He is partly correct, but forgets about the polygon budget. The GPU is fast but not infinitely so. It has lots of texture memory, but not an infinite amount. Game developers have to balance graphical fidelity against the rendering time. They actually did a really bad job of this for Cities: Skylines 2 and it was a big reason why the game was so sluggish on release. Search for the story of the teeth for a particularly salient example.
Also that grand staircase should be something the player chooses to place, rather than something you get every time a path is sloped.
Most of the changes replace one model with an equally detailed one, or add a bunch of decals that are cheap in modern engines with clustered rendering.
Adding props is a bit more expensive, but they can be very low detail and still look good from a distance. Something small like a newspaper or plastic bag can be less than 30 polygons with a 64x texture.
Nobody's asking for ray tracing and complicated shaders. Just small tweaks that make a city look more natural.
db48x · · focus · HN ↗
Also that grand staircase should be something the player chooses to place, rather than something you get every time a path is sloped.
tancop · · focus · HN ↗
Adding props is a bit more expensive, but they can be very low detail and still look good from a distance. Something small like a newspaper or plastic bag can be less than 30 polygons with a 64x texture.
Nobody's asking for ray tracing and complicated shaders. Just small tweaks that make a city look more natural.
breakingcups · · focus · HN ↗
maximilianthe1 · · focus · HN ↗