Are the graphical elements of gaming starting to peak?

[Admiral Huddy]

How can anyone who has played Far Cry2 not be impressed by its stunning seamless graphics. The awesome terrain, draw distance, textures and shadowing are pretty realistic in terms of what we have ever seen before. But is the technology starting to peak?

When you look back on older games, such as original Far Cry, the graphics now seem some what dated which is to be expected but it wasn’t that long ago really. In those days, the games hardware requirements pretty much dominated your upgrade path and both HL2, FarCry, to name a few, really tortured pretty much everyone’s hardware at the time. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

For example, my 2 year old graphics card can easily play all* the latest titles at their highest settings, including FarCry2. Therefore, any upgrade to newer card since would be a complete waste of time.

Surely, there has to be a point where by the games themselves have little or no more room for graphical improvement and I think we are starting to see this.

Discuss.