Ripped from VE:
Tim Sweeney - I don't think voxels are going to be applicable for a while. My thinking on the evolution of realtime computer graphics is as follows: 1999: Large triangles as rendering primitives, software T&L. 2000: Large triangles, with widespread use software-tesselated curved surfaces, limited hardware T&L. 2001: Small triangles, with hardware continuous tesselation of displacement-mapped surfaces, massive hardware T&L. 2002-3: Tiny triangles, full hardware tesselation of curved and displacement-mapped surfaces, limited hardware pixel shaders a la RenderMan. 2004-5: Hardware tesselation of everything down to anti-aliased sub-pixel triangles, fully general hardware pixel shaders. Though the performance will be staggering, the pipeline is still fairly traditional at this point, with straightforward extensions for displacement map tesselation and pixel shading, which fit into the OpenGL/Direct3D schema in a clean and modular way. 2006-7: CPU's become so fast and powerful that 3D hardware will be only marginally benfical for rendering relative to the limits of the human visual system, therefore 3D chips will likely be deemed a waste of silicon (and more expensive bus plumbing), so the world will transition back to software-driven rendering. And, at this point, there will be a new renaissance in non-traditional architectures such as voxel rendering and REYES-style microfacets, enabled by the generality of CPU's driving the rendering process. If this is a case, then the 3D hardware revolution sparked by 3dfx in 1997 will prove to only be a 10-year hiatus from the natural evolution of CPU-driven rendering.