Dated Graphics and Effects?

[LostInTheMist]

So I recently watched a spate of movies and TV shows from the 80s and 90s (these were cutting edge, big budget productions; Star Trek TNG, Armageddon, etc.), and I was thinking... do you think that people in 25-30 years will think that the modern special effects will look as cheesy and dated as effects from the 80s and 90s? Or do you think we've kind a hit a point of diminishing returns, like processor speed, which for a while was doubling every year, and now... while things are getting faster, it's at a much more sedate rate.

Do you think that computer animation can't get much better than it already is? This isn't a question on AI or AI Art. I'm talking really about special effects in movies and television. Already, with most science fiction, it's almost impossible to tell the ships (space or navy) we see from real, actual ships, down to welds and rivets and hull sections, patches, seams, etc. How much better can things get? What about other storts of effects?

[JohnnyJohn21]

I've been thinking about this as well, but mostly about videogames. CGI in movies works too, I guess. It really seems like graphical technology has gotten stuck, I mean, can you even imagine something that looks even more realistic than the newest big budget games and movies? Look at the GTA VI trailer. The landscapes sometimes look more realistic than real life does. But sure, people back then, when games could run on potatoes, also said the realism was unbelievable. Hell, I remember myself at a young age playing on my console and being mesmerized by the characters living inside my fat TV. We didn't think it could get better, but it did. So why wouldn't it get better in the future?

[RperSeeker69]

I feel like time is sort of a double edged sword as for instance the graphics have improved but original ideas are hard to come by as there all these reboots and remakes. Perhaps the graphics are dated for a lot of things now in the past like playing Final Fantasy 7 or like the original Super Mario Bros but the excitement and the hype of those were in top form. 

Nowadays people don't exactly revisit a lot of the older stuff because the graphics or maybe because the storytelling isn't exactly...ok it hasn't aged well is what I am getting at. Still the graphics were  ahead of its time, like look at the original Star Fox on the SNES for example and the polygonal shapes and even movies that experimented with stuff ahead of its time. Think of like the sand worms in Dune in the original film compared to how they are done now. I suppose for many an argument comes up that green screen was used when needed but people who watch anything at Disney they are treated to a constant green screen but it packs a punch with the graphics and the sound quality and you just immerse yourself in that dark movie theater.

I can see the older stuff or play the older stuff and guess I am sort of between the two ages of cinema and video games. Suffice to say video games back then were not made for kids and not because of the content...because they were made hard.

[cincinnatus]

So I think I need to separate my thoughts on this subject into two sections: one for cinema (and television), and one for computer games.

First, games: I think you can make a great game without having hyper realistic graphics, as long as the game play is engaging and memorable.  When I was a kid, I would spend inordinate amounts of time playing Carriers at War, Phantasie, or Pool of Radiance.  And that was on an Apple IIc with a 7 inch green and black screen.  I still consider Tie Fighter from 1994 one of my favorite computer games, and I played the shit out of Wing Commander.  That's not to say that modern AAAA titles aren't as immersive; Cyberpunk 2077 looks gorgeous.  But you can have a game with cutting edge graphics and beautiful visuals that suck ass as a game.

Now, the reason why I separated Cinema and TV out is that before Jurassic Park, effects were practical.  You had something physical you to film, like a model or puppet or a guy in a suit.  Yes there were exceptions and some films that were ahead of their time (Tron, the Last Starfighter), but Jurassic Park was the turning point.  There's a documentary on Disney+ about the history of ILM, and they were talking about the making of JP.  Phil Tippett had rod puppets for all the major dino players made and was film test footage and blocking shots, when a couple of guys from the basement showed off what they had done in a computer--less than a minute of the T-Rex walking, and Steven Speilberg said "we're using computers".

Phil Tippett was the man for stop motion and go motion.  The chess scene in Star Wars, the AT-ATs in Empire, the ED-209 in Robocop, Dragonslayer...all him.  And to watch him relate how he felt at that moment...he felt his life was over.  Luckily, he's still around...teaching computer geeks how to make animals move realistically.

There’s nothing wrong with modern films, but you need to be aware of that change…it’s fine to compare Frank Herbert’s sand worms to the most recent ones, but keep in mind that you could actually touch Frank’s worms. 

Another thing that I learned…the sequel trilogy for Star Wars.  One scene that catches in my craw is the Falcon chase scene in The Force Awakens, through the crashed SSD.  It never really sat well with me, and later I learned it was because they did things with the CGI they couldn’t do practically.  The Falcon comes very close to the camera, and then zooms into the distance.  Turns out SW scenes with ships have a look and feel, that was dictated by what they could and could not do with the motion control and models on rods in front of blue screens.  When they got fancy…my monkey brain was like “that don’t look right”.

[LostInTheMist]

On games, graphics have never mattered to me very much at all. 

I still play a couple of games from the 1990s, including the Shareware game "Escape Velocity" and its "sequel" called "Escape Velocity: Override." Last time I played one of them was less than 24 hours ago. I learned how to build/install an OS9 emulator on my (modern M1 chip) computer SPECIFICALLY to play those games. (They were Mac-only games.) 

Escape Velocity: Nova works on both Mac and PC (although not on Mac any more, and anyway, the company went belly-up) and have plug-ins of both games, but the plug-ins for the original games only work on the original games.

Anyway, the graphics and technology are both extremely low. And yet, I play them, sometimes for hours at a time, sometimes for days in a row, because graphics don't matter to me... at all. As long as the game is fun, I don't care what it looks like. I'd love Stardew Valley if it were 8-bit, or if it were photo-realistic, so long as it was exactly the same as it is.

I play a lot of Grand Strategy games. The focus isn't really on sound or graphics, though the maps are pretty and the music is good (at least, the GSG from Paradox have pretty maps and good music.) 

I don't play First-Person Shooters. The game with the best graphics I have played of late is Baldur's Gate 3, but even there.... I don't particularly care about the graphics. I'm actually glad that a lot of indie games have stopped trying to compete with AAA studios, and pixelated graphics are experiencing a kind of retro-revolution.

Just like with a movie, if it's not a good movie, it doesn't matter what it looks like, but even more so with games. If the game is crap, I don't care what it looks like.

[The Old Wolf]

As a gamer I want cutting edge graphics WITH good gameplay because it can be done, I dont play FPS for the most part,
still dont have BG3 yet either but from what Im hearing about BG3 thats the kinda stuff Im interested in SW:KOTOR was great, the original Resident Evil, Dragon Warrior, all the Black Isle stuff that was killer game,graphics and story. I tried the remake of FF7 and did not care for it , it looked good but it just did not grab me like the original..

As for movies look at lawnmower man directors cut, they were tryin to do things they could not, or go farther back to the superman TV series and look at the flying from back then

so yeah both will get better 

[LostInTheMist]

As a gamer I want cutting edge graphics WITH good gameplay because it can be done, I dont play FPS for the most part,
still dont have BG3 yet either but from what Im hearing about BG3 thats the kinda stuff Im interested in SW:KOTOR was great, the original Resident Evil, Dragon Warrior, all the Black Isle stuff that was killer game,graphics and story. I tried the remake of FF7 and did not care for it , it looked good but it just did not grab me like the original..

As for movies look at lawnmower man directors cut, they were tryin to do things they could not, or go farther back to the superman TV series and look at the flying from back then

so yeah both will get better

I never considered KOTOR as top-of-the-line as far as Graphics went. I'll admit that I didn't get an Xbox until about a year after KOTOR came out (a few weeks before KOTOR 2 came out) and I didn't REALLY play KOTOR for almost a year afterwards. School got busy; I was in high school and I wound up biting off more than I could chew that year. It was a year that made every year at Uni seem easy by comparison, but it was definitely a year from hell. So by the time I finally got to really play KOTOR, it was nearly two years out-of-date, and that was back when graphical advancements were moving at an unbelievable pace.

Since then, I've completed it four or five times, including every single side quest and companion quest on every play through.

[The Old Wolf]

I never considered KOTOR as top-of-the-line as far as Graphics went. I'll admit that I didn't get an Xbox until about a year after KOTOR came out (a few weeks before KOTOR 2 came out) and I didn't REALLY play KOTOR for almost a year afterwards. School got busy; I was in high school and I wound up biting off more than I could chew that year. It was a year that made every year at Uni seem easy by comparison, but it was definitely a year from hell. So by the time I finally got to really play KOTOR, it was nearly two years out-of-date, and that was back when graphical advancements were moving at an unbelievable pace.

Since then, I've completed it four or five times, including every single side quest and companion quest on every play through.

Kotor was/is an absolute masterpiece of gaming it's the ONLY game I have played through multiple times