alt Hacker NewsI don't think this is true at all. I've been experimenting with a physical sky / atmosphere modeling, and it really seems that the most physically accurate sky is the most beautiful. I think this applies more generally to all light and shadows, and all natural effects which people perceive as beautiful, and at the same time difficult / expensive to recreate on a computer.
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I recall a GDC presentation about a physically-based atmospheric model developed for a (good) AAA game released sometime in the last decade, and it reportedly took up a noticeable part of the frame budget, so evidently you’re not alone in this opinion.
Modern games struggle with readability which is why there is a trend to paint interactive objects yellow. So arguably the realistic visuals are interfering with the purpose of the game.
Golden hour light shining through leaves is literally the gold standard
I personally love the Quake 1 sky textures. It's possible to have a stylized sky in a game that looks good.
> I think this applies more generally
I would say the sky and a private eye's dimly lit, smoke-filled 1920s office are pretty different, actually.
I would suggest that both are true!
It's common for games to have an intentional designed aesthetic which uses cultural and social and graphical "languages" to create specific emotional impacts and effects. The lower the budget the more this is leaned into for expedient reasons but that in turn creates genre expectations! Low-poly and 8-bit are fine examples of what were once a product of technical limitations becoming their own target.
Subject matters also, and the overall aesthetic of the game; triple-A games often push towards what you're describing, that the most impactful and compelling may also be the most real...
...or at least, contain elements of it. Lots of games mess with color shading and saturation etc for the impact-reasons...
I do look forward to the era of more "photorealistic" rendering as you prefer, especially for natural landscapes like those I enjoy IRL. Some of which can have very "unnatural" feeling swings in tone and all sorts of things! I was just up in the mountains this week and saw a lot more variation in lighting and its impact on a consistent landscape (mountains across a lake) than I've ever seen in a game engine so far :)
Not to disagree with you, but I've noticed that many people have very little clue about what nature looks like. I see that in CGI/games a lot, trees, clouds, atmosphere, grass, moon... totally wrong from what actually happens in the world. But it looks good! :D