We are not even close to photo realistic graphics in console games right now. There is much more to graphics/game engines than how realistic people in games look anyway. Consoles still could double a couple times in power and still have room to grow in terms of things to process without games looking photo realistic.

Leaves blowing in the wind, grass, dynamic shadows and lighting, millions of variables being calculated constantly, etc, etc and all of that has nothing to do with super high res textures.

One thing though. I'm waiting for the day when the GPU and the CPU are no longer two distinct units. Not just that they are on the same die package, but are actually the same processing unit with the necessary computation parts in their pipeline to process _anything_ fast enough that it doesn't make sense to have two separate parts.

Yes, I'm mostly talking about photo realistic human characters... What I'm talking about is that games nowadays is going for a "real world" look, albeit with some great art styles, but they're still trying to make the humans look human, and in the end that might be a bad idea a few years from now...

I can't post any pictures from a game yet, since no game looks that good yet. But they are trying to make human characters look human, and in a few years time they'll probably succeed, and the question then is, will it turn people of considering the uncanny valley

I used GoW and UC as examples of game that tries to make the characters as human as possible (as does TLOS). These games don't look realistic enough, so they don't fall in the uncanny valley - but games will get there pretty soon. And GoW and UC only goes to show that developers are trying to go for a realistic look.

yes! This is what I'm talking about! Yes, UC has avoided it, it's a bad example on my part - I simply used it as they're going for realism.

Your concern is not so much about the visuals, it's about the motions.

And here lies your fault. You cannot compare the stiff motions of a robot with the motion capturing of real humans in CGI movies or in video games.
It's far more easy to properly bend digital joints than real life metal ones.

But in my opinion I think CGI (especially effects) already looks better than photorealism, so we should aim our games to look like that instead.

I've read this thread and I'm unconvinced that photorealistic graphics are doomed.

did you check out the entire OP? Would you like to have a game where the characters look like those robots? and read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

It explains why games can't get too photo realism. I'm all for great looking games, but this got me thinking that photo realistic hraphics might back fire...

but games won't look like this robot, you clearly see this is a "human robot" and we will never get a game which will have humans look like this robot as long as it isn't a a game about those robots in households or whatever.

humans in computer games will always look like a computer model as long as they won't look 100% real and they will never look as a real life robot which is made to look like a human. so comparing robots with possible computer models of humans is the wrong way in my opinion. if you really want to show how bad this can be in games you would have to show a computer model of a human and not a robot of the real world.

maybe there are examples of some cgi movies which flopped because of that uncanny valley feeling for people? wasn't there this movie with angelina jolie and other computer models? don't remember the name anymore but i believe i remember that some didn't like it because of this "computer movie which tries to look like reality"

That's actually CGI and not one of these robots in your OP.

NBA 2K:

These are not that far off and they look good.