This 30-Year-Old Terminator VFX BLEW OUR MINDS!

I think CGI is getting worse for the same reason video games are getting worse - reaching 70% of a result can be done with 10% of the effort it took decades ago, but reaching 100% is not getting easier - you need tons of incredibly talented and dedicated engineers who have a very deep understanding of CG and come up with a bespoke solution. An example in movies would be the video the Corridor guys did on the Terminator 2 shot where the T-1000 phases through the prison bars - the VFX team on the movie essentially built a fluid simulation engine to get it right. The fact that they were able to recreate the effect on a shoestring budget speaks volumes of their talent and the evolution of tooling, but it doesn't look nearly as good: ▶ this video Another example from the field of video games would be Back 4 Blood vs Left 4 dead - the insane amount of care and effort Valve put into minute details cannot be replicated by faster tools and more computing power: link

There is YouTube channel called Corridor Crew which tried to use new technology available to film makers to reproduce the scene in Terminator where T-1000 (played by Robert Patrick) walks through metal bars of a jail cell. To their surprise, the results they got were pretty underwhelming and worse than what digital effects artists were able to come up with decades ago. Highly recommend to watch their video. [1] [1] ▶ this video

This software was mentioned briefly in the Corridor Crew video where they recreate a scene from Terminator II ▶ this video For macOS users that have Homebrew installed, you can install fSpy with: brew install --cask fspy