Not all that crazy, but realtime raytracing (or more usefully, path tracing) WILL eventually get here. That's going to have a major impact on 3D game engines,

Not all that crazy, but realtime raytracing (or more usefully, path tracing) WILL eventually get here. That's going to have a major impact on 3D game engines, because it massively drops the amount of code required to produce extremely physically-accurate images. All the other components of game engines will still be needed, of course, but a cutting-edge renderer will go from being a massive, multi-month project to something that a skilled coder can assemble in 99 lines or so. (No kidding. Here's a 99-line path tracer: http://www.kevinbeason.com/smallpt/ http://www.kevinbeason.com/smallpt/ )