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Hi, I would like to ask if you know the current videogames pushing the limits for graphics. I remember some years ago they were Crysis and then Bioshock, and after that I've completely lost the track of videogames, and I would like to know what are the current ones.

Thanks in advance :)

Crysis2 and Battlefield 3 seems to be the ones pushing the most atm. Epic unveiled a test of some next-next stuff at GDC. try and youtube some GDC 2011 tech vids to check it out.

Uncharted 2 and God of War 3 are the most impressive i have seen lately.

There are several ways for graphics to be breathtaking, usually what you think of is to get lifelike human characters, in my opinion for this Crysis maxed out has set a mark for this that has remained unmatched. This engine was two generations ahead of its time. Unless I missed something, I'm not a playing that much.
I've also seen impressive videos of heavy rain, unreal engine 3 and deux ex.
BFBC2 on some screenshots looks phenomenal too.

I've seen in a paper written by the folks at Crytek that they estimate that the uncanny valley will be reached in the generation of games that comes after the next one.

Think of it.

But not only photorealistic can look great ; I, for one, have been astonished by Just Cause 2, where the cartoonish, colored, immense world, cities, mountains, jungles, deserts and sky are the star.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gP9P3kdXiY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ez4KQNDii0&feature=related

Honestly, Crysis 2 didn't seem all that beefy.

also don't forget to look at :

- id tech 5 (using megatexture technology, should be released this year)
- source engine (that evolved a lot since hl2 episode 2)
- unreal engine 4 (coming in 2012)

\o/ The Just Cause 2 Super Gaycopter \o/

crysis 2 seems to go back in time before crysis 1

Killzone 3 was impressive...

I agree that Crysis 2 doesn't look so good. The graphics were the selling point on the first game, but this one looks very average.

I'd say the most graphically impressive games I've seen are Arkham Asylum and Farcry 2.

Regarding crysis 2 it depends alot on whether we are talking PC or console version (obviously) - the consoles have maxed out years ago.

Witcher 2 for PC also impressed quite alot. - compare that to dragon age 2 for console and cry :)

developers are very slowly moving towards dx11, mostly due to the reason of the current generation of consoles, i guess. so development hasnt been too fast the last years..
the above mentioned unreal tech demo was impressive tho, havent checked out crysis2 yes (but i heard its engine is not that much more powerful than the old crysis one since it, again, was also developed to run reasonably fast on the consoles).

oh and also this megatexture thing. looking forward to RAGE, actually.

I don't see the difference between "megatexture" and "tesselation"...

wat

killzone 2, 3, uncharted 2, (3). gow3. And definately my favourite in visuals department atm. Frostbite 2 -engine :)

Oh, and they've been busy @ Lionhead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M04SMNkTx9E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdcqtjlBWCE

@qmotvs : this is quite impressive.
at 1:05 what are the three debug square supposed to do ?

my guess is :

first one : no idea

second one : show all textures actually active ? since they are certainly quite big maybe they have to be loaded dynamically. it seems there is quite a lot. did they use the good old lightmap trick to render all the scenes ? (in the two videos all lights/shadows are static... only intensity or color change...)
third one : a quadtree for some object culling ?

Sorry I forgot the paper itself, its here http://miciwan.com/GDC2011/GDC2011_Mega_Meshes.pdf