Ironically, an ultra high depth-of-field isn't realistic.
In computer graphics, simulating low depth of field (background and foreground blurred, while subject in focus) is a considered an advancement in realism.
On the other hand, many games simulate lens flare too.
I kind of wonder if there are not other "actually realistic" avenues that haven't been pursued. For example, simulating floaters.
I also found it funny playing some first-person shooters in 3d and/or VR. Although it would make sense to have these effects when using a sniper rifle, you can use a sniper rifle without closing one eye! ha!
You can use gun sights in the real world while keeping both eyes open (and some schools of thought recommend it for situational awareness). It's not even that hard so long as your dominant eye is the one looking through the sights, and you don't get wink fatigue either.
I suspect the VR game isn't correctly simulating what this actually looks like, though.
If a subject has floaters, they will be there when viewing a VR scene with goggles, and will move in the right ways when moving the head and eyes; there is no need to waste cycles on that.
It’s arguably more typically considered an advancement in the realism of simulating a real life camera with an optical lens. Not the same thing as simulating human visual perception more realistically.
Games are trying to look more like movies, hence new technologies to simulate shallow DoF, lens flare, anamorphic lens artifacts etc. None of these really help make the game world look more like how a human might perceive them, they do all help make the game look like how a typical movie camera might have perceived the scene.
For sure shallow DoF simulation _could_ be used to try and make games more human perception like, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the effect used this way - it’s virtually always used to simulate optical bokeh/out of focus areas to look more film like.
In real life, whatever I look at is always in focus. It's actually very unrealistic to simulate depth of field without good eye tracking, because the user will end up looking at things that are simulated as out of focus but should actually be in-focus because the user is looking at them.
If you don't have good eye tracking, then rendering the entire scene in focus is most realistic, as whatever I look directly at will appear in focus and everything else is more peripheral and will be blurred a bit by my optical system anyway.
Computer games strive to look like movies, borrowing established means of expression and cliches from movies (specifically, Hollywood movies). This includes narrow depth of field in cutscenes, color keying by genre (usually orange and blue) and imitation of chemical film colors. AAA games look very unrealistic, but everyone is too accustomed to this look.
Static graphics, rendered with non real-time methods, usually imitate photos, so depth of field is added too. They tend to look more realistic than games.
Narrow depth of field occurs in human vision, like when looking at very close objects under well-lit conditions. (We have flexible lenses in our eyes for a reason, and when they don't work well, we have corrective lenses for a reason.)
The effect has been imitated in static rendering (e.g. raytracing) long before it appeared in games and full length animations.
It is a real-world optical effect that requires extra work to simulate; when that is not included in the algorithms, you get wide depth of field by default. Everything going back to Gouraud-shaded polygons and wire-frame is effectively wide depth of field.
I kind of wonder if there are not other "actually realistic" avenues that haven't been pursued. For example, simulating floaters.
I also found it funny playing some first-person shooters in 3d and/or VR. Although it would make sense to have these effects when using a sniper rifle, you can use a sniper rifle without closing one eye! ha!