Graphics can be rendered at such a level, as to be able to fool the best of em. The problem is that to do this... it takes Hours upon Hours, of Light-Ray Tracing.
To make a believable object / animal... a single frame might take 1 week of processing time, for the render to be output.
Animation can be flawless as well... if someone actually uses motion capture at high resolutions... and or great frame-analyzers (with a little help from
humans.. when the thing gets confused) The problem here... is that many studios Cheap-Out. Like Lucus, and his Brainiac CGI-Modelers... whom had
Zero business even Trying their hand at animation... let alone putting it to film! >__<
Animation by real talented Artists, can be stunning, and potentially flawless. The thing is... Such artists can not stand to work with the WRETCHED CLUNKY
interfaces of all of those 3d moderling + animation programs. They get Infuriated, as it takes them 10x longer to come close to something workable... and
its so clunky... that even the best efforts, tend to be stifled by the process and interfacing. They could do a whole flip book worth of an animation, in the time it takes to get a single thing rolling in a 3d editor.
Also, what people will eventually realize, if and when things get to a point of realtime-photorealism... is that real life can be quite boring.
Thats why we tend to like and value paintings and artworks, that are not based on photorealism. Such as a Comic Book cover, an old CRT video
game like OutRun, a vector world that has a sort of MC Escher look to it. Animae characters huge emotion conveying eyes, and different proportions,
creatures such as Dragons... that do not exist in this reality... and much more.
Its the reason why Starry Night, will be worth 1 million times in value... than someones photograph of an actual star lit night sky.
Sure... people will initially be all about it... but eventually, the hype would fade... and they may look for something more
artistic / interpretive and fantasy based.
As an artist myself... I can tell you... that there are a lot of ways to make an image look far more awesome, with some unrealistic.. but
effective uses of color and shading. You can make things really Pop out, and Zing.
I certainly can also appreciate hyper-realistic artists, that can make their images look at real as a photo... but at the same time,
its fairly meaningless to me... because a photograph would have done the exact same thing... with far less effort / time wasted.
At least with an interpretive approach, you are getting an artistic / creative representation.
Anyway... The biggest thing people are going to eventually wake up to... is that no matter how real the games look... if they play like
crap, are not challenging, fun, interesting ... then they are not going to be worth a damn anyway. Which is why a game like Robotron,
despite its cheesy look.. is a far more addictive and intense experience... than any FPS that has ever been developed.
Only VR has a chance to potentially change things a bit better on the gameplay end... IF their controllers are far better at analog
precision and depth of range in interactions. (Thumbsticks just dont cut it)