[Bekwnn]

Not exactly. The methods to achieve these things in real time are new and evolving. It's not just a matter of hardware. Sure, you knew how to get the same end effect with raytracing ages ago, but the path from A to B is extremely different.

[ska]

That's true but 2nd order effect. The global illumination folks 20 years ago were still ahead of todays AAA titles in terms of "depths" in the above context. And the big bang-for-buck on the modern visuals is more modeling and model complexity, art budget. Sure there are a bunch of engineers working around hardware limitations etc, and there are some clever things being developed, but that's not where the the big shift lies, imo.