[sebastos]

You've probably looked at this, but maybe it would help to avoid thinking "out of the box", and try it more incrementally: create an extremely simple cellphone video of an "easy" scene, like a teapot sitting on linoleum or something. Then try to recreate it -perfectly- using computer graphics. Get it to the level where you can literally compare the pixels for each frame.

Maybe that could bring you closer to understanding what the important factors are that the current graphics pipeline can't do. Why is it hard to get the pixels in the simulated video be the same color as the cell phone ones? Are the materials off? The shadows? If you can't even make the teapot look real, then you've zeroed in on something fundamental that's still going to bite you when you're busy trying to rig antelope skeletons.

[tripzilch]

There's already one standard scene / benchmark like that, the Cornell Box: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_box

Of course it's ridiculously simple, so you may want to increase the bar a little to impress GP :p