Are graphics reaching their cap this gen?

No doubt about it. No matter what, games will always look better with each passing gen.

I look at Ryse and Killzone SF for example. Yes, the visuals will age and they could look better. But there's no way to significantly improve from that.

The good thing is that this will leave gameplay (and breadth of the game world) as a bigger focus than it has been in the previous gen.

Of course there is. People say this all the time. could you imagine in the 80's what it would be like now? no... We are always riding that ever breaking crest of technical development... we will always be amazed at the improvements we never seen coming... mark my words

Visuals so far this gen are much better than last gen consoles, a lot better.

Its not as big a jump last gen was beacuse that was SD (4:3) to HD (16:9). That was much more noticeable

Without having to upgrade hardware pretty soon we will see PS4 games that beat KZ SF graphics...

Games are only capped by the hardware they are ran on. Imo, the bar should have been set higher for both. But that said, I still think both can produce some nice looking games. We have Ryse and KZ SF. But with time, we will see something that looks better than both and that will surprise you. Still to early to say much as both consoles need time and the developers need to figure out the hardware and how to optimize the games so that they can run better and look better.

One thing that is steadily going backwards is game length. Games are getting shorter these days, there's really no excuse for that this gen.

Graphics will only get better give it one or two years before we see even better graphics than ryse and killzone.

2ndwonder. i think length has gotten shorter over the past gen was because companies had to devote so much time to making the visuals realistic that less time was spent designing the AI, the levels, the side-activities among other things.

Agree with Redent to an extent. But I'm saying from now to the end of the gen won't be anywhere near the leap that playing Gears of War 1 in HD was.

This is why some people think that the leap from 7th gen to 8th gen is not as big as before. In fact it is, but the improvements are less and less visible for the untrained eyes.

Budgets will cap graphics far quicker than hardare will.

Are we doing realtime v-ray at 4k rez and 60fps? No? Then we have some distance yet to go.

Their are still advancements to be had in animation, lighting, destruction, dynamic environments. And many many more areas. And of course ai as well