When will video games look like Pixar movies?

Caleb Chapman: At this point, computers can get pretty close to rendering the original Pixar film "Luxo Jr." in real time. One big difference is that the methods used for lighting and shading in films (ray tracing) is very system intensive compared to what video games use today. Real-time ray tracing has been emerging in recent years. IBM set up a demo using three Playstation 3s with real time ray tracing that looked pretty good. So really it wouldn't be crazy if two generations from now, video games were close to Pixar movies. However, as speed increases for real time rendering in video games, it also increases for movie rendering farms. Therefore, rendered films will always be able to be more complex than real time video games. Eventually, there will be a point, though, where the extra rendering does not add enough visual improvement to matter. I think that point is further out.The other thing to consider is that rendered movies look great because of careful atten! tion to detail for each scene and frame, the lighting, camera motion and textures. That same amount of work will have to be put into the video game. Video games today on the high end are maybe $30-40 million to produce, whereas Ratatouille had a budget of $150 million. That disparity would have to be addressed as well....Show more