Monday, April 28, 2003

If 4D doesn't exist the current generation of video cards might last 40 years.

(This is a continuation of the previous story "If 3d didn't exist the Playstation could have lasted 40 years")

Are computers succeptable to the standardization platform that exists in movies, music, and the rest of the consumer goods world? Will there be an outlet for additional power once the 3D graphics realm is adequately conquered? Much like we have been able to for 10 years now with word processing, can we finally buy one last gaming machine to last a lifetime?

Hold on to your wallet a little while longer there. Computer games and consoles are converging, but remain different beasts with different gamer tastes, and are subject to different market forces. Graphics cards can and do improve incrementally in the computer realm without breaking backwards compatibility, which contrasts sharply to the console realm where anything less than a breathtaking leap forward is met with dismal sales. Free from the resolution limitations of standard TV's, a video card can be incrementally better by providing similar viewing quality at higher resolution, by meeting a higher screen-refresh rate, or by scaling the quality of the gaming environment (a trick not viable in the one-design-fits-all model of consoles). Furthermore, the Open GL / Direct X model of abstration provides a convienient middle layer allowing all cards compatible with your version of Open GL to play the same games whether the standard has been out for 1 or 50 years... ensuring compatibility in a way that the consumer device model does not.

At some point Open GL and Direct X will "top out," providing all of the functions required for gorgious graphics given the limitations of current display devices. Has that happened yet? Without realtime raytracing that is a probable no. Will it happen at some point? History would indicate yes.

When it does happen, and assuming Moore's Law chugs along beyond the 2016 barrier, gaming companies will have to decide how far back along the power curve they are willing to support, rather than how far back along the technical curve. As such a system under a standardized API would be easy to create, it would be unwise and unnecessary to shut out many consumers from that market. Why refuse a person access to your game simply because they need the rendering distance set to 1 mile instead of 10 miles, or they use the last mile models on all game encounters?

Despite what I have said above, I do not believe perfect backwards compatibility will be available for many, many years. For one, unlike 2D graphics the 3D models we have today are sadly lacking in depth, texture, lighting etc. Glass and other transparencies, reflections, the natural diffusion of light, reflected light onto other surfaces, surface refraction etc are realistic touches that are sadly lacking in today's realtime 3D. The raytracing required to achieve such effects is so computationally expensive as to be a theoretical milestone in the future of gaming, ensuring that Open GL 2.0 will not likely be the last iteration of the graphical standard. Furthermore, while the images possible in the current generation of computer card is stunning, the physical model behind the image is greatly lacking. Arbitrary deformation as demonstrated in Worms 3D is barely achieveable with the current generation of hardware, but even basic physical concepts such as moments of impact, rebound, stretch, etc are very expensive, and fluid dynamics are just beyond modern computers despite their necessity for flight. The interactions of societies of simulated people, the stress models on user-created bridges, and accurate collision detection between basketball player and rim are all important physics issues that cannot be accurately modeled in realtime by the current generation of hardware. Quite frankly, I would not be surprised to see physics or collision detection acceleration chips cropping up in the near future. Finally, if Moore's Law is to continue beyond 2016, radical changes in the architecture of modern computers will be necessary. Quantum computing would not be simply a jump forward in power above a standard x86 architecture, but would be a tremendous re-examination of how to control a processor and how to optimize for this different low-level physical process. A new OS and new API's would be inevitable, along with the yearly updated optimization routines.

At some point the 3D revolution will top out to a process that is "good enough." We are already at a point where the yearly upgrade cycle has cooled into a 5-year process, and cards released today might last up through 2010 or beyond. While the end of this cycle is not here yet, it is important to remember that no consumer device in history has remained on the same rapid-fire upgrade treadmill for very long. Hopefully soon that will stretch to 10 or 20 years per card, rather than the previous 1. Only then will slick packing images be less important than the contentents of the box.

Monday, April 21, 2003

If it weren't for the 3rd dimension, the Playstation might have lasted 40 years.

If it weren't for the 3rd dimension, the Playstation might have lasted 40 years. That's a bold statement, but one that might reflect the future of console and computer gaming... for you see, there is no 4th dimension.

Successful consumer standards generally enjoy shelf lives of 10-40 years. In 1948 Columbia released the LP, which became a defacto standard in 1951 when RCA victor began selling the format and would remain the #1 format for music sales until being surpassed by CD's exactly 40 years later. 8-Tracks were less successful, but were released way back in 1966, the same year that Philips released the (still used) cassette tape. The The VHS tape system was released in 1976 and is still going strong, despite being beaten to the punch in 1972 by Philips' Lazer Disk player, and later beaten up in 1997 by DVD players.

What did these players have in common? They were "good enough," didn't have substantially better alternatives, and they had the backing of some of the largest companies in the world. None of the names back then were well known outside of the inner circle of gaming gurus, but today they roam the earth as powerfully as any hollywood studio. Remember when the crown in Square's cap was 3D World Runner? Now they have the power to absorb a 100 million dollar box office flop. Gaming companies have become some of the largest companies in the world. The Playstation format was also "good enough" to do basically all 2D games without complaint. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is often referred to as one of the richest, most beautiful 2D games of all times, but one is left a bit puzzled as to how that game could be improved with the faster processor and larger disk space afforded the PS2. For that matter, graphics aside the SNES was powerful enough to functionally run every sprite-based 2D game on the Playstation. But with resolutions equal to the highest displayable on a television and RAM sufficient to hold the quantities of artwork likely to be put out on a budget, the Playstation seems adequate to handle everything one is likely to throw at it... except for 3D.

The 3D revolution took gaming by storm, the same way that 2D games ursurped 1D games (like space invaders). By being capable of playing 3D games, the Playstation managed to unseat the SNES and defeat rival Sega's Saturn. But by being incompetent at playing 3D games, it was later ursurped by the far more respectable PS2. Ikaruga would be possible on the Playstation, but Munch's Oddysee would not.

What would have happened if the 32bit platforms had remained as consumer devices? One side effect is that they would have become commoditized. Much in the way that Award reverse-engineered the IBM bios, the Playstation would have been reverse-engineered and committed to hardware (a feat not too far removed from the reverse-engineering that went into emulators). Clones, in other words, would have forced Sony to license their system specs to 3rd party manufacturers, ala 3DO. Second, prices would have lowered significantly. With a stable platform, high penetration rates, and freedom from licensing restrictions, small developers would be free to flood the market with whatever they developed and (hopefully) profit from quality titles with smaller margins. This is assuming that consumers have developed into aware enough entities that they won't buy badly designed games and abandon the hobby altogether: that problem sunk the industry in 1984 and led to the draconian licensing issues that ensure both quality and banality in the industry today. With lower prices would come higher market penetration and, QED, better overall mindshare. Third, the system would become invisible. With the unchallenged standard VHS tape, people would refer to renting "movies" rather than tapes. Modern companies hock DVD's as if the medium were more important than the experience, leading focus to pointless cheerleading of the standard rather than real discussion of the merits of various movies. With so much energy being expended upon system promotion by distributers, dealers, and users, discussion of the qualities of the games available take second stage. This would change, leading (hopefully) to better games reaping financial reward and avoiding another above-mentioned crash.

This scenerio may well play out in the post PS3 era... But that possibility, and the ramafications of "acceptable speed" on the computer market, will be explored in a later article.