CGI news - Rendered speechless - 2009

When the creative director of Top Gear magazine mails a link around the office with the subject line, ‘The future is this stuff', you'd be silly not to sit up and pay attention.

The link points to a YouTube page featuring some awesome CGI work from an Azerbaijani designer called PanTural.

If you watch the video, you can really start to see how 3D computer animation could shape the future of your first contact with new cars: CGI renderings rather than the real thing.

And when they look this good, does it matter if they're not The Real Thing?

This kind of CGI will likely start appearing more and more, especially within the confines of your favourite car magazines, who wouldn't need to get their hands on a real vehicle to do a photoshoot.

However, when you consider that this piece of work took PanTural 110 days just to render, you realise that we're not quite there just yet.

But in five years? It's definitely possible...