Umm...Yaezakura, about graphics, I'm gonna have to stop ya there.
(Big images, sorry.)
This is a screenshot from Skyrim, one of, if not THE most graphically-intensive game in the current iteration of games. Now, it looks good. It looks DAMN good. BUT, that's using a rendering method known as
ray casting, a method that's been in use...pretty much since 3D graphics came on the gaming scene. It can produce some absolutely stunning visuals, and do so somewhat efficiently. This game also makes use of such things as anisotropic filtering, bump mapping, normal mapping...the list goes on.
Is that a picture of glasses, dice, and shit? No. Its straight from
this Wikipedia article on ray
tracing. This is no bullshit image. Go look in the talk section for that image, the uploader mentioned it took him
560 hours. Well over 23 days for one image that looks so realistic, I honestly thought it was taken in real life.
That is the kind of graphics we're working toward.
Look at the two images, compare the levels of realism. We've got a long god damned way to go between the two...and that way will not be paved by software, but by hardware. The day will come when the latter picture will become the norm for video game graphics...but that day will be long-coming.
[ETA]
And, before you discount this as some blowhard putting together disparate buzzwords and bullshit, remember this: I'm a motherfucker who has spent the past 8-9 years of his life learning how to design and code games. I've done the research, I've done the legwork. I may not know it all, but, god damn it, I know my shit.
Also, appropriate video is appropriate: