When will PS4/X1 graphics peak?

Going by my experience, i would say by the end of the generation.

Games will get better looking. Surely you don't expect 2013 graphics all the way up until 2020 do you? They will improve their engines accordingly like every generation before it.

not only that, tuning, upgrades and physics simulation also will take a massive load on the graphics, not to mention wet weather simulation too.

In the next few minutes

In the end of generation

heil68 is this you? its from the ign website about forza 6.

Some time from now, there's only 3 games that are using asynchronous GPU compute on the PS4 so far so there's one feature that many devs haven't even looked at yet. Hopefully DX12's asynchronous shaders will put this in the spotlight more and get it used more both on console and AMD GPUs.

Here's a quote from Cerny:

“You’ll see the benefits in terms of the graphics and the quality of the world simulation and the like. On top of that we did significant customisation of the GPU to make sure that there was that extra target for people to go after in 2016/2017. Put that all together, I think the future’s looking very bright for PlayStation 4,"

"Much of what we're seeing with the launch titles is that usage; it's very, very quick to get up to speed if that's how you use it. But at the same time, then you're not taking advantage of all the customization that we did in the GPU. I think that really will play into the graphical quality and the level of interaction in the worlds in, say, year three or year four of the console."

And Daylight devs Zombie Studios:

"Properly utilizing Compute shader functionality can certainly add a lot of life to a game, and as developers mature with the new hardware we should expect massive gains from offloading highly parallel tasks from the CPU to the GPU."

They certainly seem to put a lot of stock in it. If it provides the gains as claimed then we might see a bit of a jump as compute hits the mainstream particularly on the PS4 given it has 8 ACE units to the Xbox's 2.

Already peaked with games like Witcher 3. Yes Character models/environments will look better but world will have to be linear. Uncharted 4 will look great for a linear game but as I said there won't be much to render and graphics are more than just pretty character models and good looking small locations.

Newer engines will also improve visuals but optimization has its limits too. Later they'll be force to cut corners and will hide short comings by fixing camera in some scenes, adding blur to hide textures, running the game at sub 900p on unstable frame rates etc.

@nyadc: No there not as that was running on a PS4. It may only be a David Cage game but they could handle that.

Last gen we did see massive improvements in parallel processing, engine optimizations, new software technology in AA, lighting, shading, physics, and so on. All that pushed the old hardware to turn out some pretty awesome looking games. It will be interesting to see if that will happen this gen. GTA V on last gen consoles is really a final showcase of all those technologies, and would not have been possible earlier in the gen. Though it's hard to believe that the jump will as big this gen, I highly doubt that.

@tushar172787:

Nope, just another user using my avitar. I dont post on IGN.

well towards the end of gen of course.

this gen has been strange though. i dont think we have even really had the first big push in graphical fidelity (outside of higher res and higher framerate compared to most last gen games).

last gen many games in the first year or so on the 360 and PS3 looked like upressed first xbox and PS2 games. it wasnt until gears 1 and uncharted 1 came out that we really saw what this new hardware could do. i remember the initial dissapointment around the new hardware with the first gen games....even arguments coming out that the hardware didnt really offer that much benefit over the PS2 and first xbox.

but this gen hasnt really had its uncharted 1 or gears 1 game yet. many games look like PS3 and 360 games with some sort of icehancer type mod applied. dont get me wrong, they look great. im not going to point at a game like withcer 3 or forza and say they are ugly. that would be daft. but there just hasnt been that jump yet and we are well into the gen now.

i dont know where itll come from either. its not uncharted 4 by the looks of things. it looks great...but it looks like uncharted 3 with just upressed textures and an icehancer mod applied (at least it did the last time i saw it. maybe thats why they pushed it back though to get more time to understand the hardware (it must be especially tricky for console only devs because something like the PS4 is completely different from the PS3. a lot of the thinking around optimising for the PS3 just goes in the bin for the PS4). i dont see anything coming for the X1 that looks like the gears 1 type jump yet either.

i do think we are at a point where games are maxing out the raw horsepower of the consoles...just using brute force to get the games running and bolting on extra graphical features. the next step up from that is to get tech designed from the ground up to use the hardware more efficively and efficently. last gen the CPU was heavily involved in graphics rendering (especially on the PS3) and the underlying tech is still probably getting the CPU to do things that should be done on the GPU now. we dont have much hardware accelerated physics either and so on. getting that balance right is the next big step.

the reason we are getting so many remakes is that developers, i think, need time to develop the tech...but they also need to ship product. so they are playing around with the tech using existing games and seeing what works well and what doesnt.

i do think there is more to come though and hopefully we will get a better glimpse of that at this years E3.

People say Dark Sorcerer is a pipe dream, they're in for a rude awakening.

And this is only the first couple of years, wait for God of War 4, UC4 E3 build, Horizon, new Infamous, QD's new game and TLOU2 before calling tapped out.

Wow, people actually fell for Sonys Dark Sorcerer trailer? That explains a lot.

@Heil68: ok, got it.

When Gears of War 4 comes out and nothing then onward will look better

The PS4 peaked with The Dark Sorceror tech demo, and the Xbox One hit it's peak when it had GTX's running it's games at trade shows. *snap*

@shibua: Gears was just so boss for a while. It basically became the bar for "DAT next gen look" back in 2006. At that same time, Sony launched PS3 with Resistance, and while the character models were pretty good, the graphics/explosions generally paled in comparison to GeoW. I remember feeling sorry for my friends who only had a ps3, although it eventually proved to be a great console. Anyway, I hope Gears 4 can recapture that same epic feel on Xbox One, although now its harder to impress people with graphics.