As someone who found the graphical leap from PS3/360 to PS4/X1 quite underwhelming, and who hasn't really been blown away by a game's graphics since Uncharted 2 in 2009, I feel like I'm still waiting for that "next gen" feeling that games like Gears of War 1, Rogue Squadron 2, and Mario 64 gave me back in their day. 

I'd like to ask when did you actually hop into the current gen? This is because if you or someone else waited let's say 2 years before buying PS4/X1, then your "eyes" had a lot of time to adjust to the new graphical standard via trailers/pictures. Like how Uncharted 4, Witcher 3 or Driveclub look perfectly normal in my eyes now. Personally I've had few wow-moments this gen, maybe not as big than in the past but most definitely legit wow-moments. But I was there Day 1, Killzone Shadowfall looked very impressive back then. Driveclub has been by far the most mind-blowing but only those can understand who were there on Day 1.

Well. If you compare the early Xbox 360 games to the early Xbox One games... The difference is absolutely stupid.

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher bay.


For instance on the 360 launch games like Pefect Dark Zero were pretty ugly and not much of an improvement over the original Xbox.


And then towards the end of the generation we got:


But then if you compare Battlefield 3 to say... Hardline or Battlefield 4 or what-not on the Xbox One, the difference is relatively neglible all things considered.




It wasn't untill around 2007 with Halo 3 did the Xbox 360 truly start to stretch it's legs, it had Tessellation on the water, triple buffering, HDR lighting... Lots of framebuffer effects. It was a power house.
Reach then threw away the Tessellation, triple buffering and HDR lighting, introduced texture streaming and impostering and bolstered image quality elsewhere substantually.
Halo 4 then took things to the extreme with static baked and precalculated everything, which they took note from Uncharted.

I think the end of this year/early next year we will likely reach the point where we start to see games truly shine on the current hardware... The transition is taking longer than normal because there are 10's of millions of gamers that took awhile to transition to newer hardware.

So far this gen though I'm just not seeing the rapid improvements that we saw on PS3/360 through 2007-2009. Ryse and Killzone are launch titles and they're still some of the best looking games on their respective systems in my eyes. Maybe the next few years will prove me wrong, but I feel like PS4/X1 are never going to go leaps and bounds beyond their early titles the way PS3/360 did.

Well. If you look towards the end of last generation though, games started to go backwards as developers didn't have baked/pre-calculated effects... You could see the regression in Call of Duty and even Dragon Age Inquisition's environments, having your graphics details rendered in real time, dynamically is a more expensive (But ultimately better IMHO) way to do things, which is why people seem to think we haven't made big leaps.

But I agree, I don't think we are ever going to get the extreme leap that we saw between launch and ending like with the last gen consoles though, because Neo and Scorpio is going to muddy the waters, it's a boon for PC gamers though.

I have played Drive Club. It looks very pretty, (though 30fps in a racing game rubs me the wrong way) but it still doesn't strike me as presenting the same kind of vast leap over PS3/360's best as previous generational transitions did. Honestly, there hasn't been a single game on PS4 or Xbox One so far that has "amazed" me. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty that look very beautiful, like Uncharted 4, Ryse Son of Rome, Star Wars Battlefront, etc, but honestly, the last time a game "amazed" me was Uncharted 2 back in 2009.

At this point I suspect I'll have to wait for the next generation of consoles to see the quantum leap over PS3/360 that I expected this gen.

DRIVECLUB (and any racing game, for that matter) still has a ways to go before things start to actually look photorealistic. For example (another one of my scenes, mainly as a commision and 3D purposes - NOT ready for video games, yet):

Even that isn't quite there, but it's much closer than any games out today. Forza 6 Apex is the closest I've seen (and that's only in Photo Mode). Video games just aren't re-caprturing 100% accurate lighting/environments/effects etc, etc... Believe me, most gamers haven't seen anywhere near the best of the best.

The graphical upgrades will become less apparent with each gen, if you're not impressed by Driveclub which looks almost photorealistic I don't think you'll be impressed by a game in terms of visuals anymore.

As dor framerate while 30fps is not ideal Drievclub executes it well and maintains a solid framerate so it does not affect the gameplay, but I do think the visuals in games also look a lot better at 60fps.

Yes, they very well can and will. If you're talkng about the picture in the OP (which is my work made using several game engines) - yes, they definitely will. 

Driveclub does look very, very good, but I don't think that just because it didn't quite floor me, that I'm not longer capable of being floored.

I'm aware that from now on, graphical progression will appear slower than it did, say, in the 2000s or the 90s, but I'm sure that at some point in the future there will be that one game like Uncharted 2 last gen that might not be a generational transition but still looks so damn impressive compared to anything else on the market that I'll once again be wowed.