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Sad But True
by /u/Bay_Ruhsuz004 | 118 comments | 2026-06-16T06:17:21+00:00 Central
Comments
| /u/ivej VR should have been the leap but it was not that popular. Try playing half life alyx or a VR racing simulator with a drive wheel. |
| /u/Megakruemel I think a big part of that failure was cost of entry. Around 500-700 bucks for something to try it out is a lot to ask. Couple that with the people who just can't deal with the motion sickness, even if they wanted to, and you have a miniscule market. We have a few sets at university we can use to develop stuff and I can handle VR pretty well. But even then you get sweaty as hell under those things. It's pretty fun but it needs a lot of things like better prices and better comfort and I have no idea how to achieve those. |
| /u/lexington59 Yeah even tho you can get use to motion sickness over time its hard to justify suffering for multiple hours just to get to the point you are use to it, but even that it jist increases the time before you do get sick, you still will get sick after enough time even after building a tolerance. So for some who are very hard core long gaming session people vr isn't appealing when even if you get use to motion sickness you still need to take large breaks to recover |
| /u/Nicalay2 You can build a tolerance where you don't get sick at all, like mine. |
| /u/SuperheropugReal Same here, to the point where I intentionally turn off all of the motion-sickmess reducing settings because they tend to hinder playability a bit, like nuking peripheral vision. |
| /u/Antique_Surprise_763 I just never got sick. I haven't played for more then 3 hours at a time but I think if it hasn't happened yet it probably wont |
| /u/kangasplat The most expensive part about VR isn't the headset, it's the room to play it in. VR while sitting sucks, if you want to play a racing sim you need more than just an office chair. And room to store your rig. If you want room scale, you need open space like that. |
| /u/ReallySmallWeenus I came here to make this point. VR is great when you have a whole spare empty room but it's not as good in a living room with a ceiling fan, furniture, and a few pets. Needing to worry about hitting something makes beat saber significantly less fun. |
| /u/Inorganic_Zombie They entered wrong time on wrong market segment. Arcades are not the thing anymore but if they would be, VR would be damn good on those. On VR boom there was several of those VR escabe rooms etc and even no gamers where WOW feels but COVID lock down killed those business |
| /u/mannyman16hjd Initialy yes, but now you can pick up a quest for 200 odd dollars. There's just not enough appealing titles or support, i'll play on my quest for an hour and then have 0 reason to go back to it for another month or 2. It's a shame, do hope we get more investment in VR at some point. |
| /u/Johncurtisreeve So what you're saying is we should be jumping into an extra dimension from 3-D to 4-D, that's what I'm getting from the image |
| /u/ShortStoryIntros Augmented lazer tag seems pretty fuckin cool as a next step https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1PIcuOYmXU |
| /u/rofeneiniger I've been fantasizing about this concept. I imagined some sort of entirely new sport. Something like a 3vs3 arena game with different classes and stuff. Basically esports irl |
| /u/Manymarbles Paintball, laser tag, and airsoft all exist Adding a video game element to it could mean fantasy type weapons, that would be cool. You are still very limited in reality for most stuff tho. Like no flying or speed boosts or whatever. Could add hit points even if laser tag can already do that. |
| /u/An_Ellie_ We need to bring back stereoscopic 3D |
| /u/Slkkk92 Fifth time is the charm |
| /u/Nago15 We actually jumped from a flat screen to VR recently. That's good enough for an extra dimension?:) |
| /u/CompetitiveAffect478 So you want a 4-D presented as 3-D projected in 2-D |
| /u/navagon We've already got 4D. Or the games would be every bit as static as they appear in OP's post. |
| /u/Bush_Hiders No, what I think he's saying is that improvements this minor should not warrant buying a whole new full priced console. |
| /u/CaptainTeemo01 You are aware that more powerful hardware is useful for more than just higher quality pixels right? |
| /u/Johncurtisreeve https://giphy.com/gifs/pCg4tODDp38ze |
| /u/Musicmaker1984 Graphics have already stagnated in the 2010s. Most games can reach photo-real graphics. Most of generational leaps now are in Optimization and visual upscaling. |
| /u/ZaeMyName Yeah, at this point we just need to see unique stylistic/artistic choices. That's how you stand out now. |
| /u/smalldickbesitzer Like NFS unbound? They did a unique art choice and got hatet lol |
| /u/ZaeMyName Hey, it's not gonna work out every time, lol🤣 Edit: And if it was hated (don't play NFS), it DID stand out😂 |
| /u/IndianUrsaMajor I didn't like Unbound a lot, but the art style looked really fresh and cool to me. I must've played about 10-15 hours and I had a ton of fun, until I started feeling how much of a grind the game was going to be. |
| /u/Webber192 Yeah, i dont think the artstyle was the main reason people hated it. For me, its the stupid amount of DLCs, the grind, and the overall horrible ost. Like cmon, how do you mess up one of the core aspects of a NFS game, the music? |
| /u/super_landrum I loved the music in that game it was fun to drive to. They had some bangers. Look up "Worry No More" by Lil Yachty. That was the main song playing at the end when you beat it |
| /u/SemenileElder The biggest problem all the new NFSes have is that they're racing games with bad physics. Them clinging onto tap to drift while also trying to grip handling just made the handling horribly inconsistent, among other smaller issues that also stack up. Payback probably did it the best because it gave up on trying to do grip handling. That in itself might not be a good thing, at least not for everyone, but at least the handling is consistent and you can adjust to it. |
| /u/EnormousGucci Felt the same I thought the new style was cool but just got bored early on |
| /u/smalldickbesitzer I know, dead cells is the best example for such a game |
| /u/SwimmingCommon Dead cells is an absolute gem. |
| /u/puppygirlpackleader Well the game must also be good on top of that... Unique also doesn't mean good |
| /u/Biggu5Dicku5 The art choice was the least of that games problems... |
| /u/TheAmazingSealo I've never played it but the art choice is great imo, just the price and player count is the problem |
| /u/arkham-ity1 So like marathon then? |
| /u/X33RR0Hunt Marathon initially got some (moderate) praise for the artstyle. The hate quickly developed mostly because it transformed a singple player FPS franchise into a live service game that leans into the extraction shooter trend. It got worse once it became clear that the game also stole a lot of assets from Antireal, which did get resolved. As of more recent, most of the Marathon hate is because Destiny 2 is ending, and a lot of people are of the opinion that Marathon killed off Destiny 2. |
| /u/_BrokenButterfly Yup. Tech can only do so much, and we're well past the point of diminishing returns. Style is the differentiator now. |
| /u/Uneventfulrice Like Windwaker did in its time or Ookami. |
| /u/TheSleepyBarnOwl Tf2 still going strong cause its artstyle is fire |
| /u/Sad_Hedgehog_4079 Nah the difference between 2011 and 2018 is huge |
| /u/_Arkus_ The one between 2018 and now...not that big. 2017-2018 was kind of the breaking point when we started getting diminishing returns |
| /u/BasicMatter7339 I mean its still not nothing, just compare rdr2 to e33. Major improvements arent being made, true, but they're really starting to nail the facial expressions, models and animation. No more stiff uncanny valley faces with mismatching emotions from witcher 3 |
| /u/donald_314 That compares one of the most expensive to produce AAA titles with a AA midrange production. Technology has come a far way and even small teams can give the scope of RDR2 a shot now. It doesn't mean it's good but it's financially possible. |
| /u/Kotanan I think this is a console vs PC thing. Ps3 was largely sub 720p, ps4 was largely 30fps. Jumping past those was a big deal. But PC has had graphics largely comparable with today since about 2010. |
| /u/theholylancer ehh, id say that there is still enough of a difference in early 2010s vs later 2010s skyrim of 2011 was what I think of as the capstone of that era of graphics, even the top most graphically crysis 2 only approached what can be done later because its a smaller open world really, and FAR less interactivity. while by 2015 KCD1 and Witcher 3 showed the way of the future in terms of either mechanics + world design or raw graphical looks, and CP2077 by 2020 locked in the generational difference. so yeah, even on PC, with a relatively higher end rig of either a HD 5870 to 980 ti to 2080 ti and now a 5090, I could 100% see the difference in graphics in generations. and right now, in 2026, crimson desert is pushing that envelope again, and it is that mid gen update to what cyberpunk 2077 did if you have the grunt to turn all the effects on, which even a 5090 can get kneecapped with ray reconstruction that being said, I do see where the OP is going, because the amount of raw power needed to run them, and the compromises to get there (hello DLSS and FG if you want 4k120+), and how many people have dumped 3k, and now closer to 4.5 if not 5k into a GPU to get that kind of looks. |
| /u/Inevitable-Bike6545 The gap isn't as big for PC but it is still there. Fallout New Vegas, Monster Hunter Tri, Assassins Creed Brotherhood, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2 etc. None of these games even remotely stand up to modern graphics. The absolute closest was Red Dead Redemption and even that isn't remotely close to Red Dead 2, let alone games like Cyberpunk. |
| /u/TheoWHVB Optimisation, you say? |
| /u/Nuclear_rabbit 50GB updates suggest otherwise |
| /u/Spork_the_dork On the contrary. 50 GB updates suggest that the game is being optimized. Loading game data from disk isn't optimally fast. To further speed up loading times the data is essentially compressed into a different format that is much faster for the game to load. The problem there is that if you ever then want to make even the tiniest change to that file, that could cause the whole file to get re-arranged by the optimizer so the only way to update that file is to replace it completely. This kind of compression also reduces the overall size of the files because there's less wasted space that would naturally happen when working with your standard file system format. This is why when you go look at any big game's files, you can't find the assets as individual files anywhere. They're instead stored in this special format somewhere in the data files and when you get an update that touches those assets even a little bit the whole file gets replaced because you can't just delta your way through that. Your delta would typically be basically the whole file anyways. |
| /u/Kinitawowi64 I was on the understanding that they might be obfuscated but compression is at an all time low, because the processor needs to be working on the game rather than decompressing graphics files and it's cheaper for end users to buy bigger hard drives than faster CPUs. |
| /u/modbroccoli now, whether those .dat files are compressing sixteen thousand libraries that this particular game doesn't actually use but which nonetheless are licensed to the studio and their engine is of course a different question. there's efficiency and then there's efficiency |
| /u/Slight-Marzipan-3017 Comlression (or lack of) is why ARK is like 270gb. They dont optimize diddly squat. If you force compress the files using compactgui it goes down to like 90-110gb and the game runs the exact same. Id rather eat a 50gb download to replace a file which changed a bit than host an extra few hundred gb because they didnt implement file compression. |
| /u/MultipleAnimals Optimization in a form of how we can offload the optimization to players. AI, framegen, anything but actually optimizing the game engines, let users pay the technical debt. |
| /u/RainbowNugget24 It's 2026, only a few games focus on optimization Most games focus on putting DLSS/FSR/XeSS work as "optimization" |
| /u/UnfinishedProjects I don't want photo realism. I want games to run smoothly on my pc that's decent. Just give us decent enough graphics. I don't need to see hairs on nipples. |
| /u/hgwaz Don't buy the latest AAA shit, buy indie games or older games. You're doing this to yourself. |
| /u/UnfinishedProjects I do pretty much only play indie games. They're more fun, cheaper, and run infinitely better than any AAA game. |
| /u/Wermine Amen to that. Doom 2016 runs 120 FPS on RX580, looks great. Give me more of that. |
| /u/General-Sloth Unreal Engine be like: how about no? Here is a four thousand poligon Toothbrush and 12 FPS. Why are devs still using that crap? |
| /u/General-Sloth Nah, not for all genres of games. Just look at the massive leaps in Graphics in strategy and building games, You will definitely see massive improvements in graphics from the early 2010s till now. FPS and Racing games maybe stagnated, but even then compare something like Far Cry 3 to Far cry 5 and you will notice the improvements in visuals. |
| /u/CaptainTeemo01 This is blatantly false. I don't think you actually remember what games looked like in 2010 |
| /u/kolosmenus Video game graphics really didn't noticably improve since Battlefront 2015, but the required specs have basically quadrupled |
| /u/Ionisation3yay Because the type of game matters too, battlefront 2015 has very static maps, so most of those beautiful lightings and shadows are all baked in, while modern games use those specs to do it all dynamically. There is almost always more to it |
| /u/raycepak some of this is rose tinted glasses. some of this is that now finally you can pretty much assume everyone's on 4k and optimize just for that. lighting, polycount, texture size have all gone up. |
| /u/Spork_the_dork finally you can pretty much assume everyone's on 4k TIL 5% of steam userbase is "pretty much everyone". 21% are on 1440p, and 51% are on 1080p still so it's really a stretch to claim that everyone's on 4K. |
| /u/raycepak Steam hardware stats are useful, but they don't fully capture where things are headed. Personally I'm still on a 1080p monitor, but the cost of decent 4K displays has dropped a lot, and we've had multiple GPU generations now capable of running 4K in at least some games. So while 4K users are still a minority today, that share will keep growing, likely faster as new games finish development cycles and target hardware that's already a few years ahead of current adoption. The assumption isn't that 'everyone is on 4K now,' but that developers plan for where the market is trending, not just where it is at this exact moment |
| /u/AgathormX 4K adoption isn't going to keep increasing rapidly because 1440p has more than enough pixel density for the monitor sizes that the vast majority of users own, 4K monitors are much more expensive (specially if you want a good panel with high refresh rate) and GPU prices are a complete disgrace. The trade off has exactly 0 benefit for the vast majority of users. |
| /u/Dokii 4k is still only 5% of steam users |
| /u/BellewTheBear Graphics can always improve. Every generation of gamers thinks they've seen the pinnacle. I remember when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out. Everyone was blown away by the visuals. It was the same year that Crysis came out. Crysis still looks great considering its age, but it doesn't compare to the cutting edge of graphics today. I guarantee 10 years from now we'll look back on Cyberpunk 2077 and think it looks kinda crappy. |
| /u/_Arkus_ I doubt. Instead of games from 20 years ago, how about we look at games that are actually 10 years old right now: Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, Metal Gear Solid 5. They all still look great to this day, I highly doubt anybody will look back at Cyberpunk and think it looks crappy. |
| /u/Doomword They haven't stagnated at all, if anything, lighting/shadow techniques have made huge jumps these past years which have a tremendous impact on photorealistic graphics. For whatever reason people still think that graphics=polygon count on a model when in reality it's so much more. |
| /u/PmMeYourKnobAndTube They might be technically better, but to the casual player the differences are borderline meaningless. You notice them if you follow these types of things and know what to look for, but lighting and shadows were good enough for most everyone by the xbox1/ps4 generation. If not earlier. Personally I can tell the difference, but I don't care. I would trade last gen graphics for faster development cycles or more resources put into other areas. |
| /u/Mattrobat I mean it is all subjective, but from my experience even the casual player can notice some of the big jumps we've had even in the last 6 years. Plenty of people were gawking at Cyberpunk both for its art style and its fantastic graphic fidelity. Alan Wake 2 was a game where my SO who mostly plays narrative games saw how detailed everything was. After playing some PS3/4 games on PS+ I can tell you plenty of those games look dated. |
| /u/Doomword Even casual people would notice the difference between a ps4 Cyberpunk and a ps5 one, and thats disregarding the crazy stuff you can do on pc with that game. Theres obviously a balance and expectations with thsese things. People would be outraged if the new GTA came out looking like it was released on base ps4. |
| /u/misteryk the problem with those shadows and reflections is that you tank your performance in half for something that a lot of people won't even notice without trying to find the difference |
| /u/zexton anyone can turn there camera up or down, to see screen space reflections vanish from the reflection in a straight cut, when things dissappear from your own field of view, |
| /u/therealNerdMuffin Most of generational leaps now are in Optimization |
| /u/Turagon That's just wrong. Skyrim is 2010s graphics (2011 to be precise) and unmodded original Skyrim looks pretty bad nowadays. You just speak from nostalgia. I grown up with Oblivion was blown away by it's graphic. In memory it was still true for years afterwards, until I played it again years later. |
| /u/FlowerBeneficial7193 Im waiting for AI that would: 1.play the games properly 2. adjust itself to player choices |
| /u/Interesting_Race5199 Litrally the opposite is happening and it didnt stagnated its more like 2019 and after that its more or less slow development. |
| /u/LaiqTheMaia This is just an insane take |
| /u/Arthur_Morgan44469 Graphics didn't reach stagnation since the 2010z. Comspare that decade to this and there's a might and day difference. |
| /u/azellnir What is the game on top? |
| /u/GattMomoll Looks like Sega Rally |
| /u/Disastrous_Life_3612 Those are two different games. Left is Super Drift Out on SNES, right is Sega Rally Championship on Sega Saturn. |
| /u/smalldickbesitzer Some rally game of Sega I think, don't know how its called |
| /u/smalldickbesitzer This, funny how I have forget this name xD |
| /u/Tiyath "Welcome to the Smith House, this is my wife Dorothy" "What is your wife's full name?" |
| /u/ModernCGIFloatinHead It's like that movie where the bus couldn't let its speed drop below a certain point, and if its speed got too low, it would blow up. I think it was called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down |
| /u/zexton sega rally championship, a new arcade costed 15.000-25000$ in 1995, this comparison op making is actually terrible, |
| /u/dontnation Sure, but sega rally 2 was available on Dreamcast just 4 years later for a fraction of that cost. |
| /u/thecu1tguy https://preview.redd.it/418i6ns91m7h1.jpeg?width=548&for mat=pjpg&auto=webp&s=73c8777ca4f817accf30eea25541754700e bddfe |
| /u/SpotBeforeSpleeping That pic is a bad example |
| /u/Mr-Stuff-Doer It still showcases the issue. Even when shown properly, diminishing returns for this stuff hit us by the PS3. Yes there is more detail but it requires so much more effort than said detail is actually worth in 99% of games |
| /u/Dotcaprachiappa What makes it a bad example? The idea is the same. |
| /u/No-Article-Particle Because it's just adding more polygons and not doing anything with them. The second pic clearly shows you can do much more with added polygons (add a lot of detail). |
| /u/csorfab how is this a better example lmao |
| /u/user_428 It shows that the originalnexample reduced detail, not added, in the final step. Of course adding a smoothing filter does not make the original image looke better. The first row shows the same thing as og image. Second row displays more clearly why it doesn't work. Third row shows a more realistic example: Still not adding as much but adding some details. |
| /u/AtlasAngel02 Also a good visual as to why games take up so much more storage space than 15 years ago too. |
| /u/Gliese581h I hope that's something they really improve upon. A few games (Helldivers 2, Conan Exiles) recently got optimization for that, cutting the required space by large amounts (Helldivers 2 went from ~150GB to 23GB). |
| /u/Badwrong_ The top one is multiple generations though. It is also two different games. Then the bottom one is obviously cherrypicked to not show any significant differences, and it is the same game. You are not going to get huge differences when showing the same game. All you will see is higher resolution and some nicer effects. This also does not include cases were the goal is just keeping the same visuals but improving the frame rate. |
| /u/ExultentPisces The top one is not multiple generations. On the left is Super Drift Out on Super Famicom. On the right is Sega Rally on Saturn. Those games both released in 1995. |
| /u/Niarbeht Wild how some people don't understand exactly how quickly technology was moving in the 90s. |
| /u/Red_Sashimi It's not even about how quick the technology is moving in this case. This is just 2 differently powered machines. It's like comparing a steam deck to a high end PC. |
| /u/Caos2 Both machines were released 4 years a part, one year less that passed since the release of the PS5. |
| /u/hery41 That would get in the way of the 'everything is nostalgia, nothing was ever good' circlejerk. |
| /u/phantomfire50 Those games both released in 1995. Tbf that means very little; games stopped releasing on the Wii in 2020, but Just Dance 2020 on the Wii is still 2 generations behind Super Mario Odyssey, which released 3 years earlier. 1990 (Famicom) and 1995 (Saturn) are still only 1 generation apart though. |
| /u/ExultentPisces I only mentioned it to emphasise the difference from one gen to the next. Many people began 1995 playing SNES or Mega Drive games and ended the year playing Saturn or PlayStation. That's a dramatic advancement in graphics tech which simple doesn't occur today. |
| /u/SordidDreams 1990 (Famicom) and 1995 (Saturn) are still only 1 generation apart though. The Saturn had 16 times the memory of the Famicom. The generational leaps back then were insane. |
| /u/Slicethatbread While true, the hardware was released four years apart. Some (most?) people would consider that a generation even if the game is released at the same time. |
| /u/Rigrot While it is not multi-generational the SNES came out in 1990 while the Saturn was in 1995. there is still 5 years of technical innovation of the console itself I'm pretty sure if you managed to convert a Saturn CD into a SNES cart it would not be able to run it. The bottom pic is still cherry picked. |
| /u/ExultentPisces Super Famicom was the absolute bleeding edge of home gaming when it released in 1990. The Sega Saturn released exactly 4 years and 1 day later in 1994. Generational leaps were enormous in the 80s and 90s. Cherry picked examples or not, today's graphics tech advances in baby steps by comparison. |
| /u/makomirocket Look up the difference between GTA 2 in 1999, and GTA 3 in 2001 |
| /u/Scoobydubyduwhereru Also, the top two bottom images should differ in resolution, but they are using two very low-res images (probably even the same) to make their point, when probably when seeing it live you might actually be able to tell the difference. |
| /u/flaming_burrito_ Nope, it is one generation, games really did progress that fast back then. And it being the same game is kind of besides the point, even if you used two different games, the difference between an end of generation PS4 and early PS5 game is really not all that noticeable. TLOU 2 and Uncharted 4 came out on PS4, and to this day they look as good, if not better than pretty much any game coming out now. We've reached the point of the technology growth S curve where progress levels out and starts to become more about optimization than big leaps. Higher resolution, better lighting, better fps, more storage, that's what you can expect from a next gen console. It just takes so much time, processing power, and file space to make games look any better than they do right now, and there's really just no need to. |
| /u/TrippingFish76 also it's like a really low resolution image lol RDR2 looks way better on series X , i was blown away by it when i first got my series X games look way better on series X and run way smoother too, no lag and stunning graphics |