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.
That is completely untrue, we are in a plateue but it’s definitely not the final one. Frame Gen is gimmicky for sure but hardware has a long history of gimmicks so it’s not a sign of the end or anything - and the related technology of “AI” upscaling is already very good
And as much as I don’t like it, if graphics are rendered on a supercomputer and streamed to users, the quality can skyrocket - that is, assuming they can afford it.
Have you compared quality of streaming services against (physical) media you own? Yeah it will never skyrocket, too many moving parts.
The difference is massive right now but it’s not like internet technologies have stagnated. Speeds and latency are only getting better