EatChildren said: There were no effects in the garden/bird demo that are 'not possible' on the current gen. Click to expand...

Epic said: Image-based reflections that allow surfaces of any shape to reflect an approximate version of scenes, with varying glossiness across surfaces, anisotropic HDR highlights and anti-aliasing Click to expand...

Epic said: Subsurface scattering (SSS) that simulates the light that scatters inside semi-translucent materials, which makes character skin come alive Click to expand...

Epic said: Anti-aliased masked materials that super sample the edges of masked and alpha-tested materials, resulting in highly realistic hair Click to expand...

Epic said: Deferred rendering with MSAA support Click to expand...

Epic said: Bokeh depth of field providing close to film-quality DOF, with artist-controllable Bokeh Click to expand...

Epic said: High-quality dynamic shadows from many lights on the environment. Click to expand...

In all honesty, I'm kinda wracking my brain thinking of what kind of effects we reallybe expecting from the next generation. You brought up tessellation on the page after this post, which is a pretty good one (subtle, but if you look at comparison shots the "tessellation on" shots always look better; things like Adam Jensen's trenchcoat's collar being rounder, or some statues inhaving physical bumps on them as opposed to mere bumpmaps). Obvious ones are 1080p standard (instead of 720p standard, and often), better AA/AF (not sure how this is on HD consoles, never really analyzed it).Samaritan is often cited as what next-gen titles should be pushing for, and just going through Epic's bulletpoints here I thought was already standard (thinking of Source's cubemap feature) - is this some kind of realtime version? That'd actually be pretty awesome.Not familiar with SSS. The screens they show don't really look much different from current gen; this might be one of those times where some kind of before/after shot would greatly help, because I'm not seeing it just yet.ED: Decided to go looking. Found this, but aside from the image on the right being redder (which is admittedly more like what skin looks like), it's... eh. On the other hand, I stumbled again upon this CryEngine shot , which admittedlyhave some pretty realistic-looking faces... so this is totally not possible on modern consoles?Actually, having characters with hair next gen would be pretty nice. So many bald characters. Most attempts to avert it, like, come off as looking kinda like clay.Falls in line with my "more AA" guess, I guess.This was the only one of those I remembered off the top of my head. Although, I'm not sure if having an intensely small DOF would really be beneficial for a video game, outside of cutscenes, or games taking place on a 2D plane where the designers decided having a legible background is really reallyunimportant...Isn't this already possible? I mean, they're more expensive than a used cartridge-only copy of, but I know I've seen screens from various games (mostly PC) with plenty of self-shadowing, dynamic shadows etc.Maybe I'm just spoiled and jaded as part of the so-called "PC gaming master race", but most of the changes here sound too subtle to pop another several hundred dollars for a new machine. There's gotta be something more obvious to point to and say "yes, this is not possible on my current rig, I must buy this now". I'm not excluding Wii U from this at all, mind; while the bird demo was impressive (I love that rain segment), nothing exactly jumped out at me as "this has never, ever been done before".I dunno, I'm just concerned we're hitting the point of diminishing returns - which is kind of hard to fathom, after every console generation jump prior being so. 3rd generation (NES) -> 4th (Genesis/SNES) had huge and immediately obvious graphical/visual updates. 4th -> 5th (N64/PS1/Saturn) had the introduction of non-rudimentary 3D. 5th -> 6th (Dreamcast/Gamecube/PS2/Xbox) had much higher-quality 3D assets. 6th -> 7th (PS3/Xbox 360/Wii) had further higher-quality 3D assets, in addition to HD. What7th -> 8th introduce?At least the Wii U has that tablet, which would sort of reproduce mechanics that would previously only work on the DS/3DS on a home console...