[nothis]

Photogrammetry (together with a physical based rendering pipeline to get the lighting just right) probably deserves all the credit in this. I remember first reading about it in 2014, in an article about an indie game for that matter. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Here's an article: https://www.pcgamer.com/find-out-why-the-vanishing-of-ethan-...

Since then, every game that embraced it for photo realism looks basically perfect in terms of world geometry. Doesn't even have to be crazy high-res or high poly, as long as you don't stick your virtual nose directly in front of stuff, you can easily fill every pixel on screen with one that's ~95% there from where it should be in a real-world photograph.

[skohan]

Aren't artists still involved in getting assets ready for production? My understanding was that a fair amount of polishing and refinement would still be required after capture (e.g. trimming down a very high poly model to something which can be rendered at 60FPS) - but I don't know to what extent that may have been automated by now.

I guess technologies like Nannite will also reduce the need for this type of grunt work.

But in either case, artists will still be involved in framing and staging the scene, doing the actual capture etc.

Creating a beautiful scene through photogrammetry is still a form of art, the same way photography and painting are each forms of art.