L. Scofield
Veteran
Sure, that's why I mentioned PBR in the formula I posted.Outch, come on! hahaha.
Basic in the sense of amount of texels in its textures and polys in ther geo, yeah, maybe. But that ignores that they were based of photometric and laser-scanned data, finely calibrated to their physically based brdfs and their lighting model,wich handles a bunch of lights with fresneld speculars, indirect lighting, AO, reflections and a bunch of other extra flair.
In terms of lighting, IES profiles + inverse square falloff help a lot. The lack of both in CE3 are very annoying when you try to create realistic lighting.Put those assets on source engine or ue3 and see if they look as good. Some people say it all came down to a bunch of post effects, because they actually didn't notice a lot of the naturalness they percieved actually came from the improved lighting . CA or DOF were just minor parts of it. Its easy to dissect polygon edges and texture resolution, but acuracy of lighting is a bit more subtle, and often is mistaken for some funky color grading or whatever by the non professional eye.
A great HDR implementation is a must but both this and the inverse square falloff are part of PBR so that's why I didn't mention them separately.
Now, CA and DOF are indeed small parts but are absolutely instrumental in fooling the eyes. Don't dismiss them because they're not some super advanced rendering technique.