Photorealism
Quick Summary
Photorealism is a digital image design orientation aimed at recreating the level of detail, physical material, and lighting effects virtually identical to the real world outside (as if captured directly through a film camera lens).
Photorealism resolution: Accurately simulating the natural light reflection on distinctive material surfaces such as wet metal, glass, and concrete.
What is Photorealism?
Photorealistic art is the ultimate challenge test for modern technology. Everything in the game — from the refraction of light through a dewdrop, the reflection on a rain-soaked road, to every pore on a character’s face — is all rigorously calculated according to real-world physics standards (Ray-Tracing and PBR).
Realistic graphics has always been the most powerful marketing weapon and the arms race of AAA-titled “big names” (notably Red Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us, or Cyberpunk 2077). However, the price of Photorealism is that it demands extremely powerful hardware and devours a savage amount of production budget money. Beyond that, no matter how beautiful it looks at launch, this format will always look “outdated” ruthlessly when a new generation of Engines and hardware appears approximately 3 to 5 years later.