How long do you think till we have photorealistic open world RPGs?

[videopho]

Depending on games gene.
For flight sims, photo realistic would be great but it's not going to happen in my life time due to excessive disk storage plus cpu/gpu demand.
FPS games are getting closer to be film like which I like too.

 

[pw38]

Games at this point look "good enough". I'm not even sure I want "photo realistic" games because that would make them less artistic in a way. Also, I like to use my imagination when playing.

That's your opinion and a somewhat ill informed one at that. Nothing prevents "artistic" games from being developed just because the realism factor can be increased. Who said you can't have both? Wind Waker is amazing but was not possible on the N64. As the Gamecube was capable of more "realistic" animations and graphics did that somehow prevent Nintendo from making what I consider the most artistic Zelda yet? Nope. In fact the better hardware helped realize their artistic vision with WW.

hopefully never.

people shit on WoW's cartoonish graphics, but I much prefer them to attempts at realism like EQ2.

Again, nothing is preventing a game like WoW from looking even more amazing with better hardware. Having hardware capable of creating a perfect clone of a human being doesn't mean you can't create an amazing looking WoW. In fact I'd say that the game would be even more enjoyable as the increasing hardware capabilities would breathe new life into the world. Being cartoonish has nothing to do with anything. By that token if WoW had been released in the early 90s you'd be OK with that, knowing what you do now about how the game looks because of more recent hardware advances? I somehow doubt that.

 

[HeXen]

WOW's graphics are the art. i never played the game but i like its art direction they chose.
its like the difference between watching Transformers cartoon vs the movie. minus the bad movie, i can like the visuals of either