not much scenery like that in here in south texas...even in video games!
speaking of which, when will we get realistic-enough detail that an average user won't be able to tell a real life photo from an in game screen capture?
The way things are going, we're not even moving towards that. The cycle that drove the industry for a decade (demanding games -> powerful hardware -> even more demanding games -> even more powerful hardware) has slowed down to a crawl. Sure, the hardware part of the cycle is still chugging along, but I wonder for how long - games no longer keep up, because games are being developed for consoles, which have a far longer product cycle.
Even consoles are arguably losing their "preferred platform" status to developers, who are now focusing on mobile gaming. Essentially, we have gotten to the point where improving PC graphics is no longer interesting to the masses and they no longer see rapid improvement. Instead, the cycle has essentially re-started - on cellphones and tablets. Top-end cellphone graphics power is today in the same league as the original x-box. From this point forward, expect to see rapid improvement in cellphone and tablet graphics, sluggish improvement on the PC (The only remaining large successful PC-centric game developer I can think of OTOH is Valve, and they aren't exactly known for pushing graphical boundaries), and one more major generation of console hardware before consoles disappear as a distinct niche and either get displaced by mobile devices, or merge with other devices into some form of "living room device to rule them all". We've seen attempts to move towards the latter as consoles become media players and more. Microsoft attempted to fill the "ultimate living room device" niche with the Home Theater PC, but ultimately failed - in no small part because content providers were unwilling to allow their content onto such an open platform.
Ultimately, the PC itself is in a threatened position. It has entrenched itself in many enterprise environments, but on a timescale of a decade or more, most consumers may find that their mobile devices can perform all the computing services they really need done locally, and that more intensive tasks can be done in the cloud. The Atrix is an interesting move in this direction. Without the economies of scale of a mass market, the PC will cease to be cheap and provide a plethora of choices like it does today.
So to address the initial question, we are not likely to see drastic improvements in graphics anytime soon.