VIRTUALLY REALITY.

Angelina. Kind of.

Just watched the hi-res trailer for BEOWULF, the upcoming movie from director Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future, Forrest Gump) and felt it deserved a mention... Not because the cast is decent (Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich), or because the story is a classic, but because the whole film is computer animated and the graphics are pretty stunning...

Tony

Until now computer generated animated films have mostly been aimed at the younger market, featuring stylized main characters. Comparing Beowulf to Toy Story from 10 years ago shows how far graphics and kinematics have progressed. Easy to believe it won't be long before actors don't even need to be on set...

Burnout Paradise

Looking at the previews from the recent E3 electronics expo shows that video game graphics are also jumping ahead pretty quickly. Gotta remember too, these graphics are rendered on-the-fly at 30-60 frames per second, not over hours using banks of computers...

Having said all this, as Pixar's latest, Ratatouille, or tennis on the Wii successfully show, realistic graphics aren't everything...

Gran Turismo 5