The still images were really impressive (to a layman like me the bar is pretty low but the comments indicate this too). When I watched the video though it broke the realness...not sure how to describe it but everything seemed 'too still' or something. Mostly with the water. Not like it's less impressive or anything but I was hoping it would feel like the images or something.

You mean this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slc--V2pi5c

To me it at least looks as good if not better than many movie's CGI. It has a little bit of "uncanny valley[0]" but not enough if I suspend my disbelief a little.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

This video is much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nLGoqqDc0w

That one is a lot better, but still looks off enough that I didn't even approach the uncanny valley. It looks great but it doesn't look real.

In the other video the foliage looks horrible. Come to think of it, I doubt I've ever seen good 3D foliage, let alone examples that come close to real.

the pebbles on the ground looks quite real. But the larger boulders in the background is too textured and not enough bumpiness and also too uniformly flat. That's what seems to make it fake. also the water looks great, but too uniform and perfect. Real water has lots of little flaws and it's usually not as clear too (things like muddy water is hard to render i guess).

I was astounded! But then, so were the guys at Unreal:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?58385-Koola-s...

This was the video I meant. I agree it looks good but not real. Kind of strange that something can be both when I was expecting it to look real, if that made sense.

What immediately stood out to me was the lack of waves. It's clearly supposed to be an ocean or large sea, but there are only small ripples in the water.

same effect here. I think I may point to two effect that subliminally distract you from immersing completely in the scene: 1 the water shader mimics moving water but there is no movement on the waterline 2 some aberration caused by the depth of field effect that doesn't match the perceived depth of the elements.

not to detract from it! it's still an extremely impressive demo.

is that texture stretching in the big rocks?

dang can you change the URL?