system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
The "photo" in photorealism refers to light transport, not photography
gpt
Huh, TIL that a few computer nerds took an established term and changed its meaning in their area. Photo in photorealism in the common usage absolutely refers to photographs; the ability to recreate a photograph in another medium. Although as best as I can tell photorealistic rendering is principally used as a contrast to non-photorealistic rendering and is not the preferred term for unbiased rendering. I suspect many art directors in video games are thinking of the artistic photorealism when thinking about post-render additives like lens flare, rather than render processes that are already done before the post-processing happens.