‘real’. But it seems a bit sad to present that in an engine which has such glaring flaws and ignore them. Other engines exist that do this better.
I just watched it again on a bigger screen, and I didn't really notice any of the details you mentioned. It's clear it's a render from the slightly artificial look many things have, which is especially the case for people. But the city scene in general looks absolutely fantastic. If you know games that look more real than this, I'd love to know which.
The human models aren't as convincing, but there's also dozens of them on screen at once, the developers are still bound by what a pc/console can do.
Full of excitement I've opened the comment section for this post and what do I see? The top comments are full of negativity about how the waves in the water don't look right, the sounds of the footsteps are not squelchy and there are artefacts in the rendering.
Why is HN so negative about amazing things? I get that we like to provide constructive criticism, since we are so passionate about technology. But come on guys, this is just spewing hate at the level of some cesspool internet forums I will not name. Be better HN!