[1stop]

But that is because of hardware capability... i.e. computers weren't good enough for artists to work with... wasn't it?

I've been out of the 3D world for a while, but Ray tracing was the be-all-end-all/holy grail of 3d. It is simulating light... you can't do better than physics.

[chacham15]

Raytracing has its limitations, subsurface scattering for example.

[stcredzero]

But don't those go away with enough compute resources?