I always thought this when we achieved high poly models and decent model textures , where do you go after that ? I think the next step is lighting , just look at the mods for GTA 45 enb , etc . GTA 5 ' s lighting was sometimes breathtaking . The same can be said for BF 1 at certain points , the zepplin SP mission for example was incredible . Also a focus on little things , such as the mud and rain on weapons in BF 1 . The photo modelling in BF 1 is also spectacular . Does anyone remember that video a few years back where this company modelled items based on photos , but outputted them as vectors ? It LOOKED cool , but probably had no basis being in a working video game . It was some weird accent guy talking over the video , I cannot remember the company name ! There ' s still ways to go , we ' ll hit a wall when everything has high polygons and texture resolutions imagine all of the pedestrians on Planet Coaster having the poly count of a ' main character '. PS I suppose you have to give the current generation of graphics credit though , the graphics are almost life like other than lighting , poor human facial modelling and some other things . The improvements can ONLY be incremental come to think of it . We can ' t make a 3 d model of a coffee mug any more realistic when its 11 with real life mesh wise , we can only improve on shadingself shadowing and how it looks in an ingame environmentA 50 , 000 poly human head , will look no different to a 100 , 000 poly head when it ' s on the head of a football player running aroung on a field .