Achieving Photorealism in Games

What the talk is about

Serhii Yehorov explains why photorealism in games is harder to reach than it seems, even with stronger consoles and graphics cards. His main idea: the brain compares every object with its real-world counterpart, so the closer an image gets to reality, the more small flaws stand out. This is the uncanny valley effect, which is why characters are often stylized on purpose. He shows typical mistakes: textures and objects that do not match in scale, light sources and highlights with inconsistent brightness, oversized scratches and wear, and light shafts without fog. He also touches on camera weight, inertia and animation, and on how fast SSDs and ray tracing bring games closer to photorealism. He ends with a checklist and a Q&A. Useful for texture artists, concept artists and 3D artists.