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Ultra-Realism in Gaming

gametrailers.com — During his GDC demonstration in 2005, Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios demoed his brainchild: The Room. An experiment dabbling in Hyper realistic surroundings, portals, and incredible definition. Where objects age and books have individual pages.

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  • LordofChaosIori, on 10/12/2007, -135/+15Wow.. and it was able to run on XP... wonder if they have a download for it?
    • asspants, on 10/12/2007, -64/+98what do you mean wow and it was able to run on xp?
      i hope you don't think that the operating system determines the
      awesomeness of the graphics.. because that would be.... stuipd.
    • ImTheDarkcyde, on 10/12/2007, -11/+126"i hope you don't think that the operating system determines the awesomeness of the graphics"

      yeah, not like directX 10 is Vista exclusive or anything
    • adamsucks, on 10/12/2007, -5/+22Unfortunately, according to IGN, it will never be released. :/

      "Even though the portals, physical manipulations, and digital clay could be used to create exciting puzzles that could redefine the Myst genre, The Room is still not a game and will never be released. Hopefully Project Dimitri will make a public appearance soon and incorporate The Room's better ideas though. Rest assured, if it does, we'll report."

      Source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/594/594829p1.html
    • asspants, on 10/12/2007, -196/+7wow i didnt get modded down... let me mock this clown some more then.

      HEY I'M GETTING TIRED OF THE WAY THE GRAFIX LOOK ON WOLFENSTIEN3D
      I BETTER UPGRADE TO WINDOWS VISTA TO MAKE IT LOOK BETTOR!!!!1111ONEONEELEVEN

      and to the other idiot: "dx10 is vista only"
      DX10 is NOT the end ***** all of SDKs.
      It's the hardware jackass. DX10 is simply a HARDWARE ABSTRACTION LAYER
    • adamsucks, on 10/12/2007, -8/+46Dugg down both your posts thanks to that. Welcome to my ***** list.
    • m0laria, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22Yea because I mean, obviously, you can just apt-get install directx10.
    • knightblade2oo4, on 10/12/2007, -1/+35This is like what they were talking about a year before fable came out. Remember all the hype of ultra-realistic open-ended environments?

      I hope the room gets leaked onto a torrent site or something, i'd love to play around with it.
    • ilyag, on 10/12/2007, -28/+11I wish Nintendo gamers (and indeed the Nintendo company itself) were as fascinated and excited about this type of technology and innovation as the rest of us.
    • Atom, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6Forgive me if I've lost faith in old Pete. Going from the whole Fable fiasco to B&W 2 which was a huge step backward from B&W, to being bought by MS. Im skeptical at best, I'll believe it when I play it.
    • rpedro, on 10/12/2007, -24/+1re:ImTheDarkcyde

      Your so inteleiggent, can I be your friend?

      re:adamsucks

      Wohhooooh, your *****!... yeah people should not badmouth holiest of all holy M$ products (aka **DX10** , for those who didn't know; been living under a rock or somethang??!!?), lest they be dugg down by the legion of Microshaft (TM) morons & scriptkiddies on Digg.

      HAHA I LAUGH AT YOUUYUUUU

      p.s. dugg your post down thanks to you being a moron
      p.p.s There's nothing directx can do that OpenGL can't with updated drivers FYI, so asspants is right
    • etnu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7DirectX 10 is just an API. It's just software. As such, it's quite possible (and quite likely), that you'll see APIs that are just as capable on other systems. The PS3 isn't using DirectX. Anything that's in DX10 will wind up in OpenGL in one form or another.
  • GodsHand, on 10/12/2007, -35/+11Could anything be more pointless than this demonstration? Another Molyneux idea destined for mediocrity.
  • XxXKUL, on 10/12/2007, -21/+5Not to mention this happened a year ago
  • Battlecry, on 10/12/2007, -8/+48Shame the guy says it'll never be released.
    • CanceledCzech, on 10/12/2007, -28/+7"The guy"? You mean Peter Molyneux, father of gaming?
    • Brandoskey, on 10/12/2007, -18/+6there is a game coming to steam that uses portal called, what else, portal. also the game Prey uses portals to an awesome effect, you can go through a portal and find yourself on a miniature planet much smaller than you just were all in real time. the mini planet even has its own specific gravity and everything. that game introduced a lot of really cool things imho, stuff i hadn't yet seen in a game at least.
    • spidoman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+60I think the biggest thing that is holding back "Ultra-realism is not the graphics anymore, but control now. I want to be able to walk around easily, I want to be able to jump over something. I want to be able to climb on top of something. If I see a ledge I should be able to grab it. I should be able to use my legs to prop myself up and climb. Despite my awful explanation, I want a more freeform style of movement, not a set style of movement or pre planned climbing objects.
    • kelbear, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Father of gaming?

      He's got some good stuff under his belt but has a big problem with featurecreep. He packs too much in, causing too much to test and too much to balance. Sometimes not all of it has a real purpose in the game. He's a great dreamer and hopefully if he can get some of this stuff working, he'll help drive the industry forward, but as a game developer, his recognition surpasses his record.
    • Ltgeo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10@Spidoman -
      Check out some movies of Assassin's Creed, every architectural object allows u to interact with it just like in real life. You can climb/swing/jump on anything that you could and real life and some.
    • grumbel, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4### I want to be able to walk around easily, I want to be able to jump over something.

      Play some Prince of Persia, SotC, Ico or whatever, for third person stuff the problem as already been solved over and over again. Assassins Creed will again take it a step further. The problem is that FPS developers refuse to even implement the most basic movement, so you are down to that 'jumping cylinder thing' for movement instead of having something that behaves remotely like a human (in most FPS your hero doesn't even use his arms to climb a ladder). Breakdown on XBox is one of the few games that tried to break that trend and implemented some better movement, so you have all the ledge climbing in a FPS game there, pretty cool, even so the perspective can make you a little seasick.

      The problem isn't so much that control is a hard problem, but more that some genre games, especially FPS, refuse to take a look at other genres. Take a bit of Assassins Creed, combine with something The Sims and you have something that should allow you to do almost all the stuff that you ever want to do.
    • lolage, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3@spidoman

      I disagree, I think the bigger factor of how ultra-realism affects game play is whats holding its implementation back; i mean the graphics tech is already there, the research of computer graphics has working stuff now that's around ten years ahead of whats currently being display either on PC or console and that should always be the case.

      Think about it, if you make a first-person-shooter "ultra-realistic", its not going to be quite as much fun as some of the games around today. Get shot once, most likely you'll die or will be heavily disabled and then die a short while later. People just wont buy that kind of game en mass because its just not fun to play and doesn't offer a worthwhile experience for the gamer. You wont be able to carry as much ammo, run quite as fast, jump as high or far, shoot as accurately and so on. Controls as you say are indeed another factor that must be considered, but the affect on game play should be paramount to the development of an exceptional product.
    • grumbel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I don't think the point is to get games that are just realistic, but to create games that have a far greater internal consistency then todays games, i.e. games that follow their own rules and don't butcher them in every second scene (classic example: a guy can jump three meter high, but a tiny piece of police tape provides an impassably barrier or you get shot a dozen times, health pack heals without problem, person gets shot in cutscene, however results in instant death). Games today are full of shortcuts, workarounds and stupid stuff that is simply there because either the CPUs aren't fast enough or because the APIs aren't far enough, so that time constrains limit what the developers can do.

      I think in the future games will be more like things that evolve then things that get created from scratch, so instead of simply painting a dirt texture, the virtual vehicle, might drives through virtual mud and gets dirty all by itself, instead of planting each and every tree, the forest grows itself and stuff like that.
  • Frankie4Fingers, on 10/12/2007, -9/+19It wont be released because it isn't really anything new. Realistic textures and movement has been around for several years now. Make into a game where there is real AI and then it might make money.
    • scratched, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8It could be interesting if they took the engine and made it into a sort of puzzle game. I remember playing a flash game where you're stuck in a room and you have to find a series of objects and solve a bunch of puzzles to get out of the room. The whole game took place in just one room.

      If they took the super realistic rooms that they created there, and turned it into a puzzle game like that, I'd buy it if enough thought was put into it. Perhaps a storyline and a few more rooms, or a bigger room, or perhaps a house. With the level of detail the demo had, it could get very interesting if enough thought was put into it.
  • kjm2664, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2The girls of gaming video was much more entertaining.
  • Easty, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19And if we gamers know anything, it's that Peter Molyneux keeps his promises.

    I can't get angry though. He's got such a lovable face.
  • taybay, on 10/12/2007, -1/+47All you need to watch is the segment about 9/10 of the way through where he makes the 'man' figure. XD
  • ericeman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I understand that Molyneux is overly ambitious and sometimes talks about things that won't get done for another decade or so but it's not like I can complain about his games Black and White is one of my favorites.
  • Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -2/+51If Molyneux is known for anything, it is the fact that he proposes his games as genre-busting, revolutionary masterpieces that feature dozens of things never before seen in gaming.

    The bad part is that his games never deliver on it.
    Black and White 2 was a disaster, it didn't move past what was accomplished in Black and White.

    The Movies was pretty bad. They promised to give you the ability to make your very own machinima movies, but what shipped was a very on-the-rails movie maker with very little customization. You were given a few canned animations, a few static cameras that could not be moved, and a few backdrops and costumes.

    Fable promised to be the ultimate RPG where every action you took sent ripples through the entire universe. What shipped, while it was still a pretty solid game, was nothing near what Molyneux promised.

    So, this is just another example of Molyneux's great powers of hyperbole, but I doubt Lionhead will ever produce something that truly revolutionizes games. They had their time, but I think Lionhead's true innovation ended in the 90s
    • evil-doer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26their innovation died before their first ever game came out in 2001?
    • Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28pardon me, I got Lionhead mixed up with Bullfrog. Molyneux worked for Bullfrog, which produced Dungeon Keeper, Populous, Theme Park and Syndicate. Talk about classics
    • SamKellett, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Bullfrog released some of the funniest damn games ever.
    • JDoggqx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Bullfrog had awesome games.

      Lionhead on the other hand...

      Let's just say I enacted a ban on all Lionhead games in my house after playing Fable. The game was completely open and would be affected by how you acted, as long as it was a good warrior that didn't mind long load screens and a plot on rails. That game convinced me that Lionhead only produces hype.
  • shirosamurai, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Now that's trippy. Too bad we'll probably never see it released :(
  • PopeOfDope, on 10/12/2007, -12/+32Realism is over rated. One of the reasons I like to play video games is to escape reality.
    • Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -5/+22http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF055AD-Game_System.jpg#124
    • Stevethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Realism doesn't stop you to escape reality, it enhances the experience. It's so simple to understand it moron. What would be a greater experience for you, Call of Duty or being in a real WWII battle. We're talking about life altering experiences here and that's what the future of gaming should be with full immersion and stuff.
    • Dustyb, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2That needed to be said, I hate reality TV and I hate ultra realistic games.
    • Stevethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I hate you and your unrealistic games
    • MrSidnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sweet! Another reference to PBF =)
      I check that site everyday
  • Poopoopants, on 10/12/2007, -20/+5Soon the world will be a place where ANYTHING can be done in a virtual world. Beyond moral, legal and physical boundaries.

    This is the first step to total realism, can things be more realistic than real life?
    • Bean945, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16More realistic than real?!?!?!

      What the bloody hell
    • bmson, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8If things become more "real" than "real", is it called abstract
    • grumbel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3### More realistic than real?!?!?!

      Think Alice in Wonderland, the core is real, but you add those funcky walk through the mirror stuff, the 'eat this and grow large' and all that other stuff that goes beyond what you can do in reality.

      The problem with games for a lot of years was that they tried to mimik reality without taking advantage of the cool stuff that goes beyond it, only recently with Portal and Pray there have been games that tried something more then this.
    • IzeasGT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The term is "hyperreality."
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
      Includes Disneyland, plastic Christmas trees, and pr0n.
  • kazem, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10Talk about not getting to the point. That was the most long-winded demo ever.
  • garreh, on 10/12/2007, -13/+4Congrats - You have found the worst video and sound quality I've had streamed to my PC in a long, long time.
  • Damaos, on 10/12/2007, -12/+5I for one am glad that will never be released
  • krazytom, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5This ***** would make Myst a real pain in the ass.

    To get the key you just need to read through all the books in the library and find the page with the video.
    • CanceledCzech, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Myst was a pain in the ass on it's own.
    • Aquinas315, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The image is always on the first page in the linking book. Besides, everyone knows linking books are only descriptors into the larger books with the full descriptions of the worlds.
  • MSTK, on 10/12/2007, -15/+42My idea of Hyper-realism is every molecule is modeled. In fact if you want to go even more detailed, every atom could be modeled. Without going into quantum mechanics, you could in theory represent the the three main sub-atomic particles (electrons and the two quarks), from which almost everything in the world is made.

    It might seem overkill, but you're not going to model every molecule so you can see them. Instead, you're modeling molecules so you can simulate their reactions on a large scale. Need a fire? Don't pull out a fire script and add lights. Instead put some Carbon Molecules in a room full of Oxygen and heat up the carbon. There is no need to create a separate script for the fire. If the carbon molecules are modeled correctly, then they should burst into flames in a natural way.

    If you need to create a liquid, don't create the blob, adjusting viscosity, opacity, etc. Find what the liquid is made of and create a bunch of molecules for it. Drop it in and it'll look real without any extra work.
    Say you have a bowl of vinegar. You wouldn't need to define the ph level with a variable. It is already assigned a ph level because of the amount of Hydrogen Ions in the molecule. The # of hydrogen ions will give it a wealth of whole new properties.
    And drop a spoon of baking soda onto the vinegar. In normal modeling you'd have to write a script that asks if there is any instance of the baking soda object touching a vinegar object, and then create fizz. With this new way, the molecules of baking soda will naturally react with the molecules of vinegar.

    When you shoot a gun in an FPS, all you do is create a bullet (metal, gunpowder). The gun has a piston which strikes the bullet. The force will cause the gunpowder to explode and shoot the bullet out.

    Too bad it'll never happen. The complexity is unnecessary.

    The scary thing is...if you take this even further (down to the subatomic particles) and model, exactly, a human being...then would you have a real living, sentient being on your hands?
    • TheTaoOfBill, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3that's a good way to make a game cost hundreds of dollars a piece.
    • Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14this would require the developers to have immense knowledge of chemistry and physics, and it would make the games entirely too complex to create.
    • namtellum, on 10/12/2007, -25/+12No offense but thats the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
    • v0lrath, on 10/12/2007, -18/+10'The scary thing is...if you take this even further (down to the subatomic particles) and model, exactly, a human being...then would you have a real living, sentient being on your hands?'

      No.
    • DjDimitrious, on 10/12/2007, -8/+8we can only teach computers what we know about the world; computers can't become a world of their own...
    • Shadow503, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10We're calling him crazy, but in 30 years I think he'll be the one laughing.

      Think of what you could do with a machine like that. It's taking years to build that giant particle accelorator. With a system like this they could incorporate the blue prints and have it done in a month.

      Think of what science could be if our only necessary resource was computing power!
    • CanceledCzech, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4Yeah, you'd need to 'make' all of the elements and then program every single possible reaction between them in order to even begin to achieve that. I suggest you look up Hyper-realism up and see what it really is.
    • kelbear, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8No need to model molecules just the resultant behavior. Unless your game has electron microscopes, you won't need it, and even then you can use LOD(Level of Detail) to convert the immediate area into molecules. There is not enough material in the universe to model the universe.

      Science is not reality. What we have is a set of rules that have thus far been true, or have been "true enough". The universe does not do math, so it doesn't need to calculate its own operations. We don't have that luxury and thus we need to explain things with math.

      Our games do need math, and we need such simplifications in order to make the games we have. There are definitely limits.
    • ScottMaximus1, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0My Science, that's a bad idea.
    • amirbd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3It's impossible to simulate the universe on a quantum level of detail. You can't process faster than the universe itself.

      Well, nevermind. It's impossible to simulate the *whole* universe. I suppose you could simulate bits of it.
    • grumbel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Have a look at what LucasArts that with Euphoria engine, while it doesn't try to model molecules, it does try to model and simulate materials. So if there is a chair build out of wood, it will break if you throw stuff against it, if you change its material to steel it will behave totally different. They also went away from the fixed breaking points, so if you throw a steel ball into a wood wall in the lower right, it will splinter in the lower right. The also did a lot of stuff with animation and character behaviour, so that characters will try to keep balance, grab on stuff when they fall and such. Shouldn't be to hard to make stuff out of wood flameable, while other materials not or less, if they havn't already done it. Its really the next logical step after we now had simple rigid body physic engines for a few years.
    • Flamekebab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I wish this was possible.

      One day perhaps. It'd certainly be a sight to see.

      What's with all the naysayers today?
    • varaon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 liter of space can perform at most 1051 operations per second on at most 1031 bits of information"
      -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zfs#Capacity

      It seems to me that if you're going to model every single subatomic particle, according to this, you'd need a supercomputer bigger than the virtual physical size of the environment being modeled!

      I love the idea of true virtual physics though, and I'm sure it'd make tons of chemists and physicists squeal with joy.
    • varaon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sorry for double post but to clarify that's 10^51 and 10^31.
    • Battlecry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That, sir, is a fascinating theory and I am glad to have read it.
    • knutert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@grumbel

      Actually, modeling exactly how wood reacts to fire is an immensely difficult task, which currently thousands of researchers are working on.
    • bennybertow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, imaging that kinda realism... I could simulate eating, I could simulate a walk in the park, lighting a camp fire and making some marshmellows... Experiencing the most realistic graphics (of course without the need for a monitor). And with best physics ever. All in absolute HD... as high a resolution as your eye can see. And the full threedimensional sound... And the movement! You won't need a mouse or pointer or remote - you just interact with your bare hands! And you will even be able to smell stuff, and feel it by touching...

      Yeah, that'd be awesome.
  • culbeda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If this type of "hyper realistic" detail IS ever brought to gaming, there will likely be a whole new market for clearinghouses of virtual objects (complex models, textures, mass and friction information, ability to perform basic aging, etc.) for the gaming industry. Imaging picking out virtual furniture, books, kitchen utensils, electronic components, etc. out of a massive virtual library and apply them to different 3D engines, etc.

    The computer hardware isn't that far away from being able to handle it. The industry, OTOH, still seems to be focused on trying to recreate the wheel for every game.

    • junk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3With development time and costs skyrocketing I'm surprised this is not happening already.
  • Jarasmen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5And how the hell am I supposed to run this game? My pc would rather stab itself than render that level of detail.
  • dugon666, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1is this a game, or just like a prototype thing? are they using it just to show that "this is the future of what our games will be"?

    ...if it explains it in the video, i have no sound.
    • adamsucks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's more or less a demonstration of what can be done. It talks about how everything in the environment reacts to age. Oranges will grow, die, then shrivel up. Books have individual pages.
  • VertigoOne, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6Ugh. All talk. If the table is made out of individual wood grains, put up or shut up. Let's see it. Let's see the individual pages in those books. Nope.. He just throws crap around in the usual physics simulation way. Just the same old shaders (probably with a 'time' parameter that makes them turn a bit 'grey' or someting equally as boring.)
    • ScottMaximus1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Molyneux is notorious for this kind of hyperbole.
  • Thezeppelin62, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thats awesome
  • ajzahir, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14i don't know if anyone posted this already but if you liked the portal idea........check this out

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdo0npuzWeA
    • markthegoth, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3god THAT looks amazing!
    • CanceledCzech, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Yeah, can't wait for Half-Life: Episode 2. That comes bundled with it, along with Team Fortress 2.
    • MoonZ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1WOW ! I love that concept !! Thanks for the comment !
  • wanker69, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This guy is on some good drugs. I want some. wtf?
  • beaumont911, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yes, we all know Peter Molyneux exaggerates certain things, but you have to admit, he has some pretty cool and revolutionary ideas.
    • beatbox32, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Well *****, I have tons of ideas about flying cars and monkeys with 10 pairs of titties, but no one is singing my praises!
  • neoian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6i want to play that so bad. even if it is a demo. i love physics in games
  • nikoniko, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Ultra-realism? Because in reality we all have magic portals in our rooms?
    • 00011000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2it's called Hyper-realism... AKA... beyond realistic
  • ajzahir, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Valve's Portal will be coming out bundled with Half-life 2 Episode 2 summer 2007
  • veggiemoore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This made me think of the simulation game Ender played in 'Ender's Game,' where you kill the giant and the kids turn into wolves.
  • Carlsen, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Peter Molyneux is -the- god of games. Darn I loved populos.
    • Cheeseness, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Dude, Wright is -the- god of games.
      Molyneux is a rocket, but I think maybe he's made some questionable sacrifices on a commercial level (not that Wright hasn't, but at least his games still manage to come somewhere close to his original vision).
  • grachi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1the portal stuff with the orange and the beam was truly awesome.

    How the orange got bigger and kept its texture and everything was the coolest thing to watch.
  • xmuzik, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Games like Resident Evil, Castlevania, Final Fantasy or The Legend Of Zelda could really benefit from some of the stuff shown in that video
  • jnosanov, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Molyneux is talking about bringing chaos to games. This would be a very interesting effect: imagine an RPG where the world ages as you progress. That combined with Spore-like procedural asset generation and animation would make for a game, or experience, almost unimaginable today. This does not mean it would be fun, of course, just new.
  • rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9The problem with tech-centric game development is that the stories told and the experienced offered are gorgeous but vacuous, promising but empty. Peter is a genius of technical design, but he spent so much time on the technology of Black & White he forgot to actually make it fun to play.

    This is the same problem that plagued George Lucas in his latest films - so obsessed with the technology that he left out the soul.

    Can you imagine Sidney Lumet or Steven Spielberg or even Peter Jackson, who is certainly CG-aware, giving a keynote lecture at a film industry gathering all about the latest lens or camera-dolly he developed? And have that be virtually ALL he and other presenters and attendees talked about?

    As long as games are all about "wow, check out these graphics", they will fail to live up to their potential. Lord of the Rings subordinated FX to story - and great stories were told even in the most primitive days of movie-making technology - or before motion pictures altogether. Shakespeare didn't need ILM to endure.

    Besides, products that depend on today's latest graphics just end up looking dated and obsolete tomorrow. It's a losing proposition. Stories (and games) that move people survive forever.

    Molineux is capable of so much more, he is one of the more intellectual and broadly educated people in the industry; I just hope one day he outgrows the technical fascination and starts making games that change our world.

    Technology in the service of story, in the service of experience, in the service of transcendence, that should be the motto of game design, not technology in the service of spectacle.
    • cvp1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2George Lucas has always had that problem. The difference for the original trilogy was that he had actors that could pick up the slack. You're definitely right though... technology is there to make the story happen.
  • daxsymbiont, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2that guy is deep into techno-bubble and buzzwords.

    what we see is high quality ragdoll physics.

    nothing unheard of.
    • sammysnake, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Things he discussed:

      1) It was hard to see from the poor quality but textures in the rooms when you zoom in become more detailed rather than the conventional method of getting more pixelated.
      2) He did not demonstrate object aging but it is a somewhat new concept.
      3) Portals giving rooms the ability to mess with reality. Portals can create pathways into other rooms or the same room that defy reality.
      4) Ability to construct objects from within the game itself.

      They are only buzz words because you had no idea what he was talking about...
    • daxsymbiont, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1and you obviously have no idea about physics engines development to be so excited about those aspects.

      besides, who are you to say i have no idea about those aspects, you are a telepath too?
  • blurrie, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2kinda pointless. if you ask me.
    we all know games are getting realistic. just play half life 2.
    this was a waste of a front page story
    • sammysnake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2These are concepts go way beyond Half-Life 2.. the main two things HL2 brought was ragdoll physics and HDR. This video has technology that progresses much further than HL2.

      Besides this video wasn't even directed at gamers it was directed at game developers. You are mistaken when you think you were the target audience.. this is probably why you think it is pointless.
    • Gizza, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"this was a waste of a front page story"

      do we have a limited supply?!?
  • Karted, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2That was very awesome.
  • knodi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love sandbox games. Its like giving box legos to a little kid. I really hope to see something like this released just to play around with.
  • shadydentist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0The portal stuff was very cool. I would love to see some of that incorporated into a game, what with the size changing and stuff
  • Jowe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2wow that looks really cool, Peter Molyneux is great! His games are always really innovative.
  • dajebus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Sounds awesome but what's a "rhume"?
  • opiv421, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0zomg garys mod
  • manicdvln, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Looks like a perverted Myst demo. A game like this would be great on the Wii, a more simplistic version of this is Elebits that just came out for the Wii.
  • dongcha9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I hope that they change the Music because I had to watch In the Mood For Love in my film class a bunch of times and that song keeps repeating....i can't possibly listen to that song one more time
  • R2C13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Neat, but chances are the details provided by this engine would not be noticed by 90% of the gamers. And those looking for extra performance will just turn down the detail levels as far as possible. So what's the point?
  • SynergyCell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can't even tell what the game looks like. The video quality is HORRIBLE.
  • DRTED, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I can't wait till they come out with a game that allows you actually step inside the T.V., leaving your reality and entering one inside the T.V. Inside you will be able to control the nintendo wiimote, xbox 360 (backwards compatability), Playstation One and Two (backwards compatability) and also allow you to be super mario, founder of wiination, the wiimote, and backwards compatability.
  • funkywood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0All you need is the physics engine and an interface for amateurs to create their own 'wonderlands' and you'd have something worth having.

    It won't make a brilliant game but just think of Second Life with portals and that amount of realism...
  • bluespoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3hi guys. I was one of the 3 main developers on this project - coding the graphics. I'm afraid I haven't read all the comments here but a few notes - and I believe this is all fairly self evident from the video so I'm not giving anything new away here-
    the room runs on just about any dx9+ graphics card, it mainly benefits visually from not being hampered by needing to support old graphics cards. bear in mind this was early 2005. I'm sure dx10 could do better but TBH it's not really the api that makes the difference.

    I'm no longer at lionhead (bizarrely that video is from nearly 2 years ago! gdc was in march 05 and the build shown was built some time around jan 05 - not sure why it got digg'ed now. but cool anyway) but I am sure some bits and bobs of the room will make it into other lionhead projects, they have some incredibly talented people there, the fable engine team is just to die for :) I'm not really going to enter into any will wright vs peter debate but I've worked with/for peter for many years and learnt a huge amount from him, he's a very talented person, and generous/intelligent/etc at least in my experience. it's tempting when you're excited about any project you're working on to talk about it (to the press or anyone) and then it's hard when things don't live up to your own expectations. developing games is hard :)

    anyway, glad you guys liked the room video. I doubt it will ever see the light of day, in the form shown here, guess that's down to peter/lionhead/microsoft. I was very proud to have worked on it with some other incredibly talented guys - dave smith (portals & physics) and mark healey (the art), with support from various people at LH not least kareem ettouney (concept art) and peter m for actually believing in the project.

    by the way the visual style is inspired loosely by a film that... ah, I'll leave you to guess which one :)

    finally on the portals side, that was dave's work. we happened to meet the valve portal people at that gdc presentation too, they came up to us and said 'heywe're working on a portal game'. they weren't at valve then but they got snapped up :) anyway, as you can see in the vid,, dave's implementation of portals is very cool, it correctly works out the forces acting on the different bits of an object as it passes thru (any number of) portals, so you can get interesting buoyancy effects, also objects resting on each other, and also supporting different scales which I haven't seen elsewhere. I worked quite hard so that light and shadows correctly flows through the portals, that is you can see shafts of light if you look carefully flowing through the portals between scenes, with correct shadowing.
    finally: pimp time. dave, mark, kareem and I now work at our new development studio, on PS3. and we're hiring. end of pimp :) www.mediamolecule.com
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