Ternian wrote:
I don't know much about CGI, but I thought LotR was far more realistic than AotC.

I heavily disagree.
I can't seem to understand why people feel this way. I think it's cause in AOTC you
know 90 percent of what your seeing isn't real. Moreover, fans see so much pre-production and production footage that the final product loses its weight since mentally you've already seen the truth. The LOTR films are shot on location and the effects dont overwhelm you the way they do in Star Wars. People tend not to experience the process of LOTR as they do in Star Wars. There's no abundance of blue screen, no fantastical environments that are foreign to us and therefore you can identify with the LOTR movies on a much more realistic level, as posted above.
That being said, from a technical standpoint, ILM is leaps and bounds ahead of WETA Digital. People praise Gollum, and while he IS an impressive acheivement in digital effects, he is not nearly as detailed as any digital character in the PT. WETA's texture mapping is not in high-res as it is in Star Wars, their cloth simulation is not as accurate and their matte work is dreadful in some places (litterally early 80s matte work - There's a few shots in TTT and ROTK that I couldn't believe they OK'd to go to print).
Nothing is going to convince either side's preference, but from a technical POV, WETA is behind. Peter Jackson will even tell you that.