You’re comparing it to what is probably the most realistic game since the PT Silent Hill demo came out, and heavily based on photogrammetry. The paper also focuses on natural textures, not built up environments, so it’s a pointless comparison in multiple ways.

Again, not a contest. The paper is exploring new techniques for generating content. Why all the negativity?

The negativity is because the claim is strong "Infinite *Photorealistic* Worlds Using Procedural Generation" while the approach is probably a dead end and does not improve performance in any of the relevant directions.

No new ground is broken here in rendering techniques, nor in procedural generation, nor in actual content. AI is generating actually photorealistic content today, AI-adjacent techniques such as NERFs as well as traditional but sophisticated rendering like UE5 are the leading edge of rendering. If you're going to make a strong claim, you should deliver something.

Again, isn’t UE5’s foliage generator 1) using masks instead of geometry by default and 2) using quixel/megascan imagery? Doesn’t seem like a useful comparison.

I honestly don’t know what you’re reacting to, what strong claims? “Infinite” is a given for procedural assets, and is highlighted in comparison to the existing partially asset-based generators (they go over existing software on page three), and the output certainly qualifies as photorealistic. There are no claims in the paper about being the first to do anything.