Photo realistic graphics in 10 years: Epic

Epic Games’ founder Tim Sweeney has said that he believes graphics in video games will resemble photo-realism within 10 years, although it will come with its own problems.

Sweeney was speaking at the Develop conference when he praised modern computing power, saying that gaming visuals will be “absolutely photo-realistic within the next 10 years” and “indistinguishable from reality level of graphics.”

Sweeney did elaborate, saying that with realistic graphics, a new wave of problems will arise.

“That just moves the challenge of graphics to the problems we don’t know how to solve,” said Sweeney. “Like simulating human intelligence, animation, speech, lip-syncing. There are still a lot areas that will require on-going research for probably the rest of our lives before we come close to approaching reality.”

Tim Sweeney

Sweeney said that he feels the industry has gone through “25 years of game history at the rate of four years every year”, referring to the changes that digital distribution has brought.

“We’ve always recognised that the industry is in a state of constant change, and those that react fastest are the survivors,” he said.

Epic Games is currently working on Fortnite and two unannounced projects.