The technology already exists, the budgets however do not.

My thought is a simple who in Naraka cares about photorealism in OLOTL2022.

I literally cannot see how "better graphics" could improve games like Hypnospace Outlaw, Stardew Valley, or Kirby's Adventure.

Maybe because I'm jaded from at least 4 generations of "Graphics will never get better than this" and seeing Moore's Law hitting the hard limit, and suffering though the brown & bloom era, but I'd rather marketing farms get fired out of a cannon into the sun so something other than spiffy graphics can be focused on.

Better AI, actual data flow optimization, keeping games under 100 GB, better sound fidelity, and so on. Things which have lagged behind for decades, or even regressed in the intervening time that bullshot publishers have pushed for sparkly graphics.

There are already ways to decrease game sizes this will only improve with time. But 40 terabyte will also considered nothing at some point

Yes, not everyone can afford $20k machines to deliver life-like visuals with VR headsets dual outputting screens at 120fps. I lothe to see that day. I dislike games exceeding 8Gb. I remember when 40Gb games was only to a handful of MMO's like Tera back 8 years or so ago.

But i guess it's one way to stop piracy. Make it too big that no one wants to download it. And because it's so big you can only play them via a streaming service...

It would certainly be a good thing for GPU vendors and perhaps the "metaverse" certain companies are trying do shove down our throats :P... as far as games go, graphical fidelity is always a cool selling point but in truth you'll want superior gameplay, not the sweetest eye candy. I'd argue most game engines are already doing pretty good in terms of graphical fidelity. I remember being pretty impressed when I played Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice years ago, and that's an UE4 title.

Yes.

I'm not particularly interested photo-realism -- in fact games that are too realistic often pull me out of the fun of playing a game.

I think a lot of studios fall back on photo-realism (or near photo-realism) instead of interesting art direction. And IMO good art direction means far more to both the experience and life of a game. I still play games with good art direction from 20 years ago.

I don't care at all about photo-realism. For me, Skyrim or Witcher 2 are already better than I need graphically to enjoy a game. I'm far more interested in gameplay, content design, writing, AI.

No idea why peeps are so obsessed with "photorealism". If you want a photorealism, just go out or look through your window. O.o

Because obviously someone wants to complain when they get the number of pores on the 256k texture map of Queen Elizabeth II's wrong.

I agree graphics arent that important but for simulations realism adds a lot to the atmosphere. Fantasy games like elder scrolls dont need that

In 20 years we'll probably be back with clubs and stones as the peak of technology.

nah , we can see all the trends
only forum games and kagura games will be in 20 years

btw do these forum "games" spam so much each day as now?:O

That's pessimistic. I'd say somewhere at least within the next 1000 years is, while not certain, at least more probable.

It would take something major to throw everyone back to the stone ages. Human society is a distributed system :P. I'm sure they'll hit some limits at some point, but at this point, the biggest impediment to internet speed at least in North America, are internet service providers lacking incentive to provide the best to their customers, not technology.

Technologically, we could realistically get a terabyte per second at least (if not now, very soon), possibly more. Probably depends on the game, but unless you are a psycho, I don't think you want your FPS to be overly realistic.

Also, I think for a lot of concepts, I can imagine an overly realistic engine actually getting in the way of the gameplay.

I'm sure all that complexity is like a huge pile of technical debt you got to sort through whenever you make gameplay changes plus it has the potential to create a lot of unnecessary noise for your end users that can take away from the gameplay elements you actually want to put the emphasis on.

At some point internet speed will be so fast you will insta download them...... the same is for space because there will be xxxx sized hard drives as well. There are already systems in place where game sizes can be made really small too. Streaming is an alternative if you play on a phone but i dont care about that. Deticated hardware will always be best especially when you want the best performance and options like modding. You will be able to download terabytes in minutes its just a matter of time
I think realistic graphics only make sense in movie games or simulations like hunting games or flight simulators. Most important part is gameplay