Each and every year, games look better. Whether it’s pure visual proficiency or the number of frames we see per second, developers continue to push the envelope for just what can be done via interactive entertainment. We’ll be taking another large step when both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launch later this year, but Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney is looking even farther down the road when it comes to game presentation. He believes that in 10 years, we’ll be playing games that look just like life.
Speaking in an interview with Game Industry International, Sweeney discussed both what games will look like in a decade, as well as the problems these looks will bring. Just how good will the environments look?
“Absolutely photorealistic within the next 10 years," the Epic founder said. “An indistinguishable from reality level of graphics.”
Simply creating worlds and characters that are indistinguishable from reality won’t make for better products. Beautiful, photorealistic graphics will bring even bigger challenges for all developers to overcome.
"That just moves the challenge of graphics to the problems we don't know how to solve. Like simulating human intelligence, animation, speech, lip-syncing,” he continued. “There are still a lot areas that will require ongoing research for probably the rest of our lives before we come close to approaching reality."
Epic is currently working on the next-generation Fortnite, as well as an announced action game that’s still early in development. Those games won’t look like life, but for all we know, Epic might just be leading the charge 10 years from now.
