Why are video games always so scaled down? - Games

APB is pretty close to that, have fun with 20 Gigs of hardrive space being consumed.

Interesting thing to think about. A realistic-scaled world would be quite immersive.

[QUOTE=MutantBadger;22765483]We have the technology to make Octo-Cores, and you're worried about CPUs? The technology is there, the real problem is making it affordable.[/QUOTE] Yea but you can't put that into a game you want to market to people with average computers.

Exactly, which is why the main problem is making this all affordable.

We have the tech to do it, and the man power (1 person can make a full to-scale city), we can use LOD, and only have 40 - 60 AI people walking the streets at once, as soon as you get to far away or obscured by a building they disappear. as for the actual buildings and props we can use LOD so the further away they are the more basic and less detailed they become

Infinity: The Quest For Earth is supposed to be realistically scaled... A realistically scaled galaxy, that is.

[QUOTE=MutantBadger;22765483]We have the technology to make Octo-Cores, and you're worried about CPUs? The technology is there, the real problem is making it affordable.[/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure most games are incapable of handling multi core. I have a quad core and I usually don't get the full benefits of that. [b]edit:[/b] Unless the makers of games in the future begin to add multicore support to all of their games.

Evocity is pretty nice.

[QUOTE=imaguy;22765073]You mean compare oblivion to morrowind. Most of oblivion's land was procedurally generated, while all of morrowind was hand crafted.[/QUOTE] Nope, both were handcrafted.

[QUOTE=MutantBadger;22765265]Just wish there were cliffs.[/QUOTE] If cliffs exist, then Cliff racers must also exist by extension. BIG no-no.

I don't remember the other games, but the most recent one that creates a believable illusion of big world (but outside the map) is splinter cell conviction. By the Washington monument to be precise. If you played that part, you will understand me. When I'm at the monument, everything feels so big...

God of war 3?

[QUOTE=RanDMC;22764712]Go ahead and give me boxes, but MW2 did a pretty good job of it in the DC levels[/QUOTE] This is true. It really feels like everything is truly as huge as in reality.

The monitor is small, that is.

Play Oblivion and turn off autorun. That's a good example of scale, but you'll spend literally an hour walking from Imperial to somewhere like Bruma [editline]11:18AM[/editline] In Grand Theft Auto IV they did a really ingenius thing, when you look up it distorts the camera giving you that sense of vertigo. When you look up at skyscrapers above you it really feels like they're massive and looming over you

[QUOTE=Nyaos;22776049]Play Oblivion and turn off autorun. That's a good example of scale, but you'll spend literally an hour walking from Imperial to somewhere like Bruma [/QUOTE] Actually a remember seeing a post about someone who turned off the fog in Oblivion and all the towns looked ludicrously close together

[QUOTE=TBleader;22764430]Current CPUs cannot handle a full city to scale with everything in it. In a few years things will get better as our advances in computing.[/QUOTE] are you dumb? You can just scale down the player to make everything bigger. Main problem i think is that people don't like realism in games. They don't want to go slow.

[QUOTE=sami-pso;22776515]are you dumb? You can just scale down the player to make everything bigger. Main problem i think is that people don't like realism in games. They don't want to go slow.[/QUOTE] And you obviously don't know how the games are actually programmed. Scale is irrelevant. It's the amount of detail. If you're willing to put up with Doom-level graphics, a modern gaming PC could probably handle a full planet, at full scale. If you require Half-Life graphics, you might have to cut it down to a continent. By the time you reach modern graphics, you'll be simulating a small city, but it'll take up twenty gigabytes of disc space.

[QUOTE=MutantBadger;22766041]Exactly, which is why the main problem is making this all affordable.[/QUOTE] No, the main problem is letting the cores easily 'talk' and transfer information between each other accurately and quickly. Developers have huge problems getting even 4 cores to each take load and communicate. 8 is just too much power to handle right now. That's why quad cores get a processing boost, but it's nowhere near their potential.

Daggerfall was to scale..... I heard it took like 2 days to walk from one side of the map to the other without fast travel. Of course, lots of things are generated and copy and pasted. Still amazing to see that in a game though, I don't think it holds up as a fun game anymore though.

[QUOTE=Slasha00;22776844]No, the main problem is letting the cores easily 'talk' and transfer information between each other accurately and quickly. Developers have huge problems getting even 4 cores to each take load and communicate. 8 is just too much power to handle right now. That's why quad cores get a processing boost, but it's nowhere near their potential.[/QUOTE] The main problem is being able to pay enough developers for a full-detail environment. The multicore stuff is a secondary problem. Going from 4 to 8 cores is not difficult. It's that most game engines are fundamentally single-core in design, and breaking out of that is extremely difficult. Sure, most engines are somewhat multithreaded now, but that's done by assigning one task to each core, instead of setting up a proper GCD-type system. Multicore is not really necessary to process a high-detail city. Disk latency would matter more, as would amount of memory, and the power of the GPU.

[QUOTE=gman003-main;22777033]The main problem is being able to pay enough developers for a full-detail environment. The multicore stuff is a secondary problem. Going from 4 to 8 cores is not difficult. It's that most game engines are fundamentally single-core in design, and breaking out of that is extremely difficult. Sure, most engines are somewhat multithreaded now, but that's done by assigning one task to each core, instead of setting up a proper GCD-type system. Multicore is not really necessary to process a high-detail city. Disk latency would matter more, as would amount of memory, and the power of the GPU.[/QUOTE] If we're talking about rendering a highly-detailed city yeah, all of that matters more. But some people were talking about having a 'fully dynamic city'(which is a pretty vague term) and I was speaking for that.

I hope Crysis 2 does a good job at creating a larger city.

[QUOTE=Master117;22764733]At one point, large environments get annoying because you spend a large amount of time going from point A to point B and not enough time fighting.[/QUOTE] oh god operation flashpoint... half the missions were spent driving a truck and if you crashed you had to restart. I spent half an hour driving a truck only to crash when I got bored and played around with the truck a bit. Then it was the same thing over and over again.

[QUOTE=rakkar;22775036]Infinity: The Quest For Earth is supposed to be realistically scaled... A realistically scaled galaxy, that is.[/QUOTE] It takes eighty years to get to the next star system?

[QUOTE=gman003-main;22776626]And you obviously don't know how the games are actually programmed. Scale is irrelevant. It's the amount of detail. If you're willing to put up with Doom-level graphics, a modern gaming PC could probably handle a full planet, at full scale. If you require Half-Life graphics, you might have to cut it down to a continent. By the time you reach modern graphics, you'll be simulating a small city, but it'll take up twenty gigabytes of disc space.[/QUOTE] Did you even read the OP? [quote]It's a matter of scale. I cannot think of a single video-game in recent memory that actually has real, believable buildings, cities, streets, towns, etc. Either your moving way to fast, everything is way to small and scrunched together, or a combination of both.[/quote] I don't claim to know how games are programmed. And i fail to believe you do.

[QUOTE=PunchedInFac;22775695]If cliffs exist, then Cliff racers must also exist by extension. BIG no-no.[/QUOTE]Cliff-Racers are only found in Morrowind because of it's high-humidity climate.

[QUOTE=Ncccookiees;22775379]Evocity is pretty nice.[/QUOTE] Evo City 2 is fairly realistic. Evo City 1, not so much.

[QUOTE=Ban Evasion Alt;22778266]It takes eighty years to get to the next star system?[/QUOTE] FTL travel :buddy:

You're all wrong. It's completely a matter of perspective. What looks good to the audience. Developers don't always compare sizes and inches correctly so the perspective gets distorted. Look at the difference between HL2 and TF2. HL2 sticks very closely to the idea of proportion, TF2 certainly does not.