Game graphics have come a long way since the 8-bit days and as engines get better and are capable of pushing more polygons and shaders, so too will the level of photorealism. According to the developers of Star Wars 1313, games in a decade will be "indistinguishable from reality."
The bold claim comes from Kim Libreri, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic (you may know them as the special effects company founded by George Lucas for Star Wars: A New Hope) that’s working with LucasArts on Star Wars 1313.
"It’s an interesting time because with modern computer graphics hardware, the way it’s going, it’s gonna be pretty hard to tell the difference between something that is interactive and rendered in real time, and something that was done for an animated TV show, or even a live-action thing,"
Libreri elaborated further:
"…today we’re matching the quality of an animated movie seven or eight years ago, and another ten years from now, it’s just going to be indistinguishable from reality."
This year’s E3 gave us a glimpse of what next-gen graphics would look like with games like Watch Dogs, The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls and PC demos like this one sure push the limits of photorealistic graphics, but will graphics really be impossible to discern from reality in 10 years?
Granted, Libreri might know a thing or two given that he did work on Super 8 and The Matrix, but we’re just not sold. Even in a beautifully rendered movie like AVATAR, it’s super easy to spot all the CGI.