heh, I think that half the reasons that monsters are so popular in the latest gen games is in part because people lose some of the familiarity with the subject and don't notice the lack of true realism. Of course, to get true lifelike realism requires much more sophisticated animation methods than are typicaly used in games today. The way things move is as much to do with it as how they move.
To be honest though, I prefer a more stylized look, and where lighting goes, I think it will be next gen shaders that pave the real way. Not the immediate current tech.
things like subsurface scattering shaders that add depth to translucency like lighting your hand with a torch, and lit candles etc. things that add a little more subtlety will get rid of the plastic look. Which currently has as much to do with the crude lighting as it does the surface materials rendered at the moment.
It's cool that realtime graphics is catching up at a more accelerated rate, it wasn't that long ago that these effects were new for pre rendered graphics. I just hope that the realism fad goes away and people start trying to be more creative with it and realise more interesting ways to visualise things.
To be honest though, I prefer a more stylized look, and where lighting goes, I think it will be next gen shaders that pave the real way. Not the immediate current tech.
things like subsurface scattering shaders that add depth to translucency like lighting your hand with a torch, and lit candles etc. things that add a little more subtlety will get rid of the plastic look. Which currently has as much to do with the crude lighting as it does the surface materials rendered at the moment.
It's cool that realtime graphics is catching up at a more accelerated rate, it wasn't that long ago that these effects were new for pre rendered graphics. I just hope that the realism fad goes away and people start trying to be more creative with it and realise more interesting ways to visualise things.