SimCity - Images and Videos

[Pandemic 32]

Hi, so I thought it'd be convenient to have a thread where people can post any new images and/or videos of SimCity.

The most recent in-game images I have found for SimCity was from the Glassbox engine conference,

  Edited March 8, 2012 by Pandemic  

[Altus 111]

Reminds me of something awful...

[jacksunny 741]

It looks so...cartoonish. I don't like it.

[GeneralEtrius 78]

It looks so...cartoonish. I don't like it.

You do realize that this is VERY early in development, right?

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

It looks so...cartoonish. I don't like it.

You do realize that this is VERY early in development, right?

Exactly. The point of the Glassbox presentation was to detail the 'under the hood' simulation engine... not show off fancy finished game graphics of a game that is still a year from release.

[Jahnri 21]

Well to be honest with a year or so to go, its far from early in development. Its almost 3/4ths done in a normal city builders development cycle. Personally I think the graphics capture the simcity style nicely.

[Asheroo 53]

Well to be honest with a year or so to go, its far from early in development. Its almost 3/4ths done in a normal city builders development cycle. Personally I think the graphics capture the simcity style nicely.

Same thoughts. Comparing it to recent gaming graphics, it already looks great. You need to understand, it's a simulation game and can only be built on gaming graphics. You can't have all those fancy renders in 3DS Max and some of those city rendering programs, that would take up a heck of a lot of physical memory and would crash the game. So as Sim City is a city building simulation game, it currently looks great and to me most certainly looks to surpass Cities XL (and the performance should be heaps better too). You can't compare Sim City's graphics with SC4 since SC4 was more 2.5D. But looking at today's gaming graphics, Sim City looks awesome. To say it looks cartoonish from those screens is a little picky.

Also remember, they're not proper screens (infact, those screens above should of not had been posted and should get taken down, I thought GDC had tight security) and many changes and enhancements to the graphics could still yet come. Lets just wait a bit more for official info and screens.

[whrm33 2]

Well to be honest with a year or so to go, its far from early in development. Its almost 3/4ths done in a normal city builders development cycle. Personally I think the graphics capture the simcity style nicely.

Same thoughts. Comparing it to recent gaming graphics, it already looks great. You need to understand, it's a simulation game and can only be built on gaming graphics. You can't have all those fancy renders in 3DS Max and some of those city rendering programs, that would take up a heck of a lot of physical memory and would crash the game. So as Sim City is a city building simulation game, it currently looks great and to me most certainly looks to surpass Cities XL (and the performance should be heaps better too). You can't compare Sim City's graphics with SC4 since SC4 was more 2.5D. But looking at today's gaming graphics, Sim City looks awesome. To say it looks cartoonish from those screens is a little picky.

Also remember, they're not proper screens (infact, those screens above should of not had been posted and should get taken down, I thought GDC had tight security) and many changes and enhancements to the graphics could still yet come. Lets just wait a bit more for official info and screens.

And who knows, they might be showing a build from last year or something.

[koolkalang 2]

I hope a video of this will surface somewhere. I want to see how those buildings were placed.

[waybig 35]

The scale looks a lot better from what I can see...

[Prens 168]

(infact, those screens above should of not had been posted and should get taken down, I thought GDC had tight security)

They are most likely taken on a cellphone and quickly uploaded to an image host (such as twitpic)

The images are not very much to go on as yet. I hope the UI doesn't stay on the right side.

[croxis 150]

Looks like it is just a developer UI

[BIWDC 2,296]

Guys I just got this in a News letter from EA

link:Sim City official Site

Might be old news now but I thought I would post it.

  Edited March 8, 2012 by BIWDC  

[packersfan 666]

The killer for this game (if Glass Box is as good as it sounds it could be for this game) is if the developers, artists fail to use the 3D capabilities to the best of their ability. I mean, don't make a game that LOOKS like a cartoon game! Make it look like a professional presentation. Make the buildings look REAL!!! Make the world look REAL!!! I just watched an animation of what the 9/11 Memorial and WTC will look like someday and it blew my mind that they have the ability to make such realistic 3D animation, but when it comes to city builders, the tendency has been for Dr. Seussy cartoony buildings.

If you can't make the buildings look MORE realistic that SC4, don't even bother making the game!

[Firebird 40]

It looks so...cartoonish. I don't like it.

You do realize that this is VERY early in development, right?

Exactly. The point of the Glassbox presentation was to detail the 'under the hood' simulation engine... not show off fancy finished game graphics of a game that is still a year from release.

I've had to say this countless times in chat to people.

[snick25 384]

Video of some of this presentation can be found here:

http://www.joystiq.c...houses-and-all/

This first part looks a LOT like Cities XL (the traffic, roads and map)... of course, it is still in the early stages of development. The second part is neat, and the simulation seems pretty realistic. However, the graphics are horrible, but, again, I'm not expecting anything special at this point in development.

EDIT: More videos, showing more of the presentation:

http://www.hardwarec...-not-final-1of4

http://www.hardwarec...-not-final-2of4

http://www.hardwarec...-not-final-3of4

http://www.hardwarec...-not-final-4of4

  Edited March 9, 2012 by snick25  

[tSlater 134]

The killer for this game (if Glass Box is as good as it sounds it could be for this game) is if the developers, artists fail to use the 3D capabilities to the best of their ability. I mean, don't make a game that LOOKS like a cartoon game! Make it look like a professional presentation. Make the buildings look REAL!!! Make the world look REAL!!! I just watched an animation of what the 9/11 Memorial and WTC will look like someday and it blew my mind that they have the ability to make such realistic 3D animation, but when it comes to city builders, the tendency has been for Dr. Seussy cartoony buildings.

If you can't make the buildings look MORE realistic that SC4, don't even bother making the game!

But the thing is, that animation you watched was likely rendered over several hours despite being only a few minutes of video, if even that. To provide photorealism in 3d in realtime with a massive environment like a citybuilder -- and have it look good -- would require us to jump into the future a decade or even more.

[meowza 230]

It looks so...cartoonish. I don't like it.

You do realize that this is VERY early in development, right?

Exactly. The point of the Glassbox presentation was to detail the 'under the hood' simulation engine... not show off fancy finished game graphics of a game that is still a year from release.

I've had to say this countless times in chat to people.

Thank you for being very tolerant.

One sad part is that somebody uploaded the vids to youtube, without categorically stating that those were engine exhibitions. And worse, calling it Simcity 5 "EXCLUSIVE GAMEPLAY".

[TheRealDeadaim 38]

It looks so...cartoonish. I don't like it.

You do realize that this is VERY early in development, right?

Exactly. The point of the Glassbox presentation was to detail the 'under the hood' simulation engine... not show off fancy finished game graphics of a game that is still a year from release.

The buildings look ok considering it's clearly not a reprensation of the final graphics, but the ground and road does look very cartoony.

Impressive graphics on a simulator as complex as this can be done, just look at the total war series. It has an incredible number of calculations going on under the hood but still looks gorgeous during battles.

  Edited March 9, 2012 by TheRealDeadaim  

[Pandemic 32]

This image is on the SimCity website, as a banner sort of thing, do you think this is what the final product will look like?

[Simlock 3]

This image is on the SimCity website, as a banner sort of thing, do you think this is what the final product will look like?

Hope it does because it looks plain BEAUTIFUL.

[jacksunny 741]

If that's what it looked like, that would be awesome.

I'd much rather have the graphics look like this picture:

[TheRealDeadaim 38]

If that's what it looked like, that would be awesome.

I'd much rather have the graphics look like this picture:

That part of the trailer is where it said 'image not representative of the game' or something similar. I would love it to look like the majority of the trailer, but can't see it happening.

[TheRealDeadaim 38]

If that's what it looked like, that would be awesome.

I'd much rather have the graphics look like this picture:

That part of the trailer is where it said 'image not representative of the game' or something similar. I would love it to look like the pictures from the trailer as you saw buldings being plopped down and growing, but can't see it happening.

  Edited March 9, 2012 by TheRealDeadaim  

[User_3D 4]

It looks so...cartoonish. I don't like it.

I don't see how it's any more cartoonish than Sim City 4

[§haÅ--Ñ€ §hÅŽo 370]

I'm hoping it is at most as cartoony as the Sims 3. I want SimCity to look realistic.

  Edited March 9, 2012 by Sirron Kcuhc  

[RodC 7]

This image is on the SimCity website, as a banner sort of thing, do you think this is what the final product will look like?

Hope it does because it looks plain BEAUTIFUL.

Agreed.

[Eʟᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ 273]

I'm hoping it is at most as cartoony as the Sims 3. I want SimCity to look realistic.

The thing is, and I believe not that many people realize this but an extremely high amount of detail comes at cost to the custom content community. The higher the detail, the less people can create custom content because of its high level of difficulty and detailing to meet certain game standards.

[TekindusT 3,809]

@Element: Ther would have been no need of custom content (or not so much custom content) in SC4 if ther had been a much wider variety of buildings, better texturing, better scaling, more styles... If SC5 is capable of doing what our best BATters can do, the need for custom content will decrease (but not disappear) as more needs will be satisfied.

I'm quite worried about the pic Pandemic has shown. It just looks as SC3000 but with streamlined graphics. Wait and see, I guess...

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Well to be honest with a year or so to go, its far from early in development. Its almost 3/4ths done in a normal city builders development cycle. Personally I think the graphics capture the simcity style nicely.

Same thoughts. Comparing it to recent gaming graphics, it already looks great. You need to understand, it's a simulation game and can only be built on gaming graphics. You can't have all those fancy renders in 3DS Max and some of those city rendering programs, that would take up a heck of a lot of physical memory and would crash the game. So as Sim City is a city building simulation game, it currently looks great and to me most certainly looks to surpass Cities XL (and the performance should be heaps better too). You can't compare Sim City's graphics with SC4 since SC4 was more 2.5D. But looking at today's gaming graphics, Sim City looks awesome. To say it looks cartoonish from those screens is a little picky.

Also remember, they're not proper screens (infact, those screens above should of not had been posted and should get taken down, I thought GDC had tight security) and many changes and enhancements to the graphics could still yet come. Lets just wait a bit more for official info and screens.

Wrongo! The game itself is only 1/3 of the way done (not counting planning), it is very early in the art development (there seems to be only one factory, 2 houses, and 2 shops) and they said that at one point they had only 1 building per occupant type.