I started playing Call of Duty 4 late last year.  The thing that had held me back from getting it sooner, was the fact that my machine was already four years old back then, and just managed to meet the game's minimum requirement of a 9800 Pro graphics card (the computer also had an Athlon 64 processor and 1GB of RAM).  Surprisingly, with the settings at 640x480 and most everything turned down low, the game ran decently, with no framerate losses that were bad enough to make me stop playing.

A few weeks ago, I realized that my good ol' computer, which served me through nearly all my undergraduate and graduate studies combined, was beginning to break down on me, with minor component problems beginning to come out of the woodwork: The DVD burner had recently turned illiterate, the screen flickered like a modern Outer Limits intro on startup half the time, the Restart in Safe Mode screen had random characters flicker on me on a crash once like the intro of MP3: Corruption, and the Memtest program couldn't even complete a test on the RAM to see if it had a problem.  Accordingly, I decided to quit while I was ahead, and instead of waiting for some cataclysmic breakdown, I built myself a new PC, stuck the contents of the old hard drive into the new like some digital Matryoshka doll, and kept going.

So now I'm playing Call of Duty 4 with a triple core processor, an HD4850 video card, and 4GB of RAM.  I've gone from a lowly 640x480 with everything turned all the way down, to a glorious 1600x1200 with everything turned all the way up.  And you know what?  Everything is shiny now!  I can see the heat distortion rising out of the missile silos on Countdown, the shockwave from exploding grenades, the blurring of nearby objects when I aim down the sights of a gun at something far away.  All this at a baby-butt smooth 60 FPS most of the time, dipping to about 30 when the screen gets really busy with friends, enemies, gunfire and smoke (but I wouldn't even notice the framerate loss if it weren't for a framerate counter program I use).

And yet, strangely, despite the graphical leap, the game has been more or less the same to me.  After I got used to the shiny, I didn't find myself enjoying the game any more or less than I did back when I was chugging along on minimum settings, with a rig that had roughly the same processing power of the Wii.  I think this means that, to me at least, if devs actually put in the effort to optimize the game, then processing power has already hit a point where they're "good enough".  Of course, it helps that absolutely nothing in gameplay was lost in the jump, something devs seem eager to leave out when they develop for the Wii.

So as long as we're here, let's ask: Where does everyone feel "good enough" is for game graphics?  Has the threshold been passed already?  Do you feel that we won't be there until we get graphics that mirror real life perfectly?

Good observation. Good graphics, from a purely technical perspective, only have shock value. A good art style does tend to endure through the age (and better tech can create better art), but ultimately "teh shiny" has no staying power

On that note, I've often found myself wondering: How long will it be until we decry Crysis (har har) as a butt ugly game?  Five years?  Ten years?  Or have we hit a critical obstacle in high game dev costs that will see graphical progress pretty much freeze for the duration of the next generation?

Actually processing power wise ur pc should have been able to beat the wii lol. But anyways i do not think the Graphical threshold has been passed. I LOVE eye candy and the better graphics the more enjoyable the game. Of coure good graphics are not worth bad gameplay. But graphics definatly help a game get my interest.

Your old PC was lightyears ahead of the Wii

Wii is 90's tech

Yeah, my PC might have been somewhere north of the Wii in power, but the specific processing power is beside the point.  I enjoyed eye candy when I wasn't in the middle of the fighting (there were a lot of places in Oblivion which came to mind; some specific examples include looking down from a mountaintop, and watching two guys spar at Cloud Ruler Temple as the run slowly rose behind them), but when I'm in the middle of the action, I find I don't really notice the graphics at all.

I find art more stimulating to the mind than graphics. Take two games for example: crysis, and prince of persia. Now i think its safe to say that crysis, graphically, looks better. However, the art style of prince of persia is innovating and new to the table. Crysis's modern day setting of jungle life looks nice, but i think we all know what a jungle looks like.

The point that i'm getting at is that however good the graphics are in a game, they start to get boring after a while. This mainly happens with the games that are quoted to be realistic.

Prince of persia however, is like looking into a watercolor painting, therefore making it something we haven't seen very often. This will probably lead to "shiny" moments also, but since its new we will be able to remember it more therefore not be bored with the look so quickly.

So there is my thesis lol

And stylistic graphics is probably the single best way to get out of the arms race of graphical realism and the associated ballooning costs.  I'm willing to bet that, if you compared those two games a decade from now, Prince of Persia's graphics would be considered more appealing, because the march of the graphical cutting edge will most likely render Crysis' realistic graphics not so realistic by comparison anymore.  Unless, of course, the next generation throws a curveball our way, and suspends the march of graphical progress on consoles.

Counterstrike pros play on 640*480 res because that's the way games are programmed, from lowest res up. Don't care about graphics, just about maximizing their ability to kill people.