Can they improve? Yes.
Do they need to improve much beyond today's high-end graphics? No.
Will graphics improve by leaps and bounds from here on out? No.
While yes people have been saying graphics can't get much better since two gens ago, we are in fact now at least getting close to that point. Sure over the next 50 years they will get better, but it's gonna be slow improvement and it won't really be worth it. Two gens ago to last gen was still a decent jump in graphics, though not huge or anything. But difference from last gen to current gen finally got pretty small. It's only going to get smaller in the future.
Graphics are already hyper realistic, and graphical improvements don't actually matter much at this point. I see improvement on effects (like full on ray tracing) and running all those nice effects, and improving draw distance and just in general the number of things happening on screen, while running all this at 60+ frames. But I don't see the actual detail of graphics improving a ton from here on out, and there is certainly not a need for it to improve. Techniques might improve like better facial movements and whatnot, that make things look more realistic, but actual graphical detail in terms of polygons in an object and textures don't really need to improve at all and won't improve much from here on out.
The industry is already at the point where making today's hyper realistic graphics causes games to cost an enormous amount of money and time to make. This needs to not get worse. Graphical detail doesn't need to get better. Higher power in the future should just be used to run the full effects with more draw distance with more things on screen at smooth framerate and keep improving AI in games, but not much more graphical detail.
I expect several system gens from now we'll still say PS5/XboxSeries look good and the detail of the graphics is still comparable, but that there's just fewer special effects and stuff happening on screen. At this point I basically consider all games to have good graphics, assuming the games are done well. Whether we're talking Switch or PS5, they all look good. Improvements in graphics don't affect how good a game is anymore.
So yes I agree with the OP's friend that graphics won't improve much, and furthermore they SHOULDN'T improve much or else every AAA game is gonna be taking 10 years to make and any AAA game that doesn't sell at least 10 million copies is gonna be a failure because they cost so much to make. Extra processing power in the future will just go to making basically today's graphics with more things/effects happening while still running smoothly, that's it. The difference between PS4 and PS5 already is fairly small, and each gen from here on out we're basically gonna say yeah I guess it looks a tiny bit better. In terms of graphical detail I think we're >95% of the way there now.
If you look at that GTA6 trailer, yeah in 30 years those graphics are still gonna be good and look comparable to whatever games are coming out at that point. Sure digital foundry might point out all the tiny differences between that game and GTA8 coming out in 30 years (only at 8 cuz these hyper realistic games take so long to make), but to the average player it's gonna look pretty dang similar.
Last edited by Slownenberg - on 04 August 2024
