This is a rather general question: what defines the realism in a game? All I can think about are texture quality and higher polygon count. I'm no professional designer, so I'm not sure what goes into a scene that makes it look real(other than the stated examples). I've just recently started 3D programming, thus I won't be making the next Battlefield anytime soon, this question is solely asked for my curiosity.
Note: I'm not asking for code or language-specific examples, just the general variables that differentiate a game that looks unrealistic and a game that looks realistic, such as a lighting system.
Here's a post-mortem from a PS3/Xb360 game I worked on:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13063685/RLL2f.pdfThe slides at the start show the before/after graphics quality between the original game and the sequel (
this project). Most of the other slides are all of the work that went into achieving that quality increase. As a graphics programmer, that's basically my diary for 6 months :lol:
But there's some good points above -- pretty much everything in this PDF are techniques that make each individual frame look better, but not necessarily making the game *in motion* look better. This game got mixed reviews for graphics (
some people thought it looked great, other people thought it looked absolutely terrible)... part of those complaints were because the animation/AI was not up to scratch.
For the actual state of the art though, skim through some reputable presentations :D
http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2016/http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2015/http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2014/http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2013/http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2012/http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2011/http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2010/http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2009/
