The graphics industry was just turned on its head yesterday with the announcement that AMD was acquiring ATI Technologies. But while that news is of great significance, ATI rival NVIDIA has plans of its own when it comes to the future of graphics. Dean Takahashi of The Mercury News had the opportunity to interview Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA. The two talk about the GeForce FX failure, why the company is dealing with Sony in the console arena this time around instead of Microsoft and how far away we are from the "Toy Story" standard.

In regards to having greater photorealism in games, Huang feels that we are still at least 10 years away. Techniques like depth of field, motion blur and HDR are being refined, but we still have a ways to go before computers can move with the fluidity of human beings. Many movies today feature human characters acting in front of blue screens as action takes place around them. The effect is (for the most) part seamless to movie viewers, but gamers still have a ways to go before we see that kind of photorealism on the PC. “With "Superman Returns,'' you can't really put a camera on a person and have him fly through a metropolis. That entire movie was animated. It was one big computer-generated movie with a guy in tights in front of a blue screen. You look at that imagery, and you know we are nowhere near that level of imagery,” said Huang.

Although the interview was conducted before the AMD-ATI merger went public, it would be interesting to see what Jen-Hsun Huang has to say about the deal. Speculation is running rampant as to what the merger means for the industry as a whole – a merger that affects not only AMD and ATI, but also Intel and NVIDIA. Intel hasn’t commented on the merger but we do expect to being hearing from them before the week is out.