Tim Sweeney: Photorealistic games possible within ten years

In an interview with Eurogamer , Epic founder Tim Sweeney predicted that we'll see the arrival of photorealistic video games within the next ten years. Sweeney said they'll be able to render environments that are absolutely photo-realistic within the next decade, but he also noted that it will take much longer to perfect other aspects of games like AI, animation, speech and lyp-syncing.

"It's continuing to improve at Moore's Law rate," he said. "Things are going to get really interesting. We'll be able to render environments that are absolutely photo-realistic within the next 10 years, like indistinguishable from reality level of graphics."

But, Sweeney noted, it will take much longer for game creators to create believable AI, among other things.

"That just moves the challenge of graphics to the problems we don't know how to solve," he said, "like simulating human intelligence, animation, speech and lip-syncing.

"There are still lots of areas in graphics that require ongoing research for probably the rest of our lives before we come close to approaching reality."

Sweeney was talking as part of a wide-ranging discussion on his career, Epic Games, Unreal Engine and the industry in general.