Ok, let's be realistic here and take a dose of reality.

The way that the character textures are created is that they are taking photographs of the original actors and mapping them onto the models.  So why don't the characters look closer to the actual actors?  It's actually pretty simple:

1. There is a limited amount of texture space available for each character.  This is determined by the testing that they've done on the engine.  MMO's have it particularly hard because of the lack of control.  A very large number of characters can appear in the same place, bogging down your system.  Odds are that the character facial textures are no larger than 512x512 for the whole head.  That's a far cry less quality than even a 1 megapixel camera.
2. Human bodies and faces are all very different.  We come in all shapes and sizes.  In an ideal world, the game models would be able to do the same.  In practice, though, they can't.  Just like with textures, there needs to be an economy in creating game models.  Character models are created with the fewest polygons possible to still get the point across.  This severely limits how much the team can do to tweak individual characters to match their real-world counterparts.  Samantha, for example, has an extremely distinctive heart-shaped face with a somewhat pointed chin.  Teal'C has an unusually large head with very unique proportions.  If the art team had been able to put the photo-sourced textures onto geometrically accurate models, the characters would look a lot more like their sources than they do.  But that would have meant spending time modeling and rigging individually accurate models.  That's just not practical, no matter how much they might have liked to do so.  Instead, the team used the body, head and hair assets that come closest to the characters. 

Look at Everquest 2 and Vanguard with all their many, many options for customizing and tweaking your character's face and body structures.  Wait!  Those sliders are mostly gone now.  The reason is that allowing that level of customization was wrecking performance for all but the most powerful machines.

Look at Age of Conan.  Yep, there are lots of customization sliders there again.  But they pull that off by severely instancing the game and greatly limiting how many players can be in any zone.  The massive 200 vs. 200 PvP battles that they'd advertised prior to launch were made impossible by the shear level of character detail.

Now consider Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  The Secret Apprentice character was played by Sam Witwer www.imdb.com/name/nm1022429/.  He was created the same way that the Stargate characters have been created, using photo sources for the texture work.  Because he's one of a very few hero characters in the game, the team was able to spend a lot of time on him and devote a lot more geometry than could go into an MMO model.  They weren't working with a cast of thousands.  Yet even with all of that, the final character still doesn't look like a perfect replica of the actor.  It's a very good likeness, but still not perfect.

The bottom line is that these SG-1 characters look close enough to their sources that you know who they are without actually breaking the limits that are imposed by MMO development. It's not perfect, but that would be impossible.

LOL Look at Teal'c his hands

I don't want to play it unless SG-1 looks like the SG-1 I've come to know and love.

Kurt Russell ftw.

Richard Dean Anderson = old used sock.

If this is going to be another game where the players are so anal about lore that the devs can't make the game fun, forget it.  That's the biggest problem I see with several games based on books/movies.  It just opens the doors for the Dorks to come out in full force.  

You'd think that all these SG fans would be excited to get an SG game which is more than they have now.  Instead, they're pissing and moaning about the graphics of the first screenshot from a early build of the game.    Go figure....

wow, i think ill be able to play this game on an n64,as bad as the graphics are. At least theres STO to look up to.

I have watched SG-1 off and on with various interest (some months/years with great interest and others not so intense interest) over the years. Although I barely watch it anymore, (college homework) in my opinion it has gone downhill over recent years. I still watch it every now and then though, actually a lot more on the Atlantis side. I could care less about graphics in MMORPGs. I just want my MMORPG to *generally* keep up with the times, but gameplay is a thousand times more important than graphics.

But seriously, this company is touting that screenshot as something GOOD in the game? There is nothing wrong with that game's graphics in general, but whether it is the engine's graphical capacity limitations or just the artists using the engine, as someone who is not really a big fan of SG1, just a casual watcher....those characters are complete garbage! I don't even care if i ever see SG1 in the game (if i even play this game), but this is a complete joke. If this is the best they can do, they shouldn't have even tried to make the sg1 series characters, and I cannot believe they are in any way demonstrating this art/graphics/rendering of SG1 Series characters as a positive aspect of the game. Some people are saying that it is nit-picking to criticize this. But the company is the one that is touting this SS! They were the ones that brought it up to be reviewed by the community. And these characters, after review, are silly. It is like saying "I am going to draw a pretty good picture of a person" and then drawing a stick-figure.

Originally posted by mrprogguy

Hey,  none of the game toons is going to look like any of you guys, so what's the beef?

Maybe there were issues getting licenses to use the particular actor's likenesses.  Could just be a legal thing. I  wouldn't read too much into it.

"CrapG-1" indeed,  Aren't you the clever boy?

And they just 'happen' to have a darker skinned toon resembling Tealq of SG1? (Dunno if that is spelled right lol).  I think if they have the right to use the Stargate name they would have the right to use the likeness of the actors that the show became famous on. I just think so far they did a bad job of it.

Personally, I hope first impressions are not lasting ones. I'm not impressed so far. But the game is in early stages and has a long way to go. I hope it looks more 'realistic' in the end.

OMG! This has to be a joke.  Where did they get those graphics from, early 2000?  And for all of you that say graphics are not everything, then go to RuneScape that should be right up your alley.  WEll to tell you the truth it is pretty much expected with the way they run their forums, they way they ran their first closed BETA and of course their money problems and their fan base, they could of put out a couple of stick figures and their fan base would be doing high 5's,,maybe if we went to their store and bought a couple T-shirts they could atleast get the graphics up to 2005 standards.

These guys have the license rights from MGM and i believe can do whatever they want in making the game look exactly like the series.

This CME seems to have a decent budget a decent staff and claim they strive for the highest standards?

 I believe they are a smart and professional outfit,but so far everything i have seen,looks CHEAP with a Capitol C.I don't know why?,someone at the top of the food chain,must have convinced everyone that WOW is successful because they made the game playable on cheap PC's lol,i hope this was not their train of thought.

CME claims to strive for the reaching edge of technology and pay extra cash to bring in whatever it takes from other engines ,software?so far i see nothing that indicates this.I think perhaps i am a dummy and am reading the typical marketing hype ,EVERY company does for themselves.

CME does more than gaming,but they have a fairly large payroll,some pretty big names in there,wonder what they are doing to fund this outfit?

I know i here it all too often,the game means a heck of a lot more than the graphics,well not in this case.It is different here because the game is trying to COPY, look like the series and all their fans KNOW what they expect to see from it.I think it will be a turn off for the fans if it looks too cheap,i mean evident already in this thread as people commenting on the player models.Evident already when players complained of the cheap looking pew pew in the first two released videos.

GRAPHICS means a heck of a lot more than what people think or say they do,the responses so far to the game proves it.

Originally posted by Aguitha

Wow are they supposed to look like the actors ?  Cause they dont !   The only one that look somehow close to the TV show character is Carter.  O'neil doesnt even look "close" of Richard Dean Anderson.

atleast they are wearing clothes now

the

Teal'c

feet

Well, I dont like it. It should be called Stargate Worlds: The journey to the past of computer graphics 

Lol. You guys don't know the half of it...

At least they take the time to make improvements...

O'Neill is pretty close for an MMO. Carter and Daniel are are vaguely similar to the TV characters - think it's mainly the hair that's wrong. Teal'C looks like a completely different person and the expression and pose make him look like he's shocked/angry/just filled his pants.

yikes.  That's really bad by todays's standards.

If they're going to release stuff with the intention of impressing people with what they're doing -"Hey everyone look at THIS!"  then they need to do better on the art  and rendering engine.

A staged shot in 3D Studio Max would look 100x better, but if this is from the actual in-game engine then uh oh.  Looks like one of those freeware things you can get at tucows.

edit: after looking at it again the head / hand / foot proportions are wrong on All the characters, especially Teal'c  *snicker* .  The artist needs to retake Human Anatomy 101.

It is an early April Fools joke, no company would doom itself that bad by releasing something that is remotley this bad. It wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't say  "SG-1", I mean I can sorta see the "likeness" but really? If its supposed to tactually look anything remotely like them then CME is doing it wrong.

These graphics are a disgrace to UE3 engine. Epic should revoke the UE3 license.

I just love SG-1 (own all the seasons) and was anticipating the launch of this game...but these look horrible and bear little, to no likeness to the actual actors.  Honestly, I wouldn't have guessed it was SG-1 unless I was told.