What single improvement are you most looking forward to for next-gen?

Is next-gen here yet??

  • Animation

    Votes: 4 25.0%
  • Physics

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • Framerates

    Votes: 5 31.3%
  • Load Times/Streaming

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • Ray-Tracing

    Votes: 4 25.0%
  • Textures

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    16

The Living Tribunal

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The spaces between realities!
Better Animation: With a massive improvement in CPU budget the next-gen consoles will see a boost in animations. More fluid and 'life-like' animations. The days of Mass Effect: Andromeda launch glitches will hopefully be a thing of the past.

iu



Better Physics: Another area to benefit from the massive CPU upgrade will be physics. Better cloth simulation, better particle reactions, realistic light calculations, water simulation. In game physics will see a large boost. Goat Simulator 5 here we come!

iu


Better Framerates: CPU boost = better framerates! More 60fps games and even faster frames! The increase in fluidity will make the experience even more immersive.

iu


Faster Loading/Better Streaming of assets: SSDs/NVME drives in next gen consoles will seamlessly drop you into worlds and pull you out without hitching and loading. Bigger games will be the main benefit. The next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games should be showcase titles for this improvement.

iu


Ray-Tracing: Realistic Light simulation that is a step above global illumination and static light sources. Probably the most intensive of all these computationally speaking, but if implemented right will (and already is) a game changer to how video games can look.

iu


Texture details/higher resolution assets: More realistic looking characters with scars, moles, pores. Brick walls that you could strike a match on. Buildings that look truly old and worn down...etc. The memory budget will allow far more and better looking assets.

iu


What are you most excited for? What was the biggest issue for you in this current generation in regards to performance/realism/etc? What issue do you expect to be completely eliminated when it comes to next-gen games?
 
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I feel like we're due for better animation and physics. PC and consoles have been chasing the high resolution and/or high frame rates for what feels like forever. IMO the physics and animation departments have taken a backseat for far too long and are due an evolution.

I would love if a game could in real time pull off what Crackdown 3's physics was supposed to be while having Sea of Thieves water physics/animation and having the graphical fidelity of Ryse.
 
everything as a cohesive whole and locked...animation/lighting has been great since the 360/ps3 era. Textures has evolved but nothing revolutionary. Loading times and 4K will be neat.... but ray tracing will be a sight to see and hear, I would love to see devs use it in 30/60 FPS titles, 30 preferably (because ya gotta see where you can start and do)
 
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Framerates #1 for sure, but load times are up there too. There's nothing more annoying than having a half hour to game and having to spend minutes waiting for a game to load.

Framerates are always big for me. The difference playing Destiny 2 on a PC vs a console is just huge. I mean, can you play at 30fps? Sure, but the game is so much better with a smooth 60.
 
SSD which they should have had 5 years ago. Welcome to the 21st century. I would say framerates, but after two generations now that should have had solid framerates we're still getting garbage.
 
SSD which they should have had 5 years ago. Welcome to the 21st century. I would say framerates, but after two generations now that should have had solid framerates we're still getting garbage.

Didn't then even go with 5400 rpm over even faster non-ssd drives? I know my PC does not have an SSD internal but it doesn't take nearly as long to load as my consoles. They really went light on the hard drives.
 
Didn't then even go with 5400 rpm over even faster non-ssd drives? I know my PC does not have an SSD internal but it doesn't take nearly as long to load as my consoles. They really went light on the hard drives.
Not sure but it wouldn't surprise me.
 
everything as a cohesive whole and locked...animation/lighting has been great since the 360/ps3 era. Textures has evolved but nothing revolutionary. Loading times and 4K will be neat.... but ray tracing will be a sight to see and hear, I would love to see devs use it in 30/60 FPS titles, 30 preferably (because ya gotta see where you can start and do)
Gotta disagree there. Textures/Shaders have absolutely been revolutionized since PS360 Era. We went from Normal maps to PBR. You can argue that they started some PBR at the end of last Gen, but it was rudamentary. Resolution is still higher, and the way Shaders can be mixed and manipulated is huge.

Hair saw a big boost this gen too. There have also been some substantial advancements in animation and animation blending as well as AI driven animation over the generation too. It's not perfected, and can be wonky, but this often comes down to time and money. Now, GTA was always more advanced in this regard even last gen, but Studios like DiCE, UbiSoft, Epic (UNREAL), Naughty Dog, ETC, have all been moving this area forward.

I wanted to pick all of the above, lol, But I think Physics will have a huge impact if we can get back to pushing the envelope like they were starting to do last gen.

Raytracing (even if it's Just GI implementation) will have a huge impact on visuals. Everything should have much more depth with the way shadows collect, and hybrid solutions with raytracing and SSR will be commonplace, I bet.

Asset streaming will be huge, I think. It'll get us better draw distance on small details and quick loading....

I'm super stoked about this coming gen, and I wasn't expecting to be this time last year...
 
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I feel like we're due for better animation and physics. PC and consoles have been chasing the high resolution and/or high frame rates for what feels like forever. IMO the physics and animation departments have taken a backseat for far too long and are due an evolution.

I would love if a game could in real time pull off what Crackdown 3's physics was supposed to be while having Sea of Thieves water physics/animation and having the graphical fidelity of Ryse.

Yeah for sure, it doesn't matter how good you get a character model to look if the immersion is broken once you see them move, honestly I like the way Rockstar animates their characters using physics but it takes too much of the control away. I'd love to see that expanded but also make it so control inputs can instantly interrupt an animation so you feel like you have total control.
 
I'll just make a short list, some games do a great job at these things already but there is always room for improvement.

Better Animation
Eliminating clipping as much as possible
Getting rid of pop in
More realistic lighting
Stop making distant objects lower res, I hate when I see grainy clouds in a game
Rain that actually looks transparent and wet vs white toothpicks
Everything on screen running at the same framerate, no more background objects or characters in the distance looking choppy when they move
Loading to be as close to eliminated as possible.
 
Gotta disagree there. Textures/Shaders have absolutely been revolutionized since PS360 Era. We went from Normal maps to PBR. You can argue that they started some PBR at the end of last Gen, but it was rudamentary. Resolution is still higher, and the way Shaders can be mixed and manipulated is huge.

Hair saw a big boost this gen too. There have also been some substantial advancements in animation and animation blending as well as AI driven animation over the generation too. It's not perfected, and can be wonky, but this often comes down to time and money. Now, GTA was always more advanced in this regard even last gen, but Studios like DiCE, UbiSoft, Epic (UNREAL), Naughty Dog, ETC, have all been moving this area forward.

I wanted to pick all of the above, lol, But I think Physics will have a huge impact if we can get back to pushing the envelope like they were starting to do last gen.

Raytracing (even if it's Just GI implementation) will have a huge impact on visuals. Everything should have much more depth with the way shadows collect, and hybrid solutions with raytracing and SSR will be commonplace, I bet.

Asset streaming will be huge, I think. It'll get us better draw distance on small details and quick loading....

I'm super stoked about this coming gen, and I wasn't expecting to be this time last year...

I think some games have gone too far with how the hair moves, it's almost like it's exaggerated just so we see it moving like when a character is riding a horse you see their hair bouncing in an unrealistic and exaggerated way vs how it looks in real life.

I agree 100% on being stoked, I can't wait!
 
Animation for me. So sick of identifying the same kind of gestures in the main character and every npc. I'm looking foward to seeing less samey animations. Just more focus on delivering lifelike animations that pull you into storytelling and experiencing believable characters.
 
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Animation for me. So sick of identifying the same kind of gestures in the main character and every npc. I'm looking foward to seeing less samey animations. Just more focus on delivering lifelike animations that pull you into storytelling and experiencing believable characters.

I want to see more actual personality in animations. More creativity. If I have to see another big monster walk out pause, and the roar with it's head thrown back right before the fight starts.... it used to be so cool, but now I just roll my eyes....
 
character animation has more to do with tools ( animation tools like Maya), engine, budget and time than hardware.