Where has all the realism gone?

[joerg 281]

I grew up with SimCity, and have been playing the games since the early 90s. Every single one of them got better and better until Simcity Societies when either I got to old for a Sim City game, or EA and Maxis decided they needed a new target audience. I played SimCity in order to create my dream cities, the problem is my dream has always been one a bit more grounded in reality. If I play Minecraft for example I build structures that might be able to realistically stand on their own rather than floating lava towers made of diamond. Every bit of who I am as a gamer today was shaped by those initial years of playing SC2K, 3K and 4. I remember calling in sick from school the day SC4 came out and from that point forward I devoted hours of my life to playing it, modding it, making BATs, and playing it some more. All of that love for the series came from the concept of achieving a realistic dream, a dream which could actually exist in the real world, one in which I could base my ideas on reality.

Why is it that Maxis is so very afraid of realism? Everything from the costs of buildings and taxes, to the scale and populations are so far gone from reality. I know there is an entire thread dedicated to map size limitations, but seriously maxis don't you freaking understand anything about the idea of a city? My home town of 48,383 people would barely fit onto a 10x10km map..... ok so lets say scale isn't perfect and players tend to add less buffer area between zones and stuff than in reality so maybe we could squeeze that same city into a 5x5km map if we really tried.... NO, Maxis expects me to put 200k people on a freaking 2x2km area! just no. I understand that maybe processing power became a limiting factor because you are forced to calculate the dietary habits of a million sims in a freaking city building game.... I can understand that, but make it a population limit then not a city size limit. Heck I would be fine with a 10x10km area with a max pop of 500k people. Theoretically it shouldn't take anymore processing power to calculate the eating habits of 500k sims on a 100km2 map than a 4km2 map. If its an issue of graphical power then I am going to just laugh and say Maxis needed to rethink its graphics engine of choice then. There are tons of games out there rendering much larger areas with significantly more detail than what SC2013 seems to posses. Heck I wanted bigger cities in SC4, but I was never going to win that argument, at least not with the sloppy coding that made the game such a resource hog (ran nearly the same on my old old althon 1.4ghz with 1Gb of ram as it does on my six core I7 with 16Gbs of ram). Alteast there are regions though right? so that you can choose your own connections between cities and zoom out to region view and see your awesome creation from a single fixed perpective? Nope, seriously why in the world did you guys make connections preset and then add a 10 mile wide buffer between your city and its neighbor city?

The question of scale bothers me even further. In SC4 they were moving in the right direction with the addition of suspension bridges that actually looked like they didn't belong in a cartoon caricature of a city. They still had some work to do though, airports for example were so small that even a real life aircraft carrier would have dwarfed them. Now in SC2013 they decided that the bridges needed to go back to looking like cartoon caricatures of the real things, and that airports needed to consume an entire city tile.... Seriously guys? Why can't you get them both right at the same time? its not like this is a guessing game, we have these things called measurements.

On the subject of population, I have seen many screenshots showing cities with populations of around 200k, but some even showing 700k. Lets say that most well developed cities in the game would achieve a population of around 240k. That puts the density at 60,000 sims per kilometer. The densest city in the world is Manila, at 40k people per Km... New York city, still a fairly dense city even by european standards has a density of around 14,000 people per square km making it about 1/4 as dense as an average well developed SC 2013 city. Seems like easy math to me. Was the design decision basically that people like big numbers so we should lie a bit and say that 25 sims live in a house?

Speaking of numbers, why can't things cost a realistic amount? Sure Ill take 30 schools at $5,000 each Bob! I just don't get it... a school costs a couple million to build. Cities rake in millions in revenue quarterly. We also calculate that revenue quarterly and even yearly in many cases, so why does maxis insist on hourly revenue? Are our attention spans that short that the thought of waiting for more than an hour of game time to balance our budget just makes us loose it?

I know this is negative, and I am of a minority that wants extreme realism. However, I would love to see some middle ground here, maybe cities slightly larger with a population cap and the ability to only simulate traffic patterns, job needs, and income levels with 1 in 10 sims simulating everything and then extrapolating that data to the other 9 sims similar to them? That would dramatically simplify the processor load and give us bigger maps. If it is graphics limited then for crying out loud just give us simple lods again at longer view distances, and use that awesome tiltshift shader tech for something useful and just don't render those out of focus elements. Making data values like population and costs realistic is as simple as changing a couple numbers around, and you could even have a realism mode in the game! As for scale, there is just no excuse, if maps were the size they needed to be then you wouldn't be forced to make a suspension bridge 1/10th its normal size and still leave buildings their proper size.

If you read this far then sorry for this massive rant, I just miss the game I grew up with, and the idea of being able to do things even somewhat realistically. That is what a SIMulation game is supposed to do right, realistically simulate things?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

SimCity 4 is not realistic either. It has higher population than what is realistic, unless you use the CAM. Also, most models from SimCity 4 made it into the new SimCity.

--Ocram

[Jasoncw 11,949]

SimCity 4 is not realistic either. It has higher population than what is realistic, unless you use the CAM. Also, most models from SimCity 4 made it into the new SimCity.

--Ocram

None of the buildings from SC4 are in the new SimCity, or, if they decided to include a few that I haven't noticed, they remade them.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Joerg! While it is a pleasant surprise to see one of the really old hands here again, the occasion could certainly be more pleasant... I read through your entire rant, and I can relate to it very much.

The only point where I don't quite agree with you is the money amounts. It would be awfully cumbersome to handle 7-digit figures (and upwards!) all the time, and it wouldn't be that important whether your new college costs §25,867,750 or §25,499,628 - why not just leave rounded amounts and ditch the last few zeroes for the sake of readability? As long as the scale is realistic (tax income vs. plop costs), the particular figures don't matter that much.

-----------

This makes me think of another factor that I haven't seen addressed so far in all the lengthy discussions about SC2013, but that IMO is relevant: It's been a while, and the game has been with us. We have matured alongside it, we have learnt new things on our own and in communities like this one. We have delved into the matter of city planning and building, of transport system layouts and building architecture.

I remember when a BATter called lambsquirter showed his Central Plaza BAT. Back then, it was just another shiny skyscraper to me, and when another young BATter called paulvmontfort replied and said that the actual Central Plaza had a triangular and not a square footprint, I thought "Well, that may be, but is it that important? It's just a skyscraper for SimCity."

And today? Today I know dozens of skyscrapers around the world by name, and not only that. Rail nuts taught me a lot about laying out rail lines, road nuts did the same for roads. Others have shown and explained how to lay out a realistic seaport, and not to forget the modular airport packs! Behind each of these mods, there is knowledge of the real-life counterpart that made the respective authors discontent with the default stuff and motivated them to offer something better. And with each of these mods, part of that background knowledge trickled into the community, slowly accumulating in the more eager custom content users and community followers - alongside their increasing age and general life experience.

I think that all this results in higher expectations and a better eye for shortcomings. I don't like most of what I see of SC2013, either, but I sometimes wonder what I'd think if I were ten yours younger and didn't have any of the experience I have gathered through the custom content community... I guess I still wouldn't like several directions this game is heading towards, but other issues - realism being one of them - would probably not hit me as hard as they do now.

[Dewm 177]

^good post.

[Burndawg 3]

well said TWrecks

[SilverCyric 131]

I totally agree. They have a loyal fan base and look how much research data this site alone has given them into what the people want. It would be so simple, and so wrong too, to grab all the custom content and release in several "expansion packs" Heck, their entire next game could be snatched up from all the UGC alone!! I'm with you brother, They're messing with the very basics of the game. To create a realistic looking city as I imagine it. And there is nothing wrong with wanting realism. I've always thought that cartoonish graphics were a crutch for amateur work, especially considering it's an adult game. Of course kids can play and enjoy, but it takes a more working understanding of the world to truly understand a real Simcity game. I loved the game growing up, but I never appreciated how truly indepth you could take the game. I say rant, I know they want more newer fans to buy the game, but if you scorn the people that built the franchise, well, you're just an idiot...

I totally agree. They have a loyal fan base and look how much research data this site alone has given them into what the people want. It would be so simple, and so wrong too, to grab all the custom content and release in several "expansion packs" Heck, their entire next game could be snatched up from all the UGC alone!! I'm with you brother, They're messing with the very basics of the game. To create a realistic looking city as I imagine it. And there is nothing wrong with wanting realism. I've always thought that cartoonish graphics were a crutch for amateur work, especially considering it's an adult game. Of course kids can play and enjoy, but it takes a more working understanding of the world to truly understand a real Simcity game. I loved the game growing up, but I never appreciated how truly indepth you could take the game. I say rant, I know they want more newer fans to buy the game, but if you scorn the people that built the franchise, well, you're just an idiot...

[Xenocity 343]

Simcity has never had realistic graphics.

Simcity has always had an cartoony style to it.

Simcity (original) had cartoony graphics (just look at it the picture above)

Simcity 2000 looks more cartoonish than the original (pictured above)

Simcity 3000 looks just as cartoonish as Simcity 2000 (pictured above)

Simcity 4 is the ugliest version impart because they used a bland artstyle.

What's more cartoonish than a UFO attacking your city? Seriously I'm asking!

Simcity 2013 returned us back to the Simcity 2000/Simcity 3000 look.

I personally love the cartoonish look because it fits the game better than a dull realistic look.

Here is a new feature you can use in Simcity 2013:

I think the color filters are cool.

But it after spending a decade moding Simcity 4 to your liking, many of you will never be happy with a new Simcity unless it is a Simcity 4 2.0!

[Cockatoo 2,257]

Nice post OP. Don't agree with you on the money thing, but I hear you on the rest.

Modded SC4 allowed us to get as close to reality as will ever be possible with a 2.5D game. If you could somehow render it from a non-isometric perspective, with the right BATs and modds, it'd actually look pretty damn close to real. So we've become quite spoiled when it comes to realism and we tend to expect a lot.

T Wrecks is spot-bloody-on here. I've been thinking the same for a long while now, I've just never said it. After all the 3D rendering I've done, a hobby which developed out of making stuff for SC4, I probably wouldn't be truly satisfied with a new SC game until I couldn't tell it from a photograph. But I know I'm part of a tiny minority of people who'd actually give a damn about details most wouldn't even notice. I know that even if they did take a more realistic approach, just as we do with our BAT's, I'd just say... make it better! Model the weeds between the cracks! Fix the shape of the curtains behind that glass!

I never expected Maxis to give us exact reality, I knew that wouldn't be possible, especially in a 3D game. But I did want them to give me something that at least hints at reality enough so as my imagination can fill in the rest. Even with its 256 colours, SC2K could do that. It was realistic enough in the sense that my imagination could do the rest. So was SC3K and of course 4. But this one isn't. It's the huge empty buffers and the toyish miniaturised graphics (tilt-shift) and the giant moons ruin the whole illusion. I want my city to feel BIG, not small. Lol, the more I think about it, the more I can’t get my head around some of the decisions taken my Maxis. Since when has anyone ever said… I wish my city felt smaller.

If it weren’t for these simple problems, not the ones relating directly to me as I detailed earlier, I’d overlook the online issue and buy it. But I can’t. My hope now is that Maxis, after getting feedback from people who aren’t us, will release a second edition geared more toward what we all expect from an SC game. I don't need perfectly proportioned buildings or immaculate detailed props, I just want something that hints at them... I want big sprawling kick-ass cities that you can almost imagine are real.

[MariusMR 124]

Post-SimCity 4 the developers have been more interested in telling us how we should play, what we should think about and where we should go with a city than actually giving us the tools, freedom and ability to intuitively, creatively, independently and individually design, build, lay out, connect and plan cities - realistic or not, one tile or an entire region, on earth or elsewhere.

The SimCity franchise, starting with SimCity Societies, has become a patronising, condescending gaming entity that underestimates my intelligence and ability, and pretends to know what is in my best interest and what I should need, want or pursue.

I resent that.

"Challenge everything". It is so fitting that it is whispered and proclaimed at the launch of SimCity 4. Challenge everything. Since, that has not been the invocation from Maxis / EA or any other entity involved in our beloved franchise.

I'll stick to SimCity 4 largely because I absolutely love it, but also because of the freedom, the passion, and the many years of dedication and commitment to improving the last real SimCity installment that placed us - the player - at the centre of it all.

[Herdervriend 46]

What I must ask is. Aren't they just making this game look cartoonish because a realistic view demands serious power, which most people do not got on there cheap pc?

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Here is a new feature you can use in Simcity 2013:

I think the color filters are cool

Wow! Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to present... SIMstagram!

*scnr*

@Herdervriend: I replied to pretty much the same assumption just yesterday, in some other thread. Sys requirements due to graphics are based on screen resolution, field of view, number of objects, polygon count, dynamic lighting effects, shadow quality, texture map size, texture colour depth, anti-aliasing. and so on...

In short, a simple low-polygon model with a small, but realistic texture on a medium screen resolution with medium shadow quality will require considerably less power than a complex, high-poly model with a large, high-resolution texture that looks totally cartoonish on high screen resolution and high shadow quality.

Any shift of a game's overall graphics appearance on the axis from "Cartoonish" to "Realistic" (no game will ever be entirely realistic) is based on conceptual and design-related decisions and not on resources. One example I mentioned in that thread is Borderlands 2 - pretty high system requirements, and the graphics have a clear and intentional exaggerated and cartoonish look to them.

For example, take one and the same set of two buildings, representing a Police Department and a Fire Department. Give them realistic wall textures, and you have a realistic look. Give them shiny blue (PD) and red (FD) textures, and you have a cartoonish look. System requirements would remain totally identical in this scenario, the appearance of the building wouldn't.

[K-os 30]

Excellent post OP, I've thought many of the same things.

[Jim14409 448]

< snip >

Like some others here, I agree except for the money thing. Realism or the nearness to realism is important to me as well. I enjoyed and appreciate your "rant" and glad there are others who feel as passionately about such things as I do, including the foolishness of some developers. Thank you.

Simcity has never had realistic graphics.

Simcity has always had an cartoony style to it.

Simcity (original) had cartoony graphics (just look at it the picture above)

Simcity 2000 looks more cartoonish than the original (pictured above)

Simcity 3000 looks just as cartoonish as Simcity 2000 (pictured above)

Simcity 4 is the ugliest version impart because they used a bland artstyle.

What's more cartoonish than a UFO attacking your city? Seriously I'm asking!

Simcity 2013 returned us back to the Simcity 2000/Simcity 3000 look.

I personally love the cartoonish look because it fits the game better than a dull realistic look.

Different tastes in graphics, I understand that although I prefer the more realistic look. Have you considered the ability of the hardware back in the early days of the game? I think the "cartoonish" look was a product of the limited graphics cards and processors that were available to the average customer over a decade ago. SC4 reveals that the game evolved not only in gameplay but in the look of the graphics as computing power evolved.

< snip >

Any shift of a game's overall graphics appearance on the axis from "Cartoonish" to "Realistic" (no game will ever be entirely realistic) is based on...

I hope that statement proves to be false someday I will probably be dead and gone but I think computer games will one day fill a room with a hologram type imagery and with the help of devices the player wears one will walk, ride, drive and even go in and out of buildings. It will be hard to tell reality from a created world. Not only will this be in games but the scenic wonders of the world will be at our disposal without leaving home. Many of these concepts are undergoing study and are in the ealy stages similar to the invention of the telephone, television, or the internet.

[Cob92 360]

Even SC4 had a somewhat stylized art direction, despite being more realism-oriented. The gritty, ultra-realistic graphics didn't exist until people modded the game to be that way.

[croxis 150]

As I posted in another thread, realistic graphics don't age well. I compared world of warcraft, a game with highly stylized graphics, to flight simulator 2004 which came out the same year, which was praised for its photorealism.

Vanilla WOW. Definitely stating to show its age. Look at the resolution of the rock texture for example. Even today it still looks decent despite the polygon count and texture sizes.

Flight simulator 2004. This was herald as "photo realistic."

I just flat out disagree with T Wreck's statement that photorealism works better at lower resolution than stylized. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

[joerg 281]

I think I may have been miss understood a bit here. My point has little to do with the realism of the graphics (afterall graphics are the easiest things in a game to mod), and more to do with realistic limitations to the game. Things like scale can never be truly corrected for once EA decides to ignore it, or the incredibly small map size and limited region abilities. These things would take years for modders to even begn to correct, but were fundamental decisions that clearly Maxis had to make in the early days of SC 2013's development that are now going to be incredibly tough to change. The point is we needed a solid foundation where even if it didn't look realistic the simulation could still be realistic and the ideas of what actually happens in a city could remain intact.

These issues are over arching and cascade through the game changing everything. Lets take the map size and scale issue and look at them a bit more in depth. The game will have a 2x2km map, as stated before this is significantly smaller than even the smallest of real world "cities". If I lived in the middle of a 2x2km city I would never need a car, my longest round trip would be less than 2 miles even to the corners, consequently from a realism standpoint I no longer need large roads or parking structures. Obviously the get around this issue of cars becoming insignificant developers had to change scale to make the issues of a smaller map size less significant, there by opening a whole new can of worms. One of the greatest joys for many players is laying out and maintaining the transportation networks of their cities. How important could a transportation network possibly be when a Sim could walk any where in their city in 10 minutes???? Oh wait Maxis opened up another can full of worms to fix that issue, lets make certain income brackets less likely to walk to work. This idea while good in theory has been put in place as a solution to a problem caused 10 layers back and not as an added bit of realism. And the issue of map size and scale cascades even further. Maxis knows its players want huge populations despite what a 4km^2 area should hold in real life, so they make buildings and houses hold more people than they should, allowing populations to soar while still keeping the map size small. Then they have the issue of radius for fire, education, healthcare and safety. A single police department should easily be able to handle a 4km^2 area in reality, but that would make the game to easy so instead you need 10. All of these issues stem back to a fundamentally poor decision to give us extremely tiny maps, a decision that will impact every piece of the simulation and force maxis to try and correct for these issues by creating all new issues.

My point goes back to the idea that to create a realistic simulation we needed realistic scale and map sizes. I suggest realistic monetary values not because I want to be an accountant and wade through mountains of million dollar values, but simply because Maxis seems to be doing a poor job of scaling real values to a more manageable number, using something closer to the real values would have insured they couldn't have messed it up.

I don't expect breathtakingly realistic graphics, and am quite content with the graphics i have seen so far despite being way over saturated (thankyou optional filters). What I did expect was at least a suitable ground work for a realistic simulation. One that would allow me to at least realistically need a highway system and train system to get my sims from place to place. The idea of tracking every sim individually is awesome, but when they can never move more than a couple kms it seems a bit pointless. I just don't see the fun in being forced to build cities so inherently unrealistic.

BTW way off topic, but I have been out of the game for years now and would love to play some SC4 again, but cant imagine doing so without some mods. Are there any mod packs or mod loaders out there that make installing 500+ bats, mods, and dependencies any easier or is it still like a 2 day long process of tracking down files and installing everything one by one like it used to be? Wish I could just download someones dat file and be done. Sorry for the off topic question that probably has an answer somewhere in the forums

[Urban Cartographer 601]

In another thread, I once stated that stylized art direction works better on weaker systems, but stylized graphics do not require lower system requirements.

Let me bring up Dark Cloud 2 and Wind Waker. Both are console video games made in 2002/2003 with cel-shaded graphics (though the GameCube has a stronger processor and the PS2 has larger capacity). Click on the links to view the art direction of those two games. Yes, their art direction still looks good today (which is a decade later).

SimCity never had realistic graphics. Regarding SC4, it was the modders who added in most of the realistic textures to buildings (realistic textures were quite rare in SC4 Deluxe (straight out of the box) even).

I am not defending stylized graphics nor am I wanting realistic graphics.

[7238320 77]

BTW way off topic, but I have been out of the game for years now and would love to play some SC4 again, but cant imagine doing so without some mods. Are there any mod packs or mod loaders out there that make installing 500+ bats, mods, and dependencies any easier or is it still like a 2 day long process of tracking down files and installing everything one by one like it used to be? Wish I could just download someones dat file and be done. Sorry for the off topic question that probably has an answer somewhere in the forums

Most the major sites have Custom Content available on CD / DVD for a donation... other than that, it's the old hunt and peck - bulk distribution is still not allowed and asking for it is still frowned upon.

[Xenocity 343]

@Jim14409

The competing games to Simcity have always had more realistic graphics even back in 1990.

Maxis games have always been more colorful and cartoonish than the competitors.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I just flat out disagree with T Wreck's statement that photorealism works better at lower resolution than stylized. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

And where, pray tell me, did I say that? I've read my post again for three times now, and you have me totally lost. I repeat my question: What are you referring to?

[The Big Z 103]

I agree quite a bit with T Wrecks's comment and want to just add a little of my own opinion to SC2013. When I think back on my first exposure to SimCity, it was SC2k in the mid-1990's. Ever since then, SC has been one of my favorite, if not my favorite, video games. The one aspect of SC4 that I find to be exceptional is its ability to be modded and altered, customized even, for the specific customer. That in and of itself has kept many people playing it since its release. My only hope for SC2013 is that Maxis keeps the ability for customization, and I'm interested to see, if it does happen, how it will be implemented. I couldn't be more excited about a new SC as I refused to even contemplate buying SC Societies.

[croxis 150]

I just flat out disagree with T Wreck's statement that photorealism works better at lower resolution than stylized. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

And where, pray tell me, did I say that? I've read my post again for three times now, and you have me totally lost. I repeat my question: What are you referring to?

"Any shift of a game's overall graphics appearance on the axis from "Cartoonish" to "Realistic" (no game will ever be entirely realistic) is based on conceptual and design-related decisions and not on resources. One example I mentioned in that thread is Borderlands 2 - pretty high system requirements, and the graphics have a clear and intentional exaggerated and cartoonish look to them."

As far as the scale and gameplay realism issues, for me a game is like reading fiction or watching a movie. Suspend my belief. The sims is a really great example. I know how much it costs to work on a house and buying building materials. The in game prices and wages are hardly reallistic. But it is internally coherent and I can enjoy it.

There is some old phrase that I can't remember exactly, that people wont believe true stories because they think it is unrealistic. Simulating real life has that same effect on a game. I've read numerous dev blogs from different designers and it seems to be a common story. They try to be realistic and it ends up making their game either unbelivable, unfun, unplayable, or some combo of the three.

[jigsaw 227]

welcome back joerg,

great to see the old school members returning.

(i'd fall off my chair if oppie turned up)

[T Wrecks 10,210]

As far as the scale and gameplay realism issues, for me a game is like reading fiction or watching a movie. Suspend my belief. The sims is a really great example. I know how much it costs to work on a house and buying building materials. The in game prices and wages are hardly reallistic. But it is internally coherent and I can enjoy it.

Erm... yes... and once again, what does this have to do with what I wrote? I fail to see even the most remote connection. This feels more and more Kafkaesque.

I was talking about graphics. Graphics style, graphics concept. Nothing but graphics. Not prices that are made more manageable by slashing the last five zeroes (which I agree with you makes perfect sense). The topic was graphics and how they affect system performance. Graphics and the hardware you need to enjoy them.

What followed were wild comparisons between totally dissimilar genres (a fantasy action game and a flight simulator - really?), an excursion to totally different questions (how well do graphics age?) and replies to things I never said.

_____________

I'll try again. We are talking about the graphics of SimCity2013. Herdervriend picked up the assumption I highlighted above and asked a question - I quote:

Aren't they just making this game look cartoonish because a realistic view demands serious power, which most people do not got on there cheap pc?

This was the starting point.

Now take the graphics of SC2013. Take any building. And now please tell me how the graphics would be more demanding if Maxis used textures that make the building look less shiny like plastics? It would be the same model, same polygon count, same texture map size, same graphics engine, same settings, just a less cartoonish texture. Now explain to me how this would change system requirements. Now explain to me how this is not a conscious artwork decision ("I'll take this texture instead of that one"). Explain to me how switching between two identically sized textures would influence system requirements.

Another one: Imagine you have a given graphics engine. Imagine you have a model with 2,000 polygons (the number doesn't matter, it's just an example) and a size of 50x50 metres in game (SimMetres, if you will). Imagine that model looks like this one to the left:

Yes, that's a giant pipe spewing sewage into the environment. Yes, those are some smooth and shiny textures. That's what I call cartoonish. And now imagine you'd make a different model - same size, same polygon count, same texture resolution, same settings - all in the same graphics engine. Just a bit more realistic - different textures, different shape, no giant pipes coming out of the ground. A building like you'd see it in real life. And now explain to me how this equally sized model with the same polygon count and the same texture resolution and identical settings, running on the same graphics engine, would use more hardware resources. Tell me how that's a decision based on system requirements and not on art concept.

(On a side note, at this point you may even compare both of the above screenshots to the water treatment plant in SC4 and tell me how SC4 is equally unrealistic.)

Or take this one:

Fire stations are all red, police stations are all blue. Same sermon as above: Substitute those glaring colours with a more subtle and realistic colour, how do system requirements skyrocket? Please explain.

No flight simulators or WoW, no different questions like "how well do games age?" or "why not keep costs limited to small numbers that only give a sense of proportion, but keep the illusion alive?", just a logical explanation as to why what I said is wrong.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

^^ To support this point in SimCity 4, just compare the RHW 2.0 textures with the current livery. The old textures were detailed, but they did look cartoonish too. The new textures may not have things like cat's eyes (that was a design decision), they do look much more realistic, despite that they have no change in resolution whatsoever:

It's not about what tools you have; it's how you use them

[Jim14409 448]

@Jim14409

The competing games to Simcity have always had more realistic graphics even back in 1990.

Maxis games have always been more colorful and cartoonish than the competitors.

I don't know what video cards or what monitors you have had down through the years, and I don't know your definitions of "cartoonish" or "realistic" but I simply cannot agree with your statement.

As I have suggested before I believe the early versions of SC were mostly a result of the available graphics rendering power. Each release improved toward the more realistic buildings and infrastructure that plain ole SC4 Rush Hour provides.

Go back and look (I just did) at the ploppable buildings that came with SC4 and Rush Hour. I find nothing cartoonish or even remotely similar to what SC13 is producing. Big Ben, the Washington Monument, The St Louis Arch, The White House and on an on are portrayed as realistic buildings that look as close to realism as the 2003 graphics allowed.

As for other buildings that came with SC4, most of them are fictional buildings to my knowledge and they are in most cases ornate and colorful, but still present as having very realistic possibilities, especially when viewed with the graphics power available in 2003. Being fictional does not equate to being "cartoonish" or unrealistic in appearance.

I view Tropico, SM Railroads, Societies, 1602, 1503, Dawn of Discovery, among others I have and do play as being more cartoonish than I ever could SC4.

If SC4 has always been so "cartoonish" then why is it that batters etc did not start out creating cartoonish stuff? I'll tell you why, because they wanted their work to blend in to what came before them.

Anyone who says SC4 is cartoonish has a very different definition of the word than I do. If you want to see Cartoonish then look at SC2013. I find it a total turnoff in many aspect and the "look" is a major one. Thank you.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

So, there seems be a misunderstanding about what a cartoonish look is. Well, I'll say what I define as cartoonish

• Bright colours
  This is an obvious one. Often you see a bright and joyful colour palette when you look at cartoons and (old) comics, whilst more realistic graphics often show more nuanced and less saturated colours. It may symbolise the simplistic world of cartoons versus the complex world of reality and also the less serious matter of cartoons. SimCity 2013 uses a bright colour palette as a standard; SimCity 4 does that in a far lesser extend (but yes, some elements like the water will only look really good with mods to de-saturize them)
  
• Lack of (subtle) details
  Cartoonish graphics are often simple of shape, but not only that: they are also more simple when it comes to texture. Now I know what you may think: "But Maarten, I see quite detailed textures in SimCity 2013, like buildings where you can see the individual bricks. How can't that be not detailed enough for you?" Well, look again. Isn't it a bit too much of a coincidence that all bricks have the exact same colour shade? Why does every brick have a flat colour shade and no noise at all? Where are the weathering effects, like growth of moss, rain trails, etc? Those are really subtle details, something you can actually notice in quite some SimCity 4 buildings where this type of detailing is present. All with all makes the buildings in SimCity 2013 look more plastic, cartoonish and newer than they actually are, making it less convincing for being a real city.
  
• Disproportinal scale
  Remember when you watch cartoons the most expressive parts of the body, like the face and hands, are big compared to the rest of the body? It makes them more expressive, but also less realistic. SimCity 4 did have some things that were disproportional (especially the too small interchanges from the Maxis Highway), but it wasn't that much obvious. SimCity 2013 seems to suffer quite hard from this type of cartoonishness: not only are the cities small, but you seem to need an awful lot of four lane roads, even in residential suburbs, which looks totally overscaled. On the other hand is a 2x2 km skyscraper city underscaled and that looks cartoonish too. Too big items, too small items, it all lacks of realism. Also, the cars in SimCity 2013 seem to be zooming by at speeds that are even scary on the german Autobahn and although the roads are wide, their lanes are so narrow that there's little room for error (seriously, are these cars supposed to be controlled by machines?).
  
• Caricatures and off colours
  In cartoons, the characters are often caricatures: characters with exorbitant and associative appearances underlying their most notable character feats. It's also not uncommon that therefore, some colours are off to make something stand out, or colour something that recalls an association with a certain thing that in reality doesn't have that colour. For instance, a red building in SimCity 2013? That must be a fire station! But are fire stations in reality painted red? No. SimCity 2013 only gives a caricature of a fire station, not a fire station that you can find in reality. SimCity 4 was more subtle about this.
  

Therefore, I think SimCity 2013 looks more cartoonish than SimCity 4.

Best,

Maarten

[MPleines 17]

I have to agree with the OP here.

OK, I would have preferred more realistic graphics, but the current graphics do look good, particularly in the display of data-layers, and who knows, a more realistic pack might be possible as DLC later on; here's hoping!

Having said that, the realism of the underlying simulation is much more important, and in its current form, there may be too much of a compromise between realistic scaling of population, area and performance. It might just be OK for small towns, but it might begin to look silly once cities become exceedingly crowded. They may look like isolated downtown areas (which, BTW, probably do have much higher densities than those mentioned earlier in the thread in real life too; Manhattan would have a much higher density than Greater NYC with Queens, Harlem and Brooklyn etc. included)

The devs have mentioned trying out a system where city tiles could be adjacent like in SC4, but they thought it didn't look good because the neighbouring cities, being dormant while the main city is active, looked dead and unnatural. Still, I wish they'd taken that route.

The money...I'm not so sure...what with the worries about the fiscal cliff, budget capping and the deficit playing havoc with the dollar/simoleon exchange rate...

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I don't mind cartoonish textures as long as I can eventually get "Texture Pack" modifications or plugins. The shape and models are also exaggerated and caricaturized.

--Ocram