: Ah, but you see that may not be possible in today's world. See, this is the
: thing that bothers me with the next gen- graphics. Who gives a shit. Sure,
: those new processors can cram a lot of textures in places where there
: weren't textures before but the question you pose is do we need them?

: I'll agree and say that no, we don't. BUT the developers may not see it that
: way- I think its one of those things where its visual garbage for the sake
: of garbage.

: It was either Korny or Six Min Whistle but they posted something in
: facebookland about the literal garbage floating around in the new CoD
: because they had to do something with that horse power.... right?

Or "Processing power corrupts."

Back when I was still involved with the Halo Homefront mod, one of my odd jobs was taking the models done by Ringleader and cutting down on the poly count. And good lord, the guy loved detail. There would be all these windows and lights and stuff that could easily be left to the texture.

Later, when I was working on a Company of Heroes mod, I told him that the budget was something like 5,000 polies for infantry, 10,000 for vehicles. (That's easily five times the detail in Halo:CE, and this was an RTS) and he promptly asked for 7,000 for the infantry units and 15,000 for the vehicles... and we planned on increasing the population cap.

I think that creative people hate limitations. Modelers want more processing power for detail. Authors want less editorial input. Comic book artists probably want more lead time and more panel space. So, as consoles and computers get more powerful, artists are layering more and more detail into their creations. Because they can, and they want it.

But as much as we hate them, limitations breed creativity. Mega Man's iconic color palette came about because the artists had to budget the colors they used, for example. By contrast
And the requisite Star Wars example: the movies were great back when Lucas had to struggle for every VFX shot and muppet alien. But as soon as he had a server farm and a team of artists to turn his every whim into reality, Return of the Jedi got a song-and-dance number.

What 343i needs is, they need an art director who can look the artists in the eye and tell them "Go back and cut this out." "Tone down that detail." "Turn that cobbled walkway into a smooth surface."

I volunteer!