Carmack and Sweeny are perhaps the most famous game graphics programmers, but they are far from the only knee pushing the state of the art. In fact, they've both been rather quiet lately. Carmack has been nose-down in VR lately and Sweeny has hired an excellent team that has been doing most of the talking for Epic.
Meanwhile, check out The Order:1886 and Beyond:Two Souls for examples of the most technically impressive game graphics from studios most people haven't heard of.
Game graphics have taken big leaps in the past few years. I attribute that to amazing advances in GPU tech coupled with quite a lot of open discussion and sharing of research in the game graphics community. But, we're still far from where we want to be.
To add to that, Sweeney hasn't really been a graphics programmer since the late 90's. He's always been much more focused on engine infrastructure, leaving graphics to other very competent programmers at Epic.
Meanwhile, check out The Order:1886 and Beyond:Two Souls for examples of the most technically impressive game graphics from studios most people haven't heard of.
Game graphics have taken big leaps in the past few years. I attribute that to amazing advances in GPU tech coupled with quite a lot of open discussion and sharing of research in the game graphics community. But, we're still far from where we want to be.