Give it a few more years and we’ll have game engines with full light photon simulations.
In this case, it’s better not to be realistic. If you’re outside on a bright day, and then come inside to a dark room, it will take minutes for your eyes to adjust. That’s not very practical in an actiony FPS.
HDR does slightly help realism, but generally nowadays, gamers want something beautiful, not realistic. and i think it implements that aspect very well.
I had no idea what HDR was supposed to do until the HL2 update. I got to a map with HDR on the coast and thought: “wow this looks incredibly realistic”
I see that it’s a bit overdone sometimes but that happens with new technologies (for example, full-colour films). When people stop playing with the “bling” we’ll have pretty, realistic games.
I know one game where HDR is done right. In Arma2 when you take off Night vision goggles at night - it’s pitch black and after a few minutes your virtual eyes adjust and you begin to see 
I don’t know about you guys but I would have to have been in a dark place for a VERY long time in order for my eyes to needs even a minute readjusting to the brighter light.
You guys talking about 15 minutes adjustment times are crazy. Would think you were trapped in a dark box for several days.
It takes usually around just a second if not less if you were just stepping into a dark place and walked out a few minutes later.
At least I’ve never had issues with readjusting and the HDR in games is totally unrealistic. It is just made to look nice. That is all.
Only when gamers get HDR displays this will become realistic. You can’t do real HDR on a LDR monitor. It just doesn’t work.
Arma 2’s Hdr is fantastic. And I really like the HDR in Valve’s games.
I hate motion blur. I don’t get an effect like that in real life. People must need glasses, it’s not realistic at all! The only games that pull it off OK are Valve’s and that’s because you don’t actually notice it at all.
There’s 2 forms of eye adjustment. To fully adjust to a lighting situation does take minutes. A large portion of the eye adjustment takes less than a second and most people don’t even notice it unless they experiment with their vision.
motion blur in most games is just too strong, but anyway, it’s not really necessary, because our eye already blurs fast motions.
The problem with both motion blur and hdr is that developers tend to overdue it, while not providing the ability to adjust said features. I prefer just a little of both, not enough to the point where they are obvious. Motion blur is not even needed usually because, like it was stated, our vision naturally blurs.
Also, you only tend to notice motion blur in films and photography. If FPS is supposed to simulate real life (unless going for a film effect intentionally), why program such characteristics? In FPS the goal is high frames per second, not ~30 fps like in films. If filming movies did not already use so much film, producers would increase the frame rate.
Our eyes do not blur fast motions on screens however due to it being ‘broken’ movement.
it’ll take some time untill they get it right. simulating human factors is a pain in the ass. no matter how hard they try, it’ll be too digital. in some older games they were satisfied with simulating a digital camera (hexagonal coronas, blood on screen, etc). nowadays they scrapped most of those effects, switching them with more human visuals (sun rays as seen through eyelash, vignette-like partial blackouts) but still combinig them with he old ones, like blood splatters on the screen, which is not too realistic, because the blood doesn’t splatter on your iris, now does it? and if it DOES get in your eye it should be blurry as hell. CS : S had a flashbang effect when the image was burned into “your eyes” but that’s nothing like how it happens in reality.
on the other hand reproducing the exact images that a person sees in these situasions would look like shit, and that’s why i think they should stick to the “camera look”. not cracks or dust on the lenses (unless you play as a robot) but keeping it as simple as it can be. a great game doesn’t need too much visual gimmicks to grab the player.
EDIT:
true. the eyes cannot interpolate between two “snapshots” (frames) that’s why it has to be a pre-rendered motion blur.