When I was a youngling, graphics improved quickly and that made older games look worse by every year. What initially looked amazing and “life-like” turned dated in just a couple of years, however it seems graphics has plateaued in the last ten-ish years.
I would say that we reached the point of diminishing returns around next-gen GTA V / MGS V. Not that you can’t see the difference between those and modern games, but it’s nowhere the leap from San Andreas to GTA IV.
I recently started playing MGS V again and I’m shocked at how good it still looks, compare it to RDD 2 and you would probably need a side by side comparison to see the extra detail.
We have finally reached a point where old games dont get less immersive because our baseline in visual fidelity keeps increasing, or if it does it’s atleast a lot slower.
I think it’s possible to push the boundaries a bit more but the cost to create a full world of detailed textures is just too much.
Our own universe isn’t locally real, meaning it renders in real time.
(I.e. on a universal scale: if a tree falls in the universe and no one is there to see it… Did it even fall? Quantum physics literally says No. Its just down when it’s observed. It never fell. It was up when it was last observed and it is down now. )
So yeah I mean we’ll get there but it will all just be local rendering. Only way in the known universe to do it 🤓