Does anyone think PC simulators will ever look this good ?

[Jughead]

Oleg says that the SoW engine will look "cinematic". So SoW ought to look as good as these vids. Unless ofcourse Oleg is exagerating. But just by looking at some of the graphics in the new games coming out, Oleg could be damn close with his statements.

[virre89]

Graphics will definantly looks like this someday, but this is as said b4 pure CGI.
Already graphics are somewere close to this if simulators were to use all the latest graphical technolegy etc im sure they'd not look far from this , anyway BOB will still be a Huge leap from the IL2 engine and look just awsome in comparance.

Btw gr8 cgi movies just awsome and love the sounds.

[Tbag]

From a technical point of view probably in 10 to 15 years. Nothing more than a guess of course. But who is going to model a whole flightsim to that degree of detail? Not sure if that would pay of. Hope Oleg stays in buisiness!

[IceFire]

We're not that far off really...what you see there isn't really stunningly impressive. IL-2 almost does all of that already. There are some effects that I hope to see in Storm of War which will take us closer or past that with maybe some small exceptions.

[BadAim]

Aggreed. BOB, I think will look damn close to that from the start, assuming of course a state of the art machine. I really doubt capability has anything to do with it, realtime computing power is the biggest obstacle, next is manpower (read money).

So really it's about power and money. Can't get away from it can we?

[Golden_Eagle_FM]

I am ready to bet that in ten years from know real time interactive raytrayced animation of the quality of what we have on those short films will be available at less than 1000 US$ (today value) for general purpose desktop machines.

This is if CPU design evolution goes as planned that is the massive multicore CPU's of the Larabelle type that Intel has already demonstrated with a raytraced version of a very popular FPS game. We are talking of CPU's with 80 cores and plus.
We are now at the stage were we have quadcore CPU's with a max frequency around 3GHz available on the market and in general use. I do not believe the frequency will increase much, but a breaktghrough in technology may allow some major steps. Shrinking the size of CPU components in combination of high voltages for high frequencies, and high heat dissipation problems is already starting to hit some fundamental physical barriers that generate many unwanted effects as for ex. electron migration. We see that it is a few years know that with INTEL and AMD have stalled between 2.5 and 3.2 GHz. Maybe we get to 4GHz but it is not really of much use. On the other hand the fundamental limits to core multiplication in the CPU are much further away.

If we apply Moore's law in conservative manner that is a doubling every 24 months then in 2009 we have 8 cores in 2011 16 cores, in 2013 32 cores, in 2015 64 cores and in 2017 128 cores. The advantage of this approach is that you can lower the frequency, and run say at 1.5 GHZ max and you can get full use of the shrinkage of components as you do not have any more the heat issue. So all the real estate can go to low heat dissipating and simpler architectured cores and so also with even more shrinking without major problems (but for sure there is also an atomic phisical limit here).
The final result is promising. Better 80 cores at 1 GHz then 4 at 4 Ghz. Roughly speaking and to have it simple you get 80 Ghz of power instead of 16.

So it is better to go the lower frequency+low heat dissipation+simpler architecture and higher multiple-core path then the other way round.

If these multi-multicore CPU's do get on the market then there will be enough processing power to get all the software rendering algorithms executed in realtime (60FPS).

The problem is that the whole polygon based culture and tools in game design will have to be readapted to optimally generate raytraced images.
But also the whole software generation community will have to be geared to use massively parallel hardware. This last point may be the most difficult issue.

So to finish I would say that we will have in ten years the hardware capability on the table for sure. I will not bet even a dime that we will be able to use that capability. That will be the major roadblock.

Gold

[Tbag]

Agree 100% Eagle! Well, let's say I agree as far as I can follow

@IceFire: Can you please send me a copy of the IL2 you play? My copy can't keep up with these vids!

[virre89]

Think he means in realism.
Anyway it won't look like this counting cinematic wise i hope everyone understands the amazing details going into charachter looking over his shoulder etc just won't happen really, that's part of CGI(MOVIES).

Even back when games like Medal of Honor Allied Assault and BF 1942 was released they had CGI intros which look beyond todays graphics more or less so, still remember this is actually a type of MOVIE.

[Xiola]

Originally Posted by Golden_Eagle_FM

I am ready to bet that in ten years from know real time interactive raytrayced animation of the quality of what we have on those short films will be available at less than 1000 US$ (today value) for general purpose desktop machines.

This is if CPU design evolution goes as planned that is the massive multicore CPU's of the Larabelle type that Intel has already demonstrated with a raytraced version of a very popular FPS game. We are talking of CPU's with 80 cores and plus.
We are now at the stage were we have quadcore CPU's with a max frequency around 3GHz available on the market and in general use. I do not believe the frequency will increase much, but a breaktghrough in technology may allow some major steps. Shrinking the size of CPU components in combination of high voltages for high frequencies, and high heat dissipation problems is already starting to hit some fundamental physical barriers that generate many unwanted effects as for ex. electron migration. We see that it is a few years know that with INTEL and AMD have stalled between 2.5 and 3.2 GHz. Maybe we get to 4GHz but it is not really of much use. On the other hand the fundamental limits to core multiplication in the CPU are much further away.

If we apply Moore's law in conservative manner that is a doubling every 24 months then in 2009 we have 8 cores in 2011 16 cores, in 2013 32 cores, in 2015 64 cores and in 2017 128 cores. The advantage of this approach is that you can lower the frequency, and run say at 1.5 GHZ max and you can get full use of the shrinkage of components as you do not have any more the heat issue. So all the real estate can go to low heat dissipating and simpler architectured cores and so also with even more shrinking without major problems (but for sure there is also an atomic phisical limit here).
The final result is promising. Better 80 cores at 1 GHz then 4 at 4 Ghz. Roughly speaking and to have it simple you get 80 Ghz of power instead of 16.

So it is better to go the lower frequency+low heat dissipation+simpler architecture and higher multiple-core path then the other way round.

If these multi-multicore CPU's do get on the market then there will be enough processing power to get all the software rendering algorithms executed in realtime (60FPS).

The problem is that the whole polygon based culture and tools in game design will have to be readapted to optimally generate raytraced images.
But also the whole software generation community will have to be geared to use massively parallel hardware. This last point may be the most difficult issue.

So to finish I would say that we will have in ten years the hardware capability on the table for sure. I will not bet even a dime that we will be able to use that capability. That will be the major roadblock.

Gold

Surely there is a size limit here, 4 cores is already close to filling a normal size CPU, so 10 cores will mean that the size of the CPU as a whloe will need to grow.

As we have already hit limits with electron migration, then the size of the core caanot go much smaller than it already is with the limits as we know them. The paths are already so small as to have individual electrons escaping and causing errors.

Wouldnt a 80 core CPU be massive? (with the limits as we now know them?)

[mondo]

I think before we get so many cores on a single chip we'll go back to what was taking off yet disappeared 5 or 6 years ago; motherboards for enthusiast PC's with support for 2 CPU's. SLI made a come back after years being undeveloped so motherboards with multiple CPU support might also make a comeback for the home PC.

Don't count out GPU's either. Looking at the specs of AMD's new ATI card, its not hard to imagine video cards with 2 GPU's containing multiple cores in systems with multiple CPU's each with multipe cores, or the amalgamation of GPU and CPU like IBM's Cell.