UofOstudent opened this issue on Mar 15, 2009 ยท 29 posts
Morkonan posted Mon, 16 March 2009 at 11:20 AM
If we're talking about a "create reality" button someone could press right out of the box, that's going to take awhile.
But, "realism" is available right now if you are willing to bridge the gap yourself between technology and desired output by using skill and knowledge. That "gap" is going to be there for a very long time. The levels of skill and knowledge required to cross it may shrink as technology becomes more powerful. That could be within a few years or a decade, it depends on a lot of factors.
As someone said above, the ability to produce stills is already here. In fact, the ability to produce an artificial human that looks like a real one has been around for a lot longer than some might thing. Michelangelo's "David" is a good example even though he is somewhat idealized. Several "Realism" painters successfully breached that gap in their own medium. Animation is troublesome because so much information is exchanged in the interplays of light. It's difficult to quantify it all. That will improve with technology.
Painting, sculpture, even literature and theatre.. those were the mediums of the day to produce that "alternate" reality so many seem to crave. Today, it's computer generated graphics. What will it be tomorrow? The medium is just as important or, in some cases more important depending upon how it is perceived, as the finished product. Will we still be dealing with two dimensional displays of three dimensional environments in the next five years? Maybe not.
In short, the answer is this: When the level of technology reaches the point where it is easily able to produce the desired output while depending only upon a minimum amount of skill and knowledge supplied by the user necessary to bridge the remaining gap ... then that is when it will happen. :)