Nice discussion, but there's one comment I'd like to make.

I wish people would stop saying "But it's possible in Game X, so why can't we do it in Poser!" "Real time" ray tracing. Jiggle physics. Insert feature of your choice here.

The problem is that people are comparing an effect that, by definition, works only in a very restricted environment (namely, the game) and extrapolating that to software that operates in a much wider context.

Games cheat mercilessly. Baked in reflections and global illumination. Billboards instead of 3D. "Jiggle physics" in female breasts but no softbody physics anywhere else (and quite often the breasts are only bouncing around and not actually reacting to the environment during gameplay). Making sure the camera can only look in  a limited range of directions. Specifically designing the 3D engine for the game (or vice versa). There are a lot of good-looking--fantastic looking, in fact--games that when you stop things from moving look like something rendered in Poser 4-era software with some postwork.

Right now, even the best games out there, running on the best quality machines, cannot produce still imagery equivalent to what's possible in the latest versions of Poser (or DS, and certainly not the high end 3D software) which make you stop for a second and have to think about whether the image is real or CG. And for moving images, forget it.