After browsing a few games, I was interested in the next generation of graphics for consoles. Usually, consoles will have severe graphic upgrades during its life-cycle, one console in particular is Playstation one where the glitchy mess that was ridge racer became an aesthetic work of art. Another console was Playstation 2. Games such as Gran Turismo 3 compared to Gran Turismo 5 shine greatly. However, no other consoles have severely changed the way it was looked at. Imho, xbox 360 still looked like xbox 360, ps3 still looked like ps3, in particular because the HD generation has converted S-video and composite from hiding all of the flaws. These flaws are noticed in particular on HD tvs, such as sharp graphics and dark colors. No photo-realistic effect until now has been able to be developed in the gaming community. One such particular example is Drive club, another is Star citizen. There are beautiful games which are linear, such as the ace combat series and Halo. However, we are now arriving in what is now called the development of particle effects, that means rain drops sliding down the car, and dust storms with lighting done accurately. Most developers haven't jumped on this wagon because well, they probably don't know how. If you look at Forza horizon 2 for xbox one, then compare it to Ps4's Drive club you will see what I am talking about. Its more of a question about the technological hardware compared to realism eg detail. For instance Rainbow six on psone or can look bad yet be realistic games or alone in the dark for sega cd can play as good as raven for xbox 360, its a question of aesthetics and programming. WOT has great physics and realism yet lacks some detail. New games like Homefront 2 have detail, yet they stay with a cgi appearance to their games, that's why there are 3 categories. CGI (computer generated, a border between cartoony and realistic), cartoony and realistic. Every category can have realistic physics however when you put graphics and physics together you get a winner. To give certain games a quasi photo-realistic appearance with physics involved, basically is not fully acknowledged in the industry because its fairly hard to do.
Take a look at these images:
As you can see both games have some type of particle effects of the real world, which seem to be elemental physics of some sort. Below are some of the top 2014 PC game photos at the highest detail resolution and maxed settings. These PNG files below of Flightsimulator X, and Project Cars prove my point. Whilst the games above of Driveclub and Space Citizen show a better quality in graphics due to budget. Games are becoming more and more to a movie-like budget and even competing with the movie industry now-a-days. This means better graphics as well.
The physics of Star citizen for instance has particle effects. Particle effects and real world elements such as fog on the window appearing can be crucial in the upcoming genres, in particular the future of gaming. Graphics are important because they show the fact that immersion is possible in game. People will buy games with this quality alone. When I was growing up I did, I bought Dreamcast because of the immersive qualities in its system, where even today, games like Sonic adventure can't be bump-mapped or replicated perfectly (see also sonic adventure for Xbox 360, etc). None of those versions were ever done accurately, This is not a hardware flaw but a developer flaw. In the gaming industry I will vouch for those few games, with a leap ahead of its competition in graphics. Sometimes its not the framerate that counts, but the aesthetics and skills involved by the developer that make the graphics shine best. Whilst I haven't seen much change in the FPS genre, the racing and flightsim genre showed some major improvements. Whilst games of the last genre to the sixth gen like Wreckless and Grid took the same approach, it never arrived on top because the graphics were simply too limited eg every stage looked the same in grid, and the AA suffered whilst Wreckless for the original xbox had fairly small amounts of navigation. GTAV also has water effects which are uncanny, however it suffers from flatness as well, it has fog lighting yet those leaves don't fall off the tree or that wind doesn't blow so-to-speak see also real world physics and particle effects. Maybe even Need for Speed has particle effects, however these are all different genres which avoid the realism of the world and its physics so are avoided in criticism eg realism doesn't have to be a simulator, it can simply mean imersion such as inside a cockpit of sorts. The lighting doesn't change in videogames, basically. However I took notice to these particular games in this article (driveclub&space citizen) because lighting is a type of fog, and these games show what the atmosphere can do, on earth and in space. Its called Fog lighting, combine that with small particle effects such as dust in space, or rain up a windshield and you have a winner in graphics. This is rarely seen, in even the best graphic revolutionary games such as rogue squadron for gamecube. Complex Fog lighting and real world physics means light breaking through trees or fog rising from the rain (in hopes of gt7, it may have fog lighting) to even dust being kicked up chaotically and hitting your wind shield, to even leaves falling on that windshield as a step towards cgi quality videogames. Although Grid has fog lighting effects, fog lighting and real world physics in the environment means a crucial sense of space and depth in combination with physics of the real world (so its avoided, however the series can be a future contender). Such as Ps4's Driveclub or the PC's Star citizen in particular, has shown what technology can really do. It seems like Next Gen graphics come early this year.