Near limit of graphics?

I was thinking today, and over the past years graphics have gone up in quality at an amazing rate. So of course computers are getting outdated faster. But looking at the graphics we have now, I'm not sure they can get all that much better. Maybe instead of 2-3 years before a computer can no longer handle games at medium-max, it will be close to 4-6 years before that happens. What do you all think?

 

na, graphics can still improve quite a bit. they will update with the next generation of consoles. however, i do think within probably 10-15 years we will be near the max potential of gaming.

 

I think they can get much better, there are talks of gaming studios using the same technology used in animated movies in the near future (ray-tracing i think its called, larabee is supposed to use it I believe), combine that with 3d and it should look much better. The problem right now and why a game like Crysis from a couple years back is still so impressive is that many companies feel that making PC only games is not profitable enough and therefore base their games on engines and technology that can also easily run on the consoles. And then you have game companies like Blizzard and Valve that only make well optimized games so that they can be played by almost anyone with a computer.

As far as a computer running games for 4-6 years I really don't know...

 

Virtual Reality.

 

Unless the game looks 100% real and sensory data is input directly to your brain, there is still room for improvement. We are a long long long way off. Probably not within our lifetimes. I don't know how anyone can possibly say that graphics quality is plateauing. When HL2 was released the graphics were like OMG! Know I go back to it and it looks pretty crappy compared to games that have been out for a year or more. As long as hardware capability increases (with parallelization of processing power it seems like it can be expanded indefinitely) visual game quality will improve.

 

There's always room for improvement!

Heck, sometimes I think the graphics in real life suck and could use some retouches

 

I agree, my toaster needs to be retextured. Maybe I forgot to turn on anti-aliasing...

 

This is funny. This makes me think of how I've seen sun shining through trees that reminds me of how good the Shaders on Crysis are. I've found myself comparing real life water to water in Crysis. Pretty sad huh?

 

Water has always been tough to model.

And Fire. That's probably the hardest to model. Hollywood just uses real fire.