Except for video games and other graphics applications augmented with hardware graphics processors. Systems like that would have seemed magical in the very recent past, but today every kid has one.
I have seen largish render farms that can produce smooth, fully-shaded, ray-traced, subsurface-scattered, photo-real, fully-hyphenated, theatrical-quality animation in real-time after only a few seconds of filling the pipeline. But it will still be a few years before every kid has one.
But we are even today at a place where patient directors can control animated characters with almost the same ease as an somewhat intractable star actor. Just as video taps transferred a lot of the cameraman's mojo to the director, fast graphics is now transferring a lot of animator's mojo to the director. Proving once again that technology does not always serve the proletariat.
And there has been idle talk of distributing animated feature films by sending the algorithms and data directly to theaters, where they will be rendered as they are projected.
And next year computer graphics will completely do away with all forms of commercial photography.
I am planning on opening up a service where you can have your kids digitally scanned, then placed in fully blown simulations of Disneyland, Wally World, etc, where you can see them enjoying themselves in a variety of pre-scripted scenarios. I except the "Mickey Mouse Hug" (tm) and "Snow White Smooch" (tm) sequences to be especially popular. Still images will be available with or without Instagram (tm) processing in attractive 50's style photo albums. All for a price considerably less than actually taking the trip. Will launch the Cat scanning service about a year later.
I'm sure I've got things to do, must go.
