iPhone 3G S to use PowerVR SGX GPU core for OpenGL ES 2.0

[AppleInsider]

The new iPhone 3G S achieves its OpenGL ES 2.0 support using the PowerVR SGX graphics processor core, according to sources familiar with the new iPhone's graphics processor design, as AppleInsider first anticipated in a report last April that broke news of a secret deal struck between Imagination Technologies, Samsung, and Apple.

The report detailed an unusual manufacturing license agreement Imagination made with Samsung to integrate new PowerVR SGX graphics cores into multiple core, System on a Chip (SoC) devices built by Samsung.

While Samsung had a design license for Imagination's earlier MBX graphics cores, it only obtained the capacity to manufacture the new SGX technology. The design rights to SGX were retained by another party in a deal shrouded in secrecy.

In July 2007, Imagination had reported in a press release that its next generation graphics and video IP cores had been licensed "to an international electronics systems company under a multi-use licensing agreement." Imagination also reported that "the SoCs to be developed under this license agreement will be produced for this new partner by Imagination’s existing semiconductor partners and/or new chip manufacturing partners."

The electronics system company was not named, but AppleInsider reported at the time that "the fact that this 'electronics system company' was both a 'new partner' and not itself a chip manufacturer strongly suggests that the international electronics mystery company was in fact, Apple, Inc., which stands among very few other companies as new to mobile graphics core licensing yet dependent upon third party manufacturers who are already Imagination partners."

Apple outed as Imagination investor

In September, AppleInsider again linked Apple to another release from Imagination in which a still unnamed "international electronic systems company" had acquired a multi-year, multi-IP, multi-use licence agreement for its current and future portfolio of PowerVR mobile graphics components, including the next generation PowerVR SGX VXD video IP cores.

"Those parts will introduce OpenGL ES 2.0 support, along with a Universal Scalable Shader Engine that will provide mobile devices with highly efficient, shader-based 3D graphics. The new core is not only backwards compatible with code developed for MBX (used in the current iPhone and iPod touch), but will also run existing code with better performance and efficiency," the article said.

The identity of Apple as the mysteriously secret licensee which had secured unique Imagination technology for its own exclusive use using Samsung to manufacture the new 'System on a Chip' parts for future models of the iPhone was later confirmed last December, when AppleInsider reported that Imagination had announced the purchase of 8 million shares of the PowerVR developer and had separately cited Apple as "a licensee of Imagination’s technology."

iPhone 3G S and OpenGL ES 2.0

Sources have now reported that Apple has detailed that Imagination's PowerVR SGX is indeed the graphics processor used in the iPhone 3G S, and that it is "designed for OpenGL ES 2.0." The new 2.0 specification of OpenGL for Embedded Systems eliminates most of the fixed-function rendering pipeline for a programmable approach to 3D rendering using shader programs.

"Almost all rendering features of the transform and lighting pipelines, such as the specification of materials and light parameters formerly specified by the fixed-function API, are replaced by shaders written by the graphics programmer. As a result, OpenGL ES 2.0 is not backwards compatible with OpenGL ES 1.1," according to the OpenGL ES entry appearing in Wikipedia.

To maintain compatibility with the OpenGL ES 1.1 used in existing iPhone and iPod touch devices, "the graphics driver for the PowerVR SGX also implements OpenGL ES 1.1 by efficiently implementing the fixed-function pipeline using shaders," sources report. This indicates that games and other applications unique to the iPhone 3G S and other future models of the iPhone and iPod touch are likely to arrive that will either be exclusive to the new model, or more likely, will support improved 3D graphics on the new device while still working on previous models using the older fixed-function 3D pipeline.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[bonklers]

would have liked a little bar graph displaying speeds of old code on old chip, old code on the new chip and new code on new chip.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by bonklers

would have liked a little bar graph displaying speeds of old code on old chip, old code on the new chip and new code on new chip.

Old Chip :: ---------
New Chip :: -------------------------

Just messing with you. I look forward to seeing benchmarks, too.

[brucep]

PowerVR SGX rock's.

[Rot'nApple]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Old Chip :: ---------
New Chip :: -------------------------

Just messing with you. I look forward to seeing benchmarks, too.

[winterspan]

Not a surprise, but a great thing anyways. Do we know what model it is? like SGX530 like OMAP3?

Just as important is what the new CPU is.. I'm guessing Samsung has a manufacturing license for the ARM Cortex-A8 core? Whats interesting is that Samsung's website still only has the iPhone 3G's chip listed as the only ARM11 they have, and there is no ARM Cortex chips at all. Perhaps Apple isn't going through Samsung anymore? Do you think they went through a different provider or actually had a custom chip fabbed?
although it is unlikely in the iPhone 3GS because of the time frame, apparently Apple does now have a *design* license with ARM now, so PA Semi could actually be designing custom Cortex-like cores that are compatible with ARMv7 instruction set. This is exactly what Qualcomm did with Snapdragon. Instead of having an off-the-shelf Cortex-A8 core integrated with Qualcomm DSPs and cellular components, the Snapdragon actually has a custom core that runs ARMv7 instruction set code. Apparently it is pretty similar to the standard Cortex-A8, but even faster. They also have a 45nm dual-core Snapdragon (1.5ghz!) that also uses custom Cortex-A9-like cores.

Anyways, I wouldn't doubt that PA Semi is working on some ARMv7-compatible Superchip for the iTablet.

[vinea]

Heh, so much for the recent ZuneHD will beat iPod Touch because of NVIDIA Tegra posts...

I'm also guessing that Satoru Iwata will be giving up showing his iPhone during an interview by this time next year...

[vinea]

Originally Posted by winterspan

Not a surprise, but a great thing anyways. Do we know what model it is? like SGX530 like OMAP3?

Just as important is what the new CPU is.. I'm guessing Samsung has a manufacturing license for the ARM Cortex-A8 core? Whats interesting is that Samsung's website still only has the iPhone 3G's chip listed as the only ARM11 they have, and there is no ARM Cortex chips at all. Perhaps Apple isn't going through Samsung anymore? Do you think they went through a different provider or actually had a custom chip fabbed?

Given the rumor is for a Samsung SoC...

although it is unlikely in the iPhone 3GS because of the time frame, apparently Apple does now have a *design* license with ARM now, so PA Semi could actually be designing custom Cortex-like cores that are compatible with ARMv7 instruction set. This is exactly what Qualcomm did with Snapdragon. Instead of having an off-the-shelf Cortex-A8 core integrated with Qualcomm DSPs and cellular components, the Snapdragon actually has a custom core that runs ARMv7 instruction set code. Apparently it is pretty similar to the standard Cortex-A8, but even faster. They also have a 45nm dual-core Snapdragon (1.5ghz!) that also uses custom Cortex-A9-like cores.

I'm thinking that's still one rev away...just a gut feel.

Anyways, I wouldn't doubt that PA Semi is working on some ARMv7-compatible Superchip for the iTablet.

That seems more likely. Or even a iPhone OSX netbook/tablet combo based on ARM like the Android netbooks...only with the App Store behind it. There's that French ARM based netbook with the detachable screen that sure would be nice if it ran OSX iPhone rather than Linux and say had a port of iLife and iWork...

[Alfiejr]

ok, great detective work, Prince. so now, what the heck does it mean for real life iPhone performance compared to the last generation? faster apps? longer battery life? makes video possible? and how does it stack up against the competition's technology?

[hmurchison]

I want to know if the 3G S iPhone is using a VXE processor to enable the video capture.

[ksec]

Um...... I pretty sure AI got this wrong, Since the Old iPhone 3G supports OpenGL ES 2.0 anyway.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by ksec

Um...... I pretty sure AI got this wrong, Since the Old iPhone 3G supports OpenGL ES 2.0 anyway.

Nope. OpenGL ES 1.1 only for the 3G.

[Constable Odo]

Does anyone know how this processor would compare to the Sony PSP? Can it do better graphics and render things faster than a PSP now. I'm tired of reading about how the PSP can do much better graphics than a second generation iPod Touch, so maybe the 3rd generation iPod Touch will be even faster than the iPhone 3G S and blow the PSP away.

[teckstud]

s'all great but is AT&T up to snuff? Time will telll.

[ipodrulz]

What I really want to know is how the GPU/CPU stacks up against the Pre/G1/Bold!

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by Alfiejr

ok, great detective work, Prince. so now, what the heck does it mean for real life iPhone performance compared to the last generation? faster apps? longer battery life? makes video possible? and how does it stack up against the competition's technology?

Yeah, the techier the article on Apple Insider, the less information it contains and the more irritating it is in terms of actually trying to get useful information from it. For these kinds of developments you are better off reading a PC World article (it will be out in a week or two), or John Gruber if he covers it. At least then you will get enough context to understand what's being said.

In fairness, Prince MacClean's articles are usually the best of the bunch for context. That's what makes them so good and so readable is the fact that he purposely goes over the background and deliberately places the new development into a context that allows you to understand what it is that's being said. It's usually "Kasper's automated servant" that gives the worst, most confusing junk articles.

I can't make any sense out of this one myself even though I'm no dummy. Just saying that the new iPhone "... (uses) the PowerVR SGX graphics processor core ..." means little to me. I know generally what that is, which means I know enough to know that there are several variants of the thing with similar names. I also know that the Pre uses a chip that is similar (if not the same), and either comes from the same company or uses a similar name.

Is this the same processor as the Pre? is it the same as the old iPhone? Who knows? More importantly, is this the rumoured chip that Apple itself is working on, or is this just one of the two or three similarly named chips from that company *before* Apple redesigned it? Any one of those points is really central to why this discovery is even to be considered "news" yet none are seemingly answered by this mish-mash.

So if you're completely clued out, this article is giberish. If, like me you know just a tiny bit about it, then it's still giberish. If you know your chips backwards and forwards, well then why are you reading this silly article? The only way to know what is really going on is then to do your own research, which I started to do so I could figure it out.

But then I realised that if I was going to do that I don't need to read Apple Insider at all, and that if the authors were too lazy to write a proper article, then why should I care anyway?

[GregAlexander]

Originally Posted by vinea

Heh, so much for the recent ZuneHD will beat iPod Touch because of NVIDIA Tegra posts...

They didn't say anything about HD video on the iPHone though, did they?

[bonklers]

Originally Posted by GregAlexander

They didn't say anything about HD video on the iPHone though, did they?

you need one of 2 things to have hd video, either an hd display (not on iphone 3gs) or capability to render hd and pass it to a display with an hd cable (iphone does not have a port for an hd cable) so they did not flat out mention hd, but indirectly it looks like no hd.

[KingOfSomewhereHot]

Originally Posted by Constable Odo

Does anyone know how this processor would compare to the Sony PSP? Can it do better graphics and render things faster than a PSP now. I'm tired of reading about how the PSP can do much better graphics than a second generation iPod Touch, so maybe the 3rd generation iPod Touch will be even faster than the iPhone 3G S and blow the PSP away.

How is the phone service using that PSP ???

[winterspan]

Originally Posted by ipodrulz

What I really want to know is how the GPU/CPU stacks up against the Pre/G1/Bold!

No one knows yet. Although both the iPhone (by this rumor and it is most likely anyways) and Pre use a chip from the PowerVR SGX series, the specific model is unknown. The Pre uses the SGX530.

Also, the Pre's OMAP3 uses a 600Mhz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU. Based on the performance improvements, the iPhone 3GS likely also uses a Cortex-A8, but no one really knows yet.

The Blackberry bold uses a 600Mhz Marvell XScale chip. The XScale architecture is a compatible offshoot of ARM originally made by Intel in the late 90's. Unlike other custom ARM implementations like the Qualcomm Snapdragon, XScale uses the older ARMv5 instruction set.
I'm not sure about the graphics processor on the Blackberry Bold chip, but it's pointless anyways because Blackberry OS doesn't support hardware graphics acceleration.

*EDIT - Blackberry Bold is supposed to be Blackberry Storm

[hmurchison]

I'm wondering if Apple's custome designs will really be able to differentiate themselves from the ARM designs you have from more vendors.

I guess Apple may be able to really tweak the power and other features but it should be interesting to see how their designs fare against Snapdragons and OMAP designs.

[winterspan]

Originally Posted by Constable Odo

Does anyone know how this processor would compare to the Sony PSP? Can it do better graphics and render things faster than a PSP now. I'm tired of reading about how the PSP can do much better graphics than a second generation iPod Touch, so maybe the 3rd generation iPod Touch will be even faster than the iPhone 3G S and blow the PSP away.

I tried to confirm these numbers with as many sources as I could find on Google. Granted, polygon rendering performance isn't the only measure of a GPU, but it is one of primary importance.

PowerVR MBX in iPhone 3G = ~2 million polygons/sec
PowerVR SGX530 in Palm Pre = ~14 million polygons/sec
MIPS-based "Media Engine" in PSP = ~33 million polygons/sec


If the iPhone has the SGX530, and the performance is so much better... how are they going to manage 3D gaming?? Are there new APIs that allow 3D games to identify which model iPhone is in use and adjust the graphics quality accordingly? How will developers deal with this? Surely they aren't just going to make all new games to the lowest common denominator, right?

[addabox]

There's some stuff on game dev reaction here, the general idea seems to be that the new hardware is very capable, but since it will require additional resources to write to we may not see much that takes full advantage for a while, since developers will want to wait and see what kind of numbers they'll be writing to.

A guy in the comments seems convinced that this was some kind of blunder on Apple's part, since it bifurcates their market unnecessarily when they could have gotten reasonable performance upgrades out of whatever the evolutionary step would have been, instead of jumping to "next gen" (his term) architecture. He talks about the console biz, and how those platforms tend to stay pretty stable for four years or so before the next big processor and graphics jump. Somebody else notes that the iPhone is already a somewhat fractured market, in that there are games on the app store now that don't do that well on the original model.

Others are more sanguine and point out that desktop game developers have long used scalable graphics engines and multiple render paths to write to diverse hardware, although I'm not sure how that would work on such a constrained device as a phone. Of course, there's always the option of having two versions, but it's pointed out that that kind of resource allocation probably wouldn't allow a 99¢ price point.

It's a very game-centric conversation, and it doesn't seem to occur to these guys that people might use their phones for something other than games and that more powerful graphics might benefit the iPhone across the board.

[winterspan]

Originally Posted by addabox

There's some stuff on game dev reaction...

Thanks for the info.. I wonder if Apple is covering that stuff at WWDC workshops... You think they'll have an easier solution for devs other than just having the API recognize the deviceID and switch the graphics accordingly?

[winterspan]

** This just in: Anandtech.com posts in-depth article about iPhone 3GS CPU/GPU hardware **

http://it.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579

[wizard69]

Originally Posted by winterspan

** This just in: Anandtech.com posts in-depth article about iPhone 3GS CPU/GPU hardware **

http://it.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579

At least that is the way I take it, as everything he says is qualified. So he is not sure but apparently has sources he at least trusts enough to write the article.

Considering some of the stuff Apple has already said about performance I have to wonder if they have even attempted to optimize the 3GS yet. Certainly they have openGL, in both flavours, running on the unit but the question is to what extent has it been optimized. With Apples highering of late it looks like they are bringing on more talent to address performance. IPhone OS 3.1 could be very interesting.

Even if the article is spot on it only covers a small portion of what is of interest here. No info on RAM isn't good. If RAM remains at 128 that is a more serious issue than the processor with respect to the competition. Apple still needs to be more forth coming.


Dave

[melgross]

Originally Posted by winterspan

I tried to confirm these numbers with as many sources as I could find on Google. Granted, polygon rendering performance isn't the only measure of a GPU, but it is one of primary importance.

PowerVR MBX in iPhone 3G = ~2 million polygons/sec
PowerVR SGX530 in Palm Pre = ~14 million polygons/sec
MIPS-based "Media Engine" in PSP = ~33 million polygons/sec


If the iPhone has the SGX530, and the performance is so much better... how are they going to manage 3D gaming?? Are there new APIs that allow 3D games to identify which model iPhone is in use and adjust the graphics quality accordingly? How will developers deal with this? Surely they aren't just going to make all new games to the lowest common denominator, right?

For whatever the reason, game that appear on both the PSP and the 3G look better on the 3G.

This has been shown more than once, and quite a few writers writing about games have said that the 3G looks better than the PSP, and much better than the DS.

Why this is so I don't understand, but it seems to be true. Monkeyball for one, looks, and plays much better on the 3G.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by addabox

There's some stuff on game dev reaction here, the general idea seems to be that the new hardware is very capable, but since it will require additional resources to write to we may not see much that takes full advantage for a while, since developers will want to wait and see what kind of numbers they'll be writing to.

A guy in the comments seems convinced that this was some kind of blunder on Apple's part, since it bifurcates their market unnecessarily when they could have gotten reasonable performance upgrades out of whatever the evolutionary step would have been, instead of jumping to "next gen" (his term) architecture. He talks about the console biz, and how those platforms tend to stay pretty stable for four years or so before the next big processor and graphics jump. Somebody else notes that the iPhone is already a somewhat fractured market, in that there are games on the app store now that don't do that well on the original model.

Others are more sanguine and point out that desktop game developers have long used scalable graphics engines and multiple render paths to write to diverse hardware, although I'm not sure how that would work on such a constrained device as a phone. Of course, there's always the option of having two versions, but it's pointed out that that kind of resource allocation probably wouldn't allow a 99¢ price point.

It's a very game-centric conversation, and it doesn't seem to occur to these guys that people might use their phones for something other than games and that more powerful graphics might benefit the iPhone across the board.

We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.

We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.

[roninja]

Originally Posted by melgross

We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.

We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.

Its all to do with the efficient nature of PowerVR graphics. Think back to the glory days of Dreamcast v Playstation2 and even though on paper the PS2 was more powerful (and eventually won the battle), the Dreamcast always had the better looking games due to the inherent nature of the Tile-Based_rendering employed by the PowerVR gfx chip at the time.

Regarding PSP, latest rumour is they've gone with PowerVR graphics for a PSP2 due late 2010/11 anyways. By then Apple will have most likely migrated to the higher performance PowerVR SGX-XT muli-GPU designs running OpenCL...all exciting stuff DYOR....

[ivan.rnn01]

Originally Posted by melgross

We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.

Oh. Great point!
Personally, I'm not at all sure that the graphic acceleration they've achieved is worth investment.

[samurai1999]

Originally Posted by roninja

Its all to do with the efficient nature of PowerVR graphics. Think back to the glory days of Dreamcast v Playstation2 and even though on paper the PS2 was more powerful (and eventually won the battle), the Dreamcast always had the better looking games due to the inherent nature of the Tile-Based_rendering employed by the PowerVR gfx chip at the time.

Regarding PSP, latest rumour is they've gone with PowerVR graphics for a PSP2 due late 2010/11 anyways. By then Apple will have most likely migrated to the higher performance PowerVR SGX-XT muli-GPU designs running OpenCL...all exciting stuff DYOR....

The PowerVR tiled architecture saves on back-end pixel rendering - by only rendering the pixels that are actually visible
- so there's almost no over-draw required

However, it doesn't save on the polygon requirement since all the poly's need to be transformed before the tile happens
- i.e. it transforms all the poly's, allocates the transformed polys to tiles, renders each tile, then outputs the results.

[vinea]

Originally Posted by addabox

There's some stuff on game dev reaction here, the general idea seems to be that the new hardware is very capable, but since it will require additional resources to write to we may not see much that takes full advantage for a while, since developers will want to wait and see what kind of numbers they'll be writing to.

The negative folks assume that the target price is $0.99 which is a bogus assumption. For OpenGL ES 2.0 games that are AAA titles I expect to be $9.99 and up.

SpiffyOne is an idiot. If Apple went Cortex A8 + SGX as suspected then the 3GS is a stable platform for both the iPhone and Touch for several years with the more high end game devs targeting OpenGL ES 2.0 vs 1.1. Even if they stuck with ARM11 the target is STILL OpenGL ES 2.0.

OpenGL is key and if you avoid any Cortex A8 specific code you can target both platforms with the same binary.

The majority of iPhone owners will transition within a year (even the 3G owners will get a subsidized price by then) with Touch users lagging a bit beyond that but with still with gamers leading the pack.

Do folks really expect that many AAA OpenGL ES 2.0 titles between now and then? No, not really. There will be a few hand-crafted showcase titles that run great on the 3GS and crappy on the 3G but most 2.0 games wont show for a year.

Oh, on the Tegra thing...I meant for gaming, not 720p HD. Unless Apple turns the aTV into a HD dock for the iPhone/iPod Touch I don't see them pushing it as a key feature like on the Zune.

[vinea]

Originally Posted by teckstud

s'all great but is AT&T up to snuff? Time will telll.

AT&T doesn't matter for this. Unless you think they are going to do a WoW port to the iPhone and you're going to play a MMO over 3g.

But for you the glass is always half empty. You're pathetic.

[vinea]

Originally Posted by melgross

We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.

We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.

Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01

Oh. Great point!
Personally, I'm not at all sure that the graphic acceleration they've achieved is worth investment.

Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.

Geez, which part of allows "games with more realistic images" do folks NOT get? Do your movies or TV shows look like bad CGI for some reason when played on your iPhone?

[Mazda 3s]

The new iPhone 3G S achieves its OpenGL ES 2.0 support using the PowerVR SGX graphics processor core, according to sources familiar with the new iPhone's graphics processor design, as AppleInsider first anticipated in a report last April that broke news of a secret deal struck between Imagination Technologies, Samsung, and Apple.

Holy run-on sentence, Batman!

[samurai1999]

Originally Posted by vinea

Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.

Yes, I think you'll gradually see better looking games coming out for the 3GS (& next gen Touch), which will encourage people to move over to the new platform

From Apple's point of view, they need to keep their platform uptodate & competitive (e.g. Zune HD & Pre)

I think a significant upgrade every two years, and a minor one in-between is a sensible approach.

Any news on how much SDRAM is in the new iPhone
- are the rumours of 2x RAM true?
- this would certainly help with Textures

[vinea]

Look in comparison to the Pandora and Beagle Board - Cortex A8 + Power VR SGX530.

Only with all the iPhone devs, the App Store and OSX vs Linux.

http://openpandora.org/

[ivan.rnn01]

Originally Posted by vinea

Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.

Geez, which part of allows "games with more realistic images" do folks NOT get? Do your movies or TV shows look like bad CGI for some reason when played on your iPhone?

They will, they will, nobody's arguing.

Me personally not understanding "more realistic". How exactly do you measure realism of the screen of 480 by 320 pixels? By experimenting with specially created 3D samples?

Never mind, you're not the first who fails to answer this correct, short and realistic.

[vinea]

Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01

They will, they will, nobody's arguing.

Me personally not understanding "more realistic". How exactly do you measure realism of the screen of 480 by 320 pixels? By experimenting with specially created 3D samples?

Never mind, you're not the first who fails to answer this correct, short and realistic.

Simple. If it looks like obvious CGI it's less "realistic". When it looks like high end FX from a movie it looks "more realistic" because the intent is to put actors into virtual backgrounds indistinguishable from live sets. Likewise certain games strive for realism for greater immersion in gameplay. First person shooters, sims (racing, or other), RPGs, etc are examples of game genres that often use higher quality graphics for increased immersion.

Not being able to understand the difference requires willful ignorance.

[ivan.rnn01]

Originally Posted by vinea

Simple. If it looks like obvious CGI it's less "realistic". When it looks like high end FX from a movie it looks "more realistic" because the intent is to put actors into virtual backgrounds indistinguishable from live sets. Likewise certain games strive for realism for greater immersion in gameplay. First person shooters, sims (racing, or other), RPGs, etc are examples of game genres that often use higher quality graphics for increased immersion.

Not being able to understand the difference requires willful ignorance.

Not. Nobody knows, which CGI is obviously CG, and how close in quality CGI should be to theatric image to qualify for "looking like".

Ever seen theater screen of 480x320?