Photoreal Game Graphics Within 10 Years Claims Industrial Light and Magic

In a video interview with CVG, Industrial Light & Magic’s Kim Libreri has predicted that computer game graphics will become near photoreal within ten years, stressing that telling reality from CGI will difficult to distinguish.

“It’s an interesting time because with modern computer graphics hardware. The way its going, it’s gonna be pretty hard to tell the difference between something that is interactive and rendered in real-time, and something that was done for an animated TV show, or even a live action thing. Ten years from now, I’m pretty sure, if you extrapolate where we’ve gone with the console generations and the changes in video and ATI hardware. We’re getting to the point right now [with real-time rendered graphics] where we’re matching the quality of an animated movie seven or eight years ago, and another ten years from now, it’s just going to be indistinguishable from reality.”

ILM is collaborating with LucasArts, who want to create a cinema-like aesthetic for their upcoming game, Star Wars 1313, due for release around 2013, but likely later since the target platforms haven’t even been announced yet. Now, while this game won’t be photoreal, it gives an idea of what’s to come, if the interview and gameplay footage in the video is anything to go by. In particular, besides the highly detailed graphics, the games segues smoothly from cut-scene to gameplay, with a discrete OSD appearing at the bottom left when it switches to playing mode, the only real indication of this.